Page 1596 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

It was dusk. Anna was alone, and waiting for him to
come back from a bachelor dinner. She walked up and
down in his study (the room where the noise from the
street was least heard), and thought over every detail of

their yesterday’s quarrel. Going back from the well-
remembered, offensive words of the quarrel to what had
been the ground of it, she arrived at last at its origin. For a
long while she could hardly believe that their dissension
had arisen from a conversation so inoffensive, of so little
moment to either. But so it actually had been. It all arose
from his laughing at the girls’ high schools, declaring they
were useless, while she defended them. He had spoken
slightingly of women’s education in general, and had said
that Hannah, Anna’s English protegee, had not the
slightest need to know anything of physics.
This irritated Anna. She saw in this a contemptuous
reference to her occupations. And she bethought her of a
phrase to pay him back for the pain he had given her. ‘I
don’t expect you to understand me, my feelings, as anyone
who loved me might, but simple delicacy I did expect,’
she said.
And he had actually flushed with vexation, and had said
something unpleasant. She could not recall her answer, but

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