Page 1597 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

at that point, with an unmistakable desire to wound her
too, he had said:
‘I feel no interest in your infatuation over this girl,
that’s true, because I see it’s unnatural.’

The cruelty with which he shattered the world she had
built up for herself so laboriously to enable her to endure
her hard life, the injustice with which he had accused her
of affectation, of artificiality, aroused her.
‘I am very sorry that nothing but what’s coarse and
material is comprehensible and natural to you,’ she said
and walked out of the room.
When he had come in to her yesterday evening, they
had not referred to the quarrel, but both felt that the
quarrel had been smoothed over, but was not at an end.
Today he had not been at home all day, and she felt so
lonely and wretched in being on bad terms with him that
she wanted to forget it all, to forgive him, and be
reconciled with him; she wanted to throw the blame on
herself and to justify him.
‘I am myself to blame. I’m irritable, I’m insanely
jealous. I will make it up with him, and we’ll go away to
the country; there I shall be more at peace.’
‘Unnatural!’ she suddenly recalled the word that had
stung her most of all, not so much the word itself as the

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