Page 1646 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

to hate each other, and so to torture ourselves and each
other? Schoolboys coming—laughing Seryozha?’ she
thought. ‘I thought, too, that I loved him, and used to be
touched by my own tenderness. But I have lived without

him, I gave him up for another love, and did not regret
the exchange till that love was satisfied.’ And with loathing
she thought of what she meant by that love. And the
clearness with which she saw life now, her own and all
men’s, was a pleasure to her. ‘It’s so with me and Pyotr,
and the coachman, Fyodor, and that merchant, and all the
people living along the Volga, where those placards invite
one to go, and everywhere and always,’ she thought when
she had driven under the low-pitched roof of the
Nizhigorod station, and the porters ran to meet her.
‘A ticket to Obiralovka?’ said Pyotr.
She had utterly forgotten where and why she was
going, and only by a great effort she understood the
question.
‘Yes,’ she said, handing him her purse, and taking a
little red bag in her hand, she got out of the carriage.
Making her way through the crowd to the first-class
waiting-room, she gradually recollected all the details of
her position, and the plans between which she was
hesitating. And again at the old sore places, hope and then

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