Page 1682 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

‘You will become another man, I predict,’ said Sergey
Ivanovitch, feeling touched. ‘To deliver one’s brother-
men from bondage is an aim worth death and life. God
grant you success outwardly—and inwardly peace,’ he

added, and he held out his hand. Vronsky warmly pressed
his outstretched hand.
‘Yes, as a weapon I may be of some use. But as a man,
I’m a wreck,’ he jerked out.
He could hardly speak for the throbbing ache in his
strong teeth, that were like rows of ivory in his mouth. He
was silent, and his eyes rested on the wheels of the tender,
slowly and smoothly rolling along the rails.
And all at once a different pain, not an ache, but an
inner trouble, that set his whole being in anguish, made
him for an instant forget his toothache. As he glanced at
the tender and the rails, under the influence of the
conversation with a friend he had not met since his
misfortune, he suddenly recalled HER—that is, what was
left of her when he had run like one distraught into the
cloak room of the railway station—on the table,
shamelessly sprawling out among strangers, the
bloodstained body so lately full of life; the head unhurt
dropping back with its weight of hair, and the curling
tresses about the temples, and the exquisite face, with red,

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