Page 240 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

town. At three o’clock she too went away, promising to
come to dinner. Alexey Alexandrovitch was at the
ministry. Anna, left alone, spent the time till dinner in
assisting at her son’s dinner (he dined apart from his

parents) and in putting her things in order, and in reading
and answering the notes and letters which had
accumulated on her table.
The feeling of causeless shame, which she had felt on
the journey, and her excitement, too, had completely
vanished. In the habitual conditions of her life she felt
again resolute and irreproachable.
She recalled with wonder her state of mind on the
previous day. ‘What was it? Nothing. Vronsky said
something silly, which it was easy to put a stop to, and I
answered as I ought to have done. To speak of it to my
husband would be unnecessary and out of the question.
To speak of it would be to attach importance to what has
no importance.’ She remembered how she had told her
husband of what was almost a declaration made her at
Petersburg by a young man, one of her husband’s
subordinates, and how Alexey Alexandrovitch had
answered that every woman living in the world was
exposed to such incidents, but that he had the fullest
confidence in her tact, and could never lower her and

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