Page 314 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

turned back again. ‘But express what—what decision?’ he
said to himself in the drawing room, and he found no
reply. ‘But after all,’ he asked himself before turning into
the boudoir, ‘what has occurred? Nothing. She was talking

a long while with him. But what of that? Surely women in
society can talk to whom they please. And then, jealousy
means lowering both myself and her,’ he told himself as he
went into her boudoir; but this dictum, which had always
had such weight with him before, had now no weight and
no meaning at all. And from the bedroom door he turned
back again; but as he entered the dark drawing room some
inner voice told him that it was not so, and that if others
noticed it that showed that there was something. And he
said to himself again in the dining room, ‘Yes, I must
decide and put a stop to it, and express my view of it...’
And again at the turn in the drawing room he asked
himself, ‘Decide how?’ And again he asked himself, ‘What
had occurred?’ and answered, ‘Nothing,’ and recollected
that jealousy was a feeling insulting to his wife; but again
in the drawing room he was convinced that something
had happened. His thoughts, like his body, went round a
complete circle, without coming upon anything new. He
noticed this, rubbed his forehead, and sat down in her
boudoir.

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