Page 411 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

‘But you’re ill or worried,’ he went on, not letting go
her hands and bending over her. ‘What were you thinking
of?’
‘Always the same thing,’ she said, with a smile.

She spoke the truth. If ever at any moment she had
been asked what she was thinking of, she could have
answered truly: of the same thing, of her happiness and her
unhappiness. She was thinking, just when he came upon
her of this: why was it, she wondered, that to others, to
Betsy (she knew of her secret connection with
Tushkevitch) it was all easy, while to her it was such
torture? Today this thought gained special poignancy from
certain other considerations. She asked him about the
races. He answered her questions, and, seeing that she was
agitated, trying to calm her, he began telling her in the
simplest tone the details of his preparations for the races.
‘Tell him or not tell him?’ she thought, looking into his
quiet, affectionate eyes. ‘He is so happy, so absorbed in his
races that he won’t understand as he ought, he won’t
understand all the gravity of this fact to us.’
‘But you haven’t told me what you were thinking of
when I came in,’ he said, interrupting his narrative; ‘please
tell me!’

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