Page 417 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

‘What, run away?’
‘And why not run away? I don’t see how we can keep
on like this. And not for my sake—I see that you suffer.’
‘Yes, run away, and become your mistress,’ she said

angrily.
‘Anna,’ he said, with reproachful tenderness.
‘Yes,’ she went on, ‘become your mistress, and
complete the ruin of..’
Again she would have said ‘my son,’ but she could not
utter that word.
Vronsky could not understand how she, with her
strong and truthful nature, could endure this state of
deceit, and not long to get out of it. But he did not
suspect that the chief cause of it was the word—son,
which she could not bring herself to pronounce. When
she thought of her son, and his future attitude to his
mother, who had abandoned his father, she felt such terror
at what she had done, that she could not face it; but, like a
woman, could only try to comfort herself with lying
assurances that everything would remain as it always had
been, and that it was possible to forget the fearful question
of how it would be with her son.

416 of 1759