Page 460 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

‘But here’s this lady too, and others very much moved
as well; it’s very natural,’ Alexey Alexandrovitch told
himself. He tried not to look at her, but unconsciously his
eyes were drawn to her. He examined that face again,

trying not to read what was so plainly written on it, and
against his own will, with horror read on it what he did
not want to know.
The first fall—Kuzovlev’s, at the stream—agitated
everyone, but Alexey Alexandrovitch saw distinctly on
Anna’s pale, triumphant face that the man she was
watching had not fallen. When, after Mahotin and
Vronsky had cleared the worst barrier, the next officer had
been thrown straight on his head at it and fatally injured,
and a shudder of horror passed over the whole public,
Alexey Alexandrovitch saw that Anna did not even notice
it, and had some difficulty in realizing what they were
talking of about her. But more and more often, and with
greater persistence, he watched her. Anna, wholly
engrossed as she was with the race, became aware of her
husband’s cold eyes fixed upon her from one side.
She glanced round for an instant, looked inquiringly at
him, and with a slight frown turned away again.
‘Ah, I don’t care!’ she seemed to say to him, and she
did not once glance at him again.

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