Page 617 - ANNA KARENINA
P. 617

Anna Karenina


                                  groaned with inward agony, and got up and changed his
                                  place in the carriage, and for a long while after, he sat with
                                  scowling brows, wrapping his numbed and bony legs in
                                  the fleecy rug.

                                     ‘Apart from formal divorce, One might still do like
                                  Karibanov, Paskudin, and that good fellow Dram—that is,
                                  separate from one’s wife,’ he went on thinking, when he
                                  had regained his composure. But this step too presented
                                  the same drawback of public  scandal as a divorce, and
                                  what was more, a separation,  quite as much as a regular
                                  divorce, flung his wife into the arms of Vronsky. ‘No, it’s
                                  out of the question, out of the question!’ he said again,
                                  twisting his rug about him again. ‘I cannot be unhappy,
                                  but neither she nor he ought to be happy.’
                                     The feeling of jealousy, which had tortured him during
                                  the period of uncertainty, had passed away at the instant
                                  when the tooth had been with agony extracted by his
                                  wife’s words. But that feeling had been replaced by
                                  another, the desire, not merely that she should not be
                                  triumphant, but that she should get due punishment for
                                  her crime. He did not acknowledge this feeling, but at the
                                  bottom of his heart he longed for her to suffer for having
                                  destroyed his peace of mind—his honor. And going once
                                  again over the conditions inseparable from a duel, a



                                                         616 of 1759
   612   613   614   615   616   617   618   619   620   621   622