Page 629 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

When she woke up next morning the first thing that
rose to her mind was what she had said to her husband,
and those words seemed to her so awful that she could not
conceive now how she could have brought herself to utter

those strange, coarse words, and could not imagine what
would come of it. But the words were spoken, and Alexey
Alexandrovitch had gone away without saying anything. ‘I
saw Vronsky and did not tell him. At the very instant he
was going away I would have turned him back and told
him, but I changed my mind, because it was strange that I
had not told him the first minute. Why was it I wanted to
tell him and did not tell him?’ And in answer to this
question a burning blush of shame spread over her face.
She knew what had kept her from it, she knew that she
had been ashamed. Her position, which had seemed to her
simplified the night before, suddenly struck her now as not
only not simple, but as absolutely hopeless. She felt
terrified at the disgrace, of which she had not ever thought
before. Directly she thought of what her husband would
do, the most terrible ideas came to her mind. She had a
vision of being turned out of the house, of her shame
being proclaimed to all the world. She asked herself where
she should go when she was turned out of the house, and
she could not find an answer.

628 of 1759