Page 635 - ANNA KARENINA
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Anna Karenina
will not feel for me?’ Tears were already flowing down
her face, and to hide them she got up abruptly and almost
ran out on to the terrace.
After the thunder showers of the last few days, cold,
bright weather had set in. The air was cold in the bright
sun that filtered through the freshly washed leaves.
She shivered, both from the cold and from the inward
horror which had clutched her with fresh force in the
open air.
‘Run along, run along to Mariette,’ she said to
Seryozha, who had followed her out, and she began
walking up and down on the straw matting of the terrace.
‘Can it be that they won’t forgive me, won’t understand
how it all couldn’t be helped?’ she said to herself.
Standing still, and looking at the tops of the aspen trees
waving in the wind, with their freshly washed, brightly
shining leaves in the cold sunshine, she knew that they
would not forgive her, that everyone and everything
would be merciless to her now as was that sky, that green.
And again she felt that everything was split in two in her
soul. ‘I mustn’t, mustn’t think,’ she said to herself. ‘I must
get ready. To go where? When? Whom to take with me?
Yes, to Moscow by the evening train. Annushka and
Seryozha, and only the most necessary things. But first I
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