Page 636 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

must write to them both.’ She went quickly indoors into
her boudoir, sat down at the table, and wrote to her
husband:—‘After what has happened, I cannot remain any
longer in your house. I am going away, and taking my son

with me. I don’t know the law, and so I don’t know with
which of the parents the son should remain; but I take him
with me because I cannot live without him. Be generous,
leave him to me.’
Up to this point she wrote rapidly and naturally, but
the appeal to his generosity, a quality she did not
recognize in him, and the necessity of winding up the
letter with something touching, pulled her up. ‘Of my
fault and my remorse I cannot speak, because..’
She stopped again, finding no connection in her
ideas.’No,’ she said to herself, ‘there’s no need of
anything,’ and tearing up the letter, she wrote it again,
leaving out the allusion to generosity, and sealed it up.
Another letter had to be written to Vronsky. ‘I have
told my husband,’ she wrote, and she sat a long while
unable to write more. It was so coarse, so unfeminine.
‘And what more am I to write him?’ she said to herself.
Again a flush of shame spread over her face; she recalled
his composure, and a feeling of anger against him impelled
her to tear the sheet with the phrase she had written into

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