Page 642 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

She sat down at the writing table, but instead of writing
she clasped her hands on the table, and, laying her head on
them, burst into tears, with sobs and heaving breast like a
child crying. She was weeping that her dream of her

position being made clear and definite had been
annihilated forever. She knew beforehand that everything
would go on in the old way, and far worse, indeed, than
in the old way. She felt that the position in the world that
she enjoyed, and that had seemed to her of so little
consequence in the morning, that this position was
precious to her, that she would not have the strength to
exchange it for the shameful position of a woman who has
abandoned husband and child to join her lover; that
however much she might struggle, she could not be
stronger than herself. She would never know freedom in
love, but would remain forever a guilty wife, with the
menace of detection hanging over her at every instant;
deceiving her husband for the sake of a shameful
connection with a man living apart and away from her,
whose life she could never share. She knew that this was
how it would be, and at the same time it was so awful that
she could not even conceive what it would end in. And
she cried without restraint, as children cry when they are
punished.

641 of 1759