Page 643 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

The sound of the footman’s steps forced her to rouse
herself, and hiding her face from him, she pretended to be
writing.
‘The courier asks if there’s an answer,’ the footman

announced.
‘An answer? Yes,’ said Anna. ‘Let him wait. I’ll ring.’
‘What can I write?’ she thought. ‘What can I decide
upon alone? What do I know? What do I want? What is
there I care for?’ Again she felt that her soul was beginning
to be split in two. She was terrified again at this feeling,
and clutched at the first pretext for doing something
which might divert her thoughts from herself. ‘I ought to
see Alexey’ (so she called Vronsky in her thoughts); ‘no
one but he can tell me what I ought to do. I’ll go to
Betsy’s, perhaps I shall see him there,’ she said to herself,
completely forgetting that when she had told him the day
before that she was not going to Princess Tverskaya’s, he
had said that in that case he should not go either. She
went up to the table, wrote to her husband, ‘I have
received your letter. —A.’; and, ringing the bell, gave it to
the footman.
‘We are not going,’ she said to Annushka, as she came
in.
‘Not going at all?’

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