Page 691 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

‘It was not in the least painful to me. It happened of
itself,’ she said irritably; ‘and see...’ she pulled her
husband’s letter out of her glove.
‘I understand, I understand,’ he interrupted her, taking

the letter, but not reading it, and trying to soothe her.
‘The one thing I longed for, the one thing I prayed for,
was to cut short this position, so as to devote my life to
your happiness.’
‘Why do you tell me that?’ she said. ‘Do you suppose I
can doubt it? If I doubted..’
‘Who’s that coming?’ said Vronsky suddenly, pointing
to two ladies walking towards them. ‘Perhaps they know
us!’ and he hurriedly turned off, drawing her after him
into a side path.
‘Oh, I don’t care!’ she said. Her lips were quivering.
And he fancied that her eyes looked with strange fury at
him from under the veil. ‘I tell you that’s not the point—I
can’t doubt that; but see what he writes to me. Read it.’
She stood still again.
Again, just as at the first moment of hearing of her
rupture with her husband, Vronsky, on reading the letter,
was unconsciously carried away by the natural sensation
aroused in him by his own relation to the betrayed
husband. Now while he held his letter in his hands, he

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