Page 693 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

‘Why can’t they?’ Anna said, restraining her tears, and
obviously attaching no sort of consequence to what he
said. She felt that her fate was sealed.
Vronsky meant that after the duel—inevitable, he

thought— things could not go on as before, but he said
something different.
‘It can’t go on. I hope that now you will leave him. I
hope’— he was confused, and reddened—‘that you will
let me arrange and plan our life. Tomorrow...’ he was
beginning.
She did not let him go on.
‘But my child!’ she shrieked. ‘You see what he writes! I
should have to leave him, and I can’t and won’t do that.’
‘But, for God’s sake, which is better?—leave your
child, or keep up this degrading position?’
‘To whom is it degrading?’
‘To all, and most of all to you.’
‘You say degrading...don’t say that. Those words have
no meaning for me,’ she said in a shaking voice. She did
not want him now to say what was untrue. She had
nothing left her but his love, and she wanted to love him.
‘Don’t you understand that from the day I loved you
everything has changed for me? For me there is one thing,
and one thing only—your love. If that’s mine, I feel so

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