Page 699 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

time. ‘Is Seryozha quite well?’ he said, and not waiting for
an answer, he added: ‘I shan’t be dining at home today,
and I have got to go out directly.’
‘I had thought of going to Moscow,’ she said.

‘No, you did quite, quite right to come,’ he said, and
was silent again.
Seeing that he was powerless to begin the conversation,
she began herself.
‘Alexey Alexandrovitch,’ she said, looking at him and
not dropping her eyes under his persistent gaze at her hair,
‘I’m a guilty woman, I’m a bad woman, but I am the same
as I was, as I told you then, and I have come to tell you
that I can change nothing.’
‘I have asked you no question about that,’ he said, all at
once, resolutely and with hatred looking her straight in the
face; ‘that was as I had supposed.’ Under the influence of
anger he apparently regained complete possession of all his
faculties. ‘But as I told you then, and have written to you,’
he said in a thin, shrill voice, ‘I repeat now, that I am not
bound to know this. I ignore it. Not all wives are so kind
as you, to be in such a hurry to communicate such
agreeable news to their husbands.’ He laid special emphasis
on the word ‘agreeable.’ ‘I shall ignore it so long as the
world knows nothing of it, so long as my name is not

698 of 1759