Page 785 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

‘Yes, yes,’ she said, evidently trying to suppress her
jealous thoughts. ‘But if only you knew how wretched I
am! I believe you, I believe you.... What were you
saying?’

But he could not at once recall what he had been going
to say. These fits of jealousy, which of late had been more
and more frequent with her, horrified him, and however
much he tried to disguise the fact, made him feel cold to
her, although he knew the cause of her jealousy was her
love for him. How often he had told himself that her love
was happiness; and now she loved him as a woman can
love when love has outweighed for her all the good things
of life—and he was much further from happiness than
when he had followed her from Moscow. Then he had
thought himself unhappy, but happiness was before him;
now he felt that the best happiness was already left behind.
She was utterly unlike what she had been when he first
saw her. Both morally and physically she had changed for
the worse. She had broadened out all over, and in her face
at the time when she was speaking of the actress there was
an evil expression of hatred that distorted it. He looked at
her as a man looks at a faded flower he has gathered, with
difficulty recognizing in it the beauty for which he picked
and ruined it. And in spite of this he felt that then, when

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