Page 788 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

which Alexey Alexandrovitch had bowed to him. He
smiled, while she laughed gaily, with that sweet, deep
laugh, which was one of her greatest charms.
‘I don’t understand him in the least,’ said Vronsky. ‘If

after your avowal to him at your country house he had
broken with you, if he had called me out—but this I can’t
understand. How can he put up with such a position? He
feels it, that’s evident.’
‘He?’ she said sneeringly. ‘He’s perfectly satisfied.’
‘What are we all miserable for, when everything might
be so happy?’
‘Only not he. Don’t I know him, the falsity in which
he’s utterly steeped?... Could one, with any feeling, live as
he is living with me? He understands nothing, and feels
nothing. Could a man of any feeling live in the same
house with his unfaithful wife? Could he talk to her, call
her ‘my dear’?’
And again she could not help mimicking him: ‘‘Anna,
ma chere; Anna, dear’!’
‘He’s not a man, not a human being—he’s a doll! No
one knows him; but I know him. Oh, if I’d been in his
place, I’d long ago have killed, have torn to pieces a wife
like me. I wouldn’t have said, ‘Anna, ma chere’! He’s not
a man, he’s an official machine. He doesn’t understand

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