Page 794 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

come singly, and the affairs of the reorganization of the
native tribes, and of the irrigation of the lands of the
Zaraisky province, had brought such official worries upon
Alexey Alexandrovitch that he had been of late in a

continual condition of extreme irritability.
He did not sleep the whole night, and his fury,
growing in a sort of vast, arithmetical progression, reached
its highest limits in the morning. He dressed in haste, and
as though carrying his cup full of wrath, and fearing to
spill any over, fearing to lose with his wrath the energy
necessary for the interview with his wife, he went into her
room directly he heard she was up.
Anna, who had thought she knew her husband so well,
was amazed at his appearance when he went in to her. His
brow was lowering, and his eyes stared darkly before him,
avoiding her eyes; his mouth was tightly and
contemptuously shut. In his walk, in his gestures, in the
sound of his voice there was a determination and firmness
such as his wife had never seen in him. He went into her
room, and without greeting her, walked straight up to her
writing-table, and taking her keys, opened a drawer.
‘What do you want?’ she cried.
‘Your lover’s letters,’ he said.

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