Page 796 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

‘You call it cruelty for a husband to give his wife
liberty, giving her the honorable protection of his name,
simply on the condition of observing the proprieties: is
that cruelty?’

‘It’s worse than cruel—it’s base, if you want to know!’
Anna cried, in a rush of hatred, and getting up, she was
going away.
‘No!’ he shrieked in his shrill voice, which pitched a
note higher than usual even, and his big hands clutching
her by the arm so violently that red marks were left from
the bracelet he was squeezing, he forcibly sat her down in
her place.
‘Base! If you care to use that word, what is base is to
forsake husband and child for a lover, while you eat your
husband’s bread!’
She bowed her head. She did not say what she had said
the evening before to her lover, that HE was her husband,
and her husband was superfluous; she did not even think
that. She felt all the justice of his words, and only said
softly:
‘You cannot describe my position as worse than I feel it
to be myself; but what are you saying all this for?’
‘What am I saying it for? what for?’ he went on, as
angrily. ‘That you may know that since you have not

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