Page 869 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

‘What! shall I be left alone—without her?’ he thought
with horror, and he took the chalk. ‘Wait a minute,’ he
said, sitting down to the table. ‘I’ve long wanted to ask
you one thing.’

He looked straight into her caressing, though
frightened eyes.
‘Please, ask it.’
‘Here,’ he said; and he wrote the initial letters, w, y, t,
m, i, c, n, b, d, t, m, n, o, t. These letters meant, ‘When
you told me it could never be, did that mean never, or
then?’ There seemed no likelihood that she could make
out this complicated sentence; but he looked at her as
though his life depended on her understanding the words.
She glanced at him seriously, then leaned her puckered
brow on her hands and began to read. Once or twice she
stole a look at him, as though asking him, ‘Is it what I
think?’
‘I understand,’ she said, flushing a little.
‘What is this word?’ he said, pointing to the n that
stood for never.
‘It means NEVER,’ she said; ‘but that’s not true!’
He quickly rubbed out what he had written, gave her
the chalk, and stood up. She wrote, t, i, c, n, a, d.

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