Page 897 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

All the way he thought no more of what he ought to
do.
With a sense of weariness and uncleanness from the
night spent in the train, in the early fog of Petersburg

Alexey Alexandrovitch drove through the deserted
Nevsky and stared straight before him, not thinking of
what was awaiting him. He could not think about it,
because in picturing what would happen, he could not
drive away the reflection that her death would at once
remove all the difficulty of his position. Bakers, closed
shops, night-cabmen, porters sweeping the pavements
flashed past his eyes, and he watched it all, trying to
smother the thought of what was awaiting him, and what
he dared not hope for, and yet was hoping for. He drove
up to the steps. A sledge and a carriage with the coachman
asleep stood at the entrance. As he went into the entry,
Alexey Alexandrovitch, as it were, got out his resolution
from the remotest corner of his brain, and mastered it
thoroughly. Its meaning ran: ‘If it’s a trick, then calm
contempt and departure. If truth, do what is proper.’
The porter opened the door before Alexey
Alexandrovitch rang. The porter, Kapitonitch, looked
queer in an old coat, without a tie, and in slippers.
‘How is your mistress?’

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