Page 911 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

what makes men shoot themselves?’ he answered himself,
and opening his eyes, he saw with wonder an embroidered
cushion beside him, worked by Varya, his brother’s wife.
He touched the tassel of the cushion, and tried to think of

Varya, of when he had seen her last. But to think of
anything extraneous was an agonizing effort. ‘No, I must
sleep!’ He moved the cushion up, and pressed his head
into it, but he had to make an effort to keep his eyes shut.
He jumped up and sat down. ‘That’s all over for me,’ he
said to himself. ‘I must think what to do. What is left?’ His
mind rapidly ran through his life apart from his love of
Anna.
‘Ambition? Serpuhovskoy? Society? The court?’ He
could not come to a pause anywhere. All of it had had
meaning before, but now there was no reality in it. He got
up from the sofa, took off his coat, undid his belt, and
uncovering his hairy chest to breathe more freely, walked
up and down the room. ‘This is how people go mad,’ he
repeated, ‘and how they shoot themselves...to escape
humiliation,’ he added slowly.
He went to the door and closed it, then with fixed eyes
and clenched teeth he went up to the table, took a
revolver, looked round him, turned it to a loaded barrel,
and sank into thought. For two minutes, his head bent

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