Page 925 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

Chapter 20

Alexey Alexandrovitch took leave of Betsy in the
drawing room, and went to his wife. She was lying down,
but hearing his steps she sat up hastily in her former
attitude, and looked in a scared way at him. He saw she
had been crying.
‘I am very grateful for your confidence in me.’ He
repeated gently in Russian the phrase he had said in
Betsy’s presence in French, and sat down beside her.
When he spoke to her in Russian, using the Russian
‘thou’ of intimacy and affection, it was insufferably
irritating to Anna. ‘And I am very grateful for your
decision. I, too, imagine that since he is going away, there
is no sort of necessity for Count Vronsky to come here.
However, if..’
‘But I’ve said so already, so why repeat it?’ Anna
suddenly interrupted him with an irritation she could not
succeed in repressing. ‘No sort of necessity,’ she thought,
‘for a man to come and say good-bye to the woman he
loves, for whom he was ready to ruin himself, and has
ruined himself, and who cannot live without him. No sort
of necessity!’ she compressed her lips, and dropped her

924 of 1759