Page 927 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

‘Why didn’t you let me nurse her, when I begged to?
Anyway’ (Alexey Alexandrovitch knew what was meant
by that ‘anyway’), ‘she’s a baby, and they’re killing her.’
She rang the bell and ordered the baby to be brought her.

‘I begged to nurse her, I wasn’t allowed to, and now I’m
blamed for it.’
‘I don’t blame..’
‘Yes, you do blame me! My God! why didn’t I die!’
And she broke into sobs. ‘Forgive me, I’m nervous, I’m
unjust,’ she said, controlling herself, ‘but do go away..’
‘No, it can’t go on like this,’ Alexey Alexandrovitch
said to himself decidedly as he left his wife’s room.
Never had the impossibility of his position in the
world’s eyes, and his wife’s hatred of him, and altogether
the might of that mysterious brutal force that guided his
life against his spiritual inclinations, and exacted
conformity with its decrees and change in his attitude to
his wife, been presented to him with such distinctness as
that day. He saw clearly that all the world and his wife
expected of him something, but what exactly, he could
not make out. He felt that this was rousing in his soul a
feeling of anger destructive of his peace of mind and of all
the good of his achievement. He believed that for Anna
herself it would be better to break off all relations with

926 of 1759