Page 945 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

‘Of course I won’t, but it would have been better..’
And he smiled gloomily.
In spite of these words and this smile, which so
frightened Varya, when the inflammation was over and he

began to recover, he felt that he was completely free from
one part of his misery. By his action he had, as it were,
washed away the shame and humiliation he had felt
before. He could now think calmly of Alexey
Alexandrovitch. He recognized all his magnanimity, but
he did not now feel himself humiliated by it. Besides, he
got back again into the beaten track of his life. He saw the
possibility of looking men in the face again without
shame, and he could live in accordance with his own
habits. One thing he could not pluck out of his heart,
though he never ceased struggling with it, was the regret,
amounting to despair, that he had lost her forever. That
now, having expiated his sin against the husband, he was
bound to renounce her, and never in future to stand
between her with her repentance and her husband, he had
firmly decided in his heart; but he could not tear out of his
heart his regret at the loss of her love, he could not erase
from his memory those moments of happiness that he had
so little prized at the time, and that haunted him in all
their charm.

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