Page 946 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

Serpuhovskoy had planned his appointment at
Tashkend, and Vronsky agreed to the proposition without
the slightest hesitation. But the nearer the time of
departure came, the bitterer was the sacrifice he was

making to what he thought his duty.
His wound had healed, and he was driving about
making preparations for his departure for Tashkend.
‘To see her once and then to bury myself, to die,’ he
thought, and as he was paying farewell visits, he uttered
this thought to Betsy. Charged with this commission,
Betsy had gone to Anna, and brought him back a negative
reply.
‘So much the better,’ thought Vronsky, when he
received the news. ‘It was a weakness, which would have
shattered what strength I have left.’
Next day Betsy herself came to him in the morning,
and announced that she had heard through Oblonsky as a
positive fact that Alexey Alexandrovitch had agreed to a
divorce, and that therefore Vronsky could see Anna.
Without even troubling himself to see Betsy out of his
fiat, forgetting all his resolutions, without asking when he
could see her, where her husband was, Vronsky drove
straight to the Karenins’. He ran up the stairs seeing no
one and nothing, and with a rapid step, almost breaking

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