him in the life he led in the eyes of the world, and hinder him from giving
way to his feeling of love and forgiveness. He stopped short, looking at
Princess Tverskaya.
“Well, good-bye, my darling,” said Betsy, getting up. She kissed Anna,
and went out. Alexey Alexandrovitch escorted her out.
“Alexey Alexandrovitch! I know you are a truly magnanimous man,”
said Betsy, stopping in the little drawing-room, and with special warmth
shaking hands with him once more. “I am an outsider, but I so love her and
respect you that I venture to advise. Receive him. Alexey Vronsky is the
soul of honor, and he is going away to Tashkend.”
“Thank you, princess, for your sympathy and advice. But the question of
whether my wife can or cannot see anyone she must decide herself.”
He said this from habit, lifting his brows with dignity, and reflected
immediately that whatever his words might be, there could be no dignity in
his position. And he saw this by the suppressed, malicious, and ironical
smile with which Betsy glanced at him after this phrase.
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 burning eyes to his hands with their swollen veins.
They were rubbing each other.
“Let us never speak of it,” she added more calmly.
“I have left this question to you to decide, and I am very glad to see….”
Alexey Alexandrovitch was beginning.
“That my wish coincides with your own,” she finished quickly,
exasperated at his talking so slowly while she knew beforehand all he
would say.
“Yes,” he assented; “and Princess Tverskaya’s interference in the most
difficult private affairs is utterly uncalled for. She especially….”
“I don’t believe a word of what’s said about her,” said Anna quickly. “I
know she really cares for me.”
Alexey Alexandrovitch sighed and said nothing. She played nervously
with the tassel of her dressing-gown, glancing at him with that torturing
sensation of physical repulsion for which she blamed herself, though she
could not control it. Her only desire now was to be rid of his oppressive
presence.
“I have just sent for the doctor,” said Alexey Alexandrovitch.
“I am very well; what do I want the doctor for?”
“No, the little one cries, and they say the nurse hasn’t enough milk.”
“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
