see me, and I liked him exceedingly,” she said, unmistakably with
malicious intent. “Where is he?”
“He has gone back to the country,” said Kitty, blushing.
“Remember me to him, be sure you do.”
“I’ll be sure to!” Kitty said naïvely, looking compassionately into her
eyes.
“So good-bye, Dolly.” And kissing Dolly and shaking hands with Kitty,
Anna went out hurriedly.
“She’s just the same and just as charming! She’s very lovely!” said Kitty,
when she was alone with her sister. “But there’s something piteous about
her. Awfully piteous!”
“Yes, there’s something unusual about her today,” said Dolly. “When I
went with her into the hall, I fancied she was almost crying.”
Chapter 29
Anna got into the carriage again in an even worse frame of mind than
when she set out from home. To her previous tortures was added now that
sense of mortification and of being an outcast which she had felt so
distinctly on meeting Kitty.
“Where to? Home?” asked Pyotr.
“Yes, home,” she said, not even thinking now where she was going.
“How they looked at me as something dreadful, incomprehensible, and
curious! What can he be telling the other with such warmth?” she thought,
staring at two men who walked by. “Can one ever tell anyone what one is
feeling? I meant to tell Dolly, and it’s a good thing I didn’t tell her. How
pleased she would have been at my misery! She would have concealed it,
but her chief feeling would have been delight at my being punished for the
happiness she envied me for. Kitty, she would have been even more
pleased. How I can see through her! She knows I was more than usually
sweet to her husband. And she’s jealous and hates me. And she despises me.
In her eyes I’m an immoral woman. If I were an immoral woman I could
have made her husband fall in love with me … if I’d cared to. And, indeed, I
did care to. There’s someone who’s pleased with himself,” she thought, as
she saw a fat, rubicund gentleman coming towards her. He took her for an
acquaintance, and lifted his glossy hat above his bald, glossy head, and then
perceived his mistake. “He thought he knew me. Well, he knows me as well
as anyone in the world knows me. I don’t know myself. I know my
appetites, as the French say. They want that dirty ice cream, that they do
know for certain,” she thought, looking at two boys stopping an ice cream
seller, who took a barrel off his head and began wiping his perspiring face
with a towel. “We all want what is sweet and nice. If not sweetmeats, then a
dirty ice. And Kitty’s the same—if not Vronsky, then Levin. And she envies
me, and hates me. And we all hate each other. I Kitty, Kitty me. Yes, that’s
the truth. ‘Tiutkin, coiffeur.’ Je me fais coiffer par Tiutkin…. I’ll tell him that
when he comes,” she thought and smiled. But the same instant she
remembered that she had no one now to tell anything amusing to. “And
there’s nothing amusing, nothing mirthful, really. It’s all hateful. They’re
singing for vespers, and how carefully that merchant crosses himself! as if
he were afraid of missing something. Why these churches and this singing
and this humbug? Simply to conceal that we all hate each other like these
cab drivers who are abusing each other so angrily. Yashvin says, ‘He wants
to strip me of my shirt, and I him of his.’ Yes, that’s the truth!”
She was plunged in these thoughts, which so engrossed her that she left
off thinking of her own position, when the carriage drew up at the steps of
her house. It was only when she saw the porter running out to meet her that
she remembered she had sent the note and the telegram.
“Is there an answer?” she inquired.
“I’ll see this minute,” answered the porter, and glancing into his room, he
took out and gave her the thin square envelope of a telegram. “I can’t come
before ten o’clock.—Vronsky,” she read.
“And hasn’t the messenger come back?”
“No,” answered the porter.
“Then, since it’s so, I know what I must do,” she said, and feeling a
vague fury and craving for revenge rising up within her, she ran upstairs.
“I’ll go to him myself. Before going away forever, I’ll tell him all. Never
have I hated anyone as I hate that man!” she thought. Seeing his hat on the
rack, she shuddered with aversion. She did not consider that his telegram
was an answer to her telegram and that he had not yet received her note.
