That which for Vronsky had been almost a whole year the one absorbing
desire of his life, replacing all his old desires; that which for Anna
had been an impossible, terrible, and even for that reason more
entrancing dream of bliss, that desire had been fulfilled. He stood
before her, pale, his lower jaw quivering, and besought her to be calm,
not knowing how or why.
“Anna! Anna!” he said with a choking voice, “Anna, for pity’s sake!...”
But the louder he spoke, the lower she dropped her once proud and gay,
now shame-stricken head, and she bowed down and sank from the sofa
where she was sitting, down on the floor, at his feet; she would have
fallen on the carpet if he had not held her.
“My God! Forgive me!” she said, sobbing, pressing his hands to her
bosom.
She felt so sinful, so guilty, that nothing was left her but to
humiliate herself and beg forgiveness; and as now there was no one in
her life but him, to him she addressed her prayer for forgiveness.
Looking at him, she had a physical sense of her humiliation, and she
could say nothing more. He felt what a murderer must feel, when he sees
the body he has robbed of life. That body, robbed by him of life, was
their love, the first stage of their love. There was something awful
and revolting in the memory of what had been bought at this fearful
price of shame. Shame at their spiritual nakedness crushed her and
infected him. But in spite of all the murderer’s horror before the body
of his victim, he must hack it to pieces, hide the body, must use what
he has gained by his murder.
And with fury, as it were with passion, the murderer falls on the body,
and drags it and hacks at it; so he covered her face and shoulders with
kisses. She held his hand, and did not stir. “Yes, these kisses—that is
what has been bought by this shame. Yes, and one hand, which will
always be mine—the hand of my accomplice.” She lifted up that hand and
kissed it. He sank on his knees and tried to see her face; but she hid
it, and said nothing. At last, as though making an effort over herself,
she got up and pushed him away. Her face was still as beautiful, but it
was only the more pitiful for that.
“All is over,” she said; “I have nothing but you. Remember that.”
“I can never forget what is my whole life. For one instant of this
happiness....”
“Happiness!” she said with horror and loathing and her horror
unconsciously infected him. “For pity’s sake, not a word, not a word
more.”
She rose quickly and moved away from him.
“Not a word more,” she repeated, and with a look of chill despair,
incomprehensible to him, she parted from him. She felt that at that
moment she could not put into words the sense of shame, of rapture, and
of horror at this stepping into a new life, and she did not want to
speak of it, to vulgarize this feeling by inappropriate words. But
later too, and the next day and the third day, she still found no words
in which she could express the complexity of her feelings; indeed, she
could not even find thoughts in which she could clearly think out all
that was in her soul.
She said to herself: “No, just now I can’t think of it, later on, when
I am calmer.” But this calm for thought never came; every time the
thought rose of what she had done and what would happen to her, and
what she ought to do, a horror came over her and she drove those
thoughts away.
“Later, later,” she said—“when I am calmer.”
But in dreams, when she had no control over her thoughts, her position
presented itself to her in all its hideous nakedness. One dream haunted
her almost every night. She dreamed that both were her husbands at
once, that both were lavishing caresses on her. Alexey Alexandrovitch
was weeping, kissing her hands, and saying, “How happy we are now!” And
Alexey Vronsky was there too, and he too was her husband. And she was
marveling that it had once seemed impossible to her, was explaining to
them, laughing, that this was ever so much simpler, and that now both
of them were happy and contented. But this dream weighed on her like a
nightmare, and she awoke from it in terror.