Vronsky had several times already, though not so resolutely as now,
tried to bring her to consider their position, and every time he had
been confronted by the same superficiality and triviality with which
she met his appeal now. It was as though there were something in this
which she could not or would not face, as though directly she began to
speak of this, she, the real Anna, retreated somehow into herself, and
another strange and unaccountable woman came out, whom he did not love,
and whom he feared, and who was in opposition to him. But today he was
resolved to have it out.
“Whether he knows or not,” said Vronsky, in his usual quiet and
resolute tone, “that’s nothing to do with us. We cannot ... you cannot
stay like this, especially now.”
“What’s to be done, according to you?” she asked with the same
frivolous irony. She who had so feared he would take her condition too
lightly was now vexed with him for deducing from it the necessity of
taking some step.
“Tell him everything, and leave him.”
“Very well, let us suppose I do that,” she said. “Do you know what the
result of that would be? I can tell you it all beforehand,” and a
wicked light gleamed in her eyes, that had been so soft a minute
before. “‘Eh, you love another man, and have entered into criminal
intrigues with him?’” (Mimicking her husband, she threw an emphasis on
the word “criminal,” as Alexey Alexandrovitch did.) “‘I warned you of
the results in the religious, the civil, and the domestic relation. You
have not listened to me. Now I cannot let you disgrace my name,—’” “and
my son,” she had meant to say, but about her son she could not
jest,—“‘disgrace my name, and’—and more in the same style,” she added.
“In general terms, he’ll say in his official manner, and with all
distinctness and precision, that he cannot let me go, but will take all
measures in his power to prevent scandal. And he will calmly and
punctually act in accordance with his words. That’s what will happen.
He’s not a man, but a machine, and a spiteful machine when he’s angry,”
she added, recalling Alexey Alexandrovitch as she spoke, with all the
peculiarities of his figure and manner of speaking, and reckoning
against him every defect she could find in him, softening nothing for
the great wrong she herself was doing him.
“But, Anna,” said Vronsky, in a soft and persuasive voice, trying to
soothe her, “we absolutely must, anyway, tell him, and then be guided
by the line he takes.”
“What, run away?”
“And why not run away? I don’t see how we can keep on like this. And
not for my sake—I see that you suffer.”
“Yes, run away, and become your mistress,” she said angrily.
“Anna,” he said, with reproachful tenderness.
“Yes,” she went on, “become your mistress, and complete the ruin
of....”
Again she would have said “my son,” but she could not utter that word.
Vronsky could not understand how she, with her strong and truthful
nature, could endure this state of deceit, and not long to get out of
it. But he did not suspect that the chief cause of it was the
word—_son_, which she could not bring herself to pronounce. When she
thought of her son, and his future attitude to his mother, who had
abandoned his father, she felt such terror at what she had done, that
she could not face it; but, like a woman, could only try to comfort
herself with lying assurances that everything would remain as it always
had been, and that it was possible to forget the fearful question of
how it would be with her son.
“I beg you, I entreat you,” she said suddenly, taking his hand, and
speaking in quite a different tone, sincere and tender, “never speak to
me of that!”
“But, Anna....”
“Never. Leave it to me. I know all the baseness, all the horror of my
position; but it’s not so easy to arrange as you think. And leave it to
me, and do what I say. Never speak to me of it. Do you promise me?...
No, no, promise!...”
“I promise everything, but I can’t be at peace, especially after what
you have told me. I can’t be at peace, when you can’t be at peace....”
“I?” she repeated. “Yes, I am worried sometimes; but that will pass, if
you will never talk about this. When you talk about it—it’s only then
it worries me.”
“I don’t understand,” he said.
“I know,” she interrupted him, “how hard it is for your truthful nature
to lie, and I grieve for you. I often think that you have ruined your
whole life for me.”
“I was just thinking the very same thing,” he said; “how could you
sacrifice everything for my sake? I can’t forgive myself that you’re
unhappy!”
“I unhappy?” she said, coming closer to him, and looking at him with an
ecstatic smile of love. “I am like a hungry man who has been given
food. He may be cold, and dressed in rags, and ashamed, but he is not
unhappy. I unhappy? No, this is my unhappiness....”
She could hear the sound of her son’s voice coming towards them, and
glancing swiftly round the terrace, she got up impulsively. Her eyes
glowed with the fire he knew so well; with a rapid movement she raised
her lovely hands, covered with rings, took his head, looked a long look
into his face, and, putting up her face with smiling, parted lips,
swiftly kissed his mouth and both eyes, and pushed him away. She would
have gone, but he held her back.
“When?” he murmured in a whisper, gazing in ecstasy at her.
“Tonight, at one o’clock,” she whispered, and, with a heavy sigh, she
walked with her light, swift step to meet her son.
Seryozha had been caught by the rain in the big garden, and he and his
nurse had taken shelter in an arbor.
“Well, _au revoir_,” she said to Vronsky. “I must soon be getting ready
for the races. Betsy promised to fetch me.”
Vronsky, looking at his watch, went away hurriedly.