Anna Karenina

Chapter 23
Dolly was wanting to go to bed when Anna came in to see her, attired for
the night. In the course of the day Anna had several times begun to speak of
matters near her heart, and every time after a few words she had stopped:
"Afterwards, by ourselves, we'll talk about everything. I've got so much I
want to tell you," she said.
Now they were by themselves, and Anna did not know what to talk about.
She sat in the window looking at Dolly, and going over in her own mind all
the stores of intimate talk which had seemed so inexhaustible beforehand,
and she found nothing. At that moment it seemed to her that everything had
been said already.
"Well, what of Kitty?" she said with a heavy sigh, looking penitently at
Dolly. "Tell me the truth, Dolly: isn't she angry with me?"
"Angry? Oh, no!" said Darya Alexandrovna, smiling.
"But she hates me, despises me?"
"Oh, no! But you know that sort of thing isn't forgiven."
"Yes, yes," said Anna, turning away and looking out of the open window.
"But I was not to blame. And who is to blame? What's the meaning of
being to blame? Could it have been otherwise? What do you think? Could it
possibly have happened that you didn't become the wife of Stiva?"
"Really, I don't know. But this is what I want you to tell me..."
"Yes, yes, but we've not finished about Kitty. Is she happy? He's a very
nice man, they say."
"He's much more than very nice. I don't know a better man."
"Ah, how glad I am! I'm so glad! Much more than very nice," she repeated.
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Dolly smiled.
"But tell me about yourself. We've a great deal to talk about. And I've had a
talk with..." Dolly did not know what to call him. She felt it awkward to
call him either the count or Alexey Kirillovitch.
"With Alexey," said Anna, "I know what you talked about. But I wanted to
ask you directly what you think of me, of my life?"
"How am I to say like that straight off? I really don't know."
"No, tell me all the same.... You see my life. But you mustn't forget that
you're seeing us in the summer, when you have come to us and we are not
alone.... But we came here early in the spring, lived quite alone, and shall
be alone again, and I desire nothing better. But imagine me living alone
without him, alone, and that will be...I see by everything that it will often
be repeated, that he will be half the time away from home," she said,
getting up and sitting down close by Dolly.
"Of course," she interrupted Dolly, who would have answered, "of course I
won't try to keep him by force. I don't keep him indeed. The races are just
coming, his horses are running, he will go. I'm very glad. But think of me,
fancy my position.... But what's the use of talking about it?" She smiled.
"Well, what did he talk about with you?"
"He spoke of what I want to speak about of myself, and it's easy for me to
be his advocate; of whether there is not a possibility ...whether you could
not..." (Darya Alexandrovna hesitated) "correct, improve your position....
You know how I look at it.... But all the same, if possible, you should get
married...."
"Divorce, you mean?" said Anna. "Do you know, the only woman who
came to see me in Petersburg was Betsy Tverskaya? You know her, of
course? Au fond, c'est la femme la plus depravee qui existe. She had an
intrigue with Tushkevitch, deceiving her husband in the basest way. And
she told me that she did not care to know me so long as my position was
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irregular. Don't imagine I would compare...I know you, darling. But I could
not help remembering.... Well, so what did he say to you?" she repeated.
"He said that he was unhappy on your account and his own. Perhaps you
will say that it's egoism, but what a legitimate and noble egoism. He wants
first of all to legitimize his daughter, and to be your husband, to have a
legal right to you."
"What wife, what slave can be so utterly a slave as I, in my position?" she
put in gloomily.
"The chief thing he desires...he desires that you should not suffer."
"That's impossible. Well?"
"Well, and the most legitimate desire--he wishes that your children should
have a name."
"What children?" Anna said, not looking at Dolly, and half closing her
eyes.
"Annie and those to come..."
"He need not trouble on that score; I shall have no more children."
"How can you tell that you won't?"
"I shall not, because I don't wish it." And, in spite of all her emotion, Anna
smiled, as she caught the naive expression of curiosity, wonder, and horror
on Dolly's face.
"The doctor told me after my illness..."
"Impossible!" said Dolly, opening her eyes wide.
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For her this was one of those discoveries the consequences and deductions
from which are so immense that all that one feels for the first instant is that
it is impossible to take it all in, and that one will have to reflect a great,
great deal upon it.
This discovery, suddenly throwing light on all those families of one or two
children, which had hitherto been so incomprehensible to her, aroused so
many ideas, reflections, and contradictory emotions, that she had nothing to
say, and simply gazed with wide-open eyes of wonder at Anna. This was
the very thing she had been dreaming of, but now learning that it was
possible, she was horrified. She felt that it was too simple a solution of too
complicated a problem.
"N'est-ce pas immoral?" was all she said, after a brief pause.
"Why so? Think, I have a choice between two alternatives: either to be with
child, that is an invalid, or to be the friend and companion of my
husband--practically my husband," Anna said in a tone intentionally
superficial and frivolous.
"Yes, yes," said Darya Alexandrovna, hearing the very arguments she had
used to herself, and not finding the same force in them as before.
"For you, for other people," said Anna, as though divining her thoughts,
"there may be reason to hesitate; but for me.... You must consider, I am not
his wife; he loves me as long as he loves me. And how am I to keep his
love? Not like this!"
She moved her white hands in a curve before her waist with extraordinary
rapidity, as happens during moments of excitement; ideas and memories
rushed into Darya Alexandrovna's head. "I," she thought, "did not keep my
attraction for Stiva; he left me for others, and the first woman for whom he
betrayed me did not keep him by being always pretty and lively. He
deserted her and took another. And can Anna attract and keep Count
Vronsky in that way? If that is what he looks for, he will find dresses and
manners still more attractive and charming. And however white and
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beautiful her bare arms are, however beautiful her full figure and her eager
face under her black curls, he will find something better still, just as my
disgusting, pitiful, and charming husband does."
Dolly made no answer, she merely sighed. Anna noticed this sigh,
indicating dissent, and she went on. In her armory she had other arguments
so strong that no answer could be made to them.
"Do you say that it's not right? But you must consider," she went on; "you
forget my position. How can I desire children? I'm not speaking of the
suffering, I'm not afraid of that. Think only, what are my children to be?
Ill-fated children, who will have to bear a stranger's name. For the very fact
of their birth they will be forced to be ashamed of their mother, their father,
their birth."
"But that is just why a divorce is necessary." But Anna did not hear her.
She longed to give utterance to all the arguments with which she had so
many times convinced herself.
"What is reason given me for, if I am not to use it to avoid bringing
unhappy beings into the world!" She looked at Dolly, but without waiting
for a reply she went on:
"I should always feel I had wronged these unhappy children," she said. "If
they are not, at any rate they are not unhappy; while if they are unhappy, I
alone should be to blame for it."
These were the very arguments Darya Alexandrovna had used in her own
reflections; but she heard them without understanding them. "How can one
wrong creatures that don't exist?" she thought. And all at once the idea
struck her: could it possibly, under any circumstances, have been better for
her favorite Grisha if he had never existed? And this seemed to her so wild,
so strange, that she shook her head to drive away this tangle of whirling,
mad ideas.
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"No, I don't know; it's not right," was all she said, with an expression of
disgust on her face.
"Yes, but you mustn't forget that you and I.... And besides that," added
Anna, in spite of the wealth of her arguments and the poverty of Dolly's
objections, seeming still to admit that it was not right, "don't forget the
chief point, that I am not now in the same position as you. For you the
question is: do you desire not to have any more children; while for me it is:
do I desire to have them? And that's a great difference. You must see that I
can't desire it in my position."
Darya Alexandrovna made no reply. She suddenly felt that she had got far
away from Anna; that there lay between them a barrier of questions on
which they could never agree, and about which it was better not to speak.
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