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Chapter 10
From that time a new life began for Alexey Alexandrovitch and for his
wife. Nothing special happened. Anna went out into society, as she had
always done, was particularly often at Princess Betsy's, and met Vronsky
everywhere. Alexey Alexandrovitch saw this, but could do nothing. All his
efforts to draw her into open discussion she confronted with a barrier which
he could not penetrate, made up of a sort of amused perplexity. Outwardly
everything was the same, but their inner relations were completely
changed. Alexey Alexandrovitch, a man of great power in the world of
politics, felt himself helpless in this. Like an ox with head bent,
submissively he awaited the blow which he felt was lifted over him. Every
time he began to think about it, he felt that he must try once more, that by
kindness, tenderness, and persuasion there was still hope of saving her, of
bringing her back to herself, and every day he made ready to talk to her.
But every time he began talking to her, he felt that the spirit of evil and
deceit, which had taken possession of her, had possession of him too, and
he talked to her in a tone quite unlike that in which he had meant to talk.
Involuntarily he talked to her in his habitual tone of jeering at anyone who
should say what he was saying. And in that tone it was impossible to say
what needed to be said to her.
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Chapter 11
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.
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Her face was still as beautiful, but it was only the more pitiful for that.
"All is over," she said; "In 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. Once 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
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them were happy and contented. But this dream weighed on her like a
nightmare, and she awoke from it in terror.
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