220 221
think...if so many men, so many minds, certainly so many hearts, so
many kinds of love.”
Vronsky was gazing at Anna, and with a fainting heart waiting for
what she would say. He sighed as after a danger escaped when she
uttered these words.
Anna suddenly turned to him.
“Oh, I have had a letter from Moscow. They write me that Kitty
Shtcherbatskaya’s very ill.”
“Really?” said Vronsky, knitting his brows.
Anna looked sternly at him.
“That doesn’t interest you?”
“On the contrary, it does, very much. What was it exactly they told
you, if I may know?” he questioned.
Anna got up and went to Betsy.
“Give me a cup of tea,” she said, standing at her table.
While Betsy was pouring out the tea, Vronsky went up to Anna.
“What is it they write to you?” he repeated.
“I often think men have no understanding of what’s not honorable
though they’re always talking of it,” said Anna, without answering him.
“I’ve wanted to tell you so a long while,” she added, and moving a few
steps away, she sat down at a table in a corner covered with albums.
“I don’t quite understand the meaning of your words,” he said,
handing her the cup.
she glanced towards the sofa beside her, and he instantly sat down.
“Yes, I have been wanting to tell you,” she said, not looking at him.
“You behaved wrongly, very wrongly.”
“Do you suppose I don’t know that I’ve acted wrongly? But who
was the cause of my doing so?”
“What do you say that to me for?” she said, glancing severely at
him.
“You know what for,” he answered boldly and joyfully, meeting her
glance and not dropping his eyes.
Not he, but she, was confused.
“That only shows you have no heart,” she said. But her eyes said
that she knew he had a heat, and that was why she was afraid of him.
“What you spoke of just now was a mistake, and not love.”
“Remember that I have forbidden you to utter that word, that
hateful word,” said Anna, with a shudder. But at once she felt that by
that very word “forbidden” she had shown that she acknowledged
certain rights over him, and by that very fact was encouraging him to
speak of love. “I have long meant to tell you this,” she went on, looking
resolutely into his eyes, and hot all over from the burning flush on her
cheeks. “I’ve come on purpose this evening, knowing I should meet
you. I have come to tell you that this must end. I have never blushed
before anyone, and you force me to feel to blame for something.”
He looked at her and was struck by a new spiritual beauty in her
face.
“What do you wish of me?” he said simply and seriously.
“I want you to go to Moscow and ask for Kitty’s forgiveness,” she
said.
“You don’t wish that?” he said.
He saw she was saying what she forced herself to say, not what she
wanted to say.
“If you love me, as you say,” she whispered, “do so that I may be at
peace.”
His face grew radiant.
“Don’t you know that you’re all my life to me? But I know no peace,
and I can’t give to you; all myself—and love...yes. I can’t think of you