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and myself apart. You and I are one to me. And I see no chance before
us of peace for me or for you. I see a chance of despair, of
wretchedness...or I see a chance of bliss, what bliss!... Can it be there’s
no chance of it?” he murmured with his lips; but she heard.
She strained every effort of her mind to say what ought to be said.
But instead of that she let her eyes rest on him, full of love, and made
no answer.
“It’s come!” he thought in ecstasy. “When I was beginning to
despair, and it seemed there would be no end—it’s come! she loves me!
She owns it!”
“Then do this for me: never say such things to me, and let us be
friends,” she said in words; but her eyes spoke quite differently.
“Friends we shall never be, you know that yourself. Whether we
shall be the happiest or the wretchedest of people—that’s in your
hands.”
She would have said something, but he interrupted her.
“I ask one thing only: I ask for the right to hope, to suffer as I do.
But if even that cannot be, command me to disappear, and I disappear.
You shall not see me if my presence is distasteful to you.”
“I don’t want to drive you away.”
“Only don’t change anything, leave everything as it is,” he said in a
shaky voice. “Here’s your husband.”
At that instant Alexey Alexandrovitch did in fact walk into the
room with his calm, awkward gait.
Glancing at his wife and Vronsky, he went up to the lady of the
house, and sitting down for a cup of tea, began talking in his deliberate,
always audible voice, in his habitual tone of banter, ridiculing someone.
“Your Rambouillet is in full conclave,” he said, looking round at all
the party; “the graces and the muses.”
But Princess Betsy could not endure that tone of his— “sneering,”
as she called it, using the English word, and like a skillful hostess she at
once brought him into a serious conversation on the subject of univer-
sal conscription. Alexey Alexandrovitch was immediately interested
in the subject, and began seriously defending the new imperial decree
against Princess Betsy, who had attacked it.
Vronsky and Anna still sat at the little table.
“This is getting indecorous,” whispered one lady, with an expres-
sive glance at Madame Karenina, Vronsky, and her husband.
“What did I tell you?” said Anna’s friend.
But not only those ladies, almost everyone in the room, even the
Princess Myakaya and Betsy herself, looked several times in the direc-
tion of the two who had withdrawn from the general circle, as though
that were a disturbing fact. Alexey Alexandrovitch was the only per-
son who did not once look in that direction, and was not diverted from
the interesting discussion he had entered upon.
Noticing the disagreeable impression that was being made on ev-
eryone, Princess Betsy slipped someone else into her place to listen to
Alexey Alexandrovitch, and went up to Anna.
“I’m always amazed at the clearness and precision of your husband’s
language,” she said. “The most transcendental ideas seem to be within
my grasp when he’s speaking.”
“Oh, yes!” said Anna, radiant with a smile of happiness, and not
understanding a word of what Betsy had said. She crossed over to the
big table and took part in the general conversation.
Alexey Alexandrovitch, after staying half an hour, went up to his
wife and suggested that they should go home together. But she an-
swered, not looking at him, that she was staying to supper. Alexey
Alexandrovitch made his bows and withdrew.