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trigues 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 In 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 reckon-
ing 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 truth-
ful 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 assur-
ances 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