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She got up, but Anna, suddenly flushing, quickly caught at her
hand.
“No, wait a minute, please. I must tell you...no, you.” she turned to
Alexey Alexandrovitch, and her neck and brow were suffused with
crimson. “I won’t and can’t keep anything secret from you,” she said.
Alexey Alexandrovitch cracked his fingers and bowed his head.
“Betsy’s been telling me that Count Vronsky wants to come here to
say good-bye before his departure for Tashkend.” She did not look at
her husband, and was evidently in haste to have everything out, how-
ever hard it might be for her. “I told her I could not receive him.”
“You said, my dear, that it would depend on Alexey Alexandrovitch,”
Betsy corrected her.
“Oh, no, I can’t receive him; and what object would there....” She
stopped suddenly, and glanced inquiringly at her husband (he did not
look at her). “In short, I don’t wish it....”
Alexey Alexandrovitch advanced and would have taken her hand.
Her first impulse was to jerk back her hand from the damp hand
with big swollen veins that sought hers, but with an obvious effort to
control herself she pressed his hand.
“I am very grateful to you for your confidence, but...” he said, feel-
ing with confusion and annoyance that what he could decide easily
and clearly by himself, he could not discuss before Princess Tverskaya,
who to him stood for the incarnation of that brute force which would
inevitably control him in the life he led in the eyes of the world, and
hinder him from giving way to his feeling of love and forgiveness. He
stopped short, looking at Princess Tverskaya.
“Well, good-bye, my darling,” said Betsy, getting up. She kissed
Anna, and went out. Alexey Alexandrovitch escorted her out.
“Alexey Alexandrovitch! I know you are a truly magnanimous
man,” said Betsy, stopping in the little drawing-room, and with special
warmth shaking hands with him once more. “I am an outsider, but I so
love her and respect you that I venture to advise. Receive him. Alexey
Vronsky is the soul of honor, and he is going away to Tashkend.”
“Thank you, princess, for your sympathy and advice. But the ques-
tion of whether my wife can or cannot see anyone she must decide
herself.”
He said this from habit, lifting his brows with dignity, and reflected
immediately that whatever his words might be, there could be no dig-
nity in his position. And he saw this by the suppressed, malicious, and
ironical smile with which Betsy glanced at him after this phrase.