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with which he had accused her of affectation, of artificiality, aroused
her.
“I am very sorry that nothing but what’s coarse and material is
comprehensible and natural to you,” she said and walked out of the
room.
When he had come in to her yesterday evening, they had not
referred to the quarrel, but both felt that the quarrel had been smoothed
over, but was not at an end.
Today he had not been at home all day, and she felt so lonely and
wretched in being on bad terms with him that she wanted to forget it
all, to forgive him, and be reconciled with him; she wanted to throw the
blame on herself and to justify him.
“I am myself to blame. I’m irritable, I’m insanely jealous. I will
make it up with him, and we’ll go away to the country; there I shall be
more at peace.”
“Unnatural!” she suddenly recalled the word that had stung her
most of all, not so much the word itself as the intent to wound her with
which it was said. “I know what he meant; he meant— unnatural, not
loving my own daughter, to love another person’s child. What does he
know of love for children, of my love for Seryozha, whom I’ve sacrificed
for him? But that wish to wound me! No, he loves another woman, it
must be so.”
And perceiving that, while trying to regain her peace of mind, she
had gone round the same circle that she had been round so often
before, and had come back to her former state of exasperation, she was
horrified at herself. “Can it be impossible? Can it be beyond me to
control myself?” she said to herself, and began again from the begin-
ning. “He’s truthful, he’s honest, he loves me. I love him, and in a few
days the divorce will come. What more do I want? I want peace of
mind and trust, and I will take the blame on myself. Yes, now when he
comes in, I will tell him I was wrong, though I was not wrong, and we
will go away tomorrow.”
And to escape thinking any more, and being overcome by irritabil-
ity, she rang, and ordered the boxes to be brought up for packing their
things for the country.
At ten o’clock Vronsky came in.