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“Eh, Anna?” he queried.
“I said nothing,” she answered just as coldly and calmly.
“Oh, nothing, tant pis then,” he thought, feeling cold again, and he
turned and went out. As he was going out he caught a glimpse in the
looking glass of her face, white, with quivering lips. He even wanted to
stop and to say some comforting word to her, but his legs carried him
out of the room before he could think what to say. The whole of that
day he spent away from home, and when he came in late in the evening
the maid told him that Anna Arkadyevna had a headache and begged
him not to go in to her.
Chapter 26.
Never before had a day been passed in quarrel. Today was the first
time. And this was not a quarrel. It was the open acknowledgment of
complete coldness. Was it possible to glance at her as he had glanced
when he came into the room for the guarantee?—to look at her, see her
heart was breaking with despair, and go out without a word with that
face of callous composure? He was not merely cold to her, he hated her
because he loved another woman—that was clear.
And remembering all the cruel words he had said, Anna supplied,
too, the words that he had unmistakably wished to say and could have
said to her, and she grew more and more exasperated.
“I won’t prevent you,” he might say. “You can go where you like.
You were unwilling to be divorced from your husband, no doubt so that
you might go back to him. Go back to him. If you want money, I’ll give
it to you. How many roubles do you want?”
All the most cruel words that a brutal man could say, he said to her
in her imagination, and she could not forgive him for them, as though
he had actually said them.
“But didn’t he only yesterday swear he loved me, he, a truthful and
sincere man? Haven’t I despaired for nothing many times already?”
she said to herself afterwards.
All that day, except for the visit to Wilson’s, which occupied two