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Chapter 20.
Alexey Alexandrovitch took leave of Betsy in the drawing room,
and went to his wife. She was lying down, but hearing his steps she sat
up hastily in her former attitude, and looked in a scared way at him. He
saw she had been crying.
“I am very grateful for your confidence in me.” He repeated gently
in Russian the phrase he had said in Betsy’s presence in French, and
sat down beside her. When he spoke to her in Russian, using the
Russian “thou” of intimacy and affection, it was insufferably irritating
to Anna. “And I am very grateful for your decision. I, too, imagine that
since he is going away, there is no sort of necessity for Count Vronsky
to come here. However, if...”
“But I’ve said so already, so why repeat it?” Anna suddenly inter-
rupted him with an irritation she could not succeed in repressing. “No
sort of necessity,” she thought, “for a man to come and say good-bye to
the woman he loves, for whom he was ready to ruin himself, and has
ruined himself, and who cannot live without him. No sort of necessity!”
she compressed her lips, and dropped her burning eyes to his hands
with their swollen veins. They were rubbing each other.
“Let us never speak of it,” she added more calmly.
“I have left this question to you to decide, and I am very glad to
see...” Alexey Alexandrovitch was beginning.
“That my wish coincides with your own,” she finished quickly,
exasperated at his talking so slowly while she knew beforehand all he
would say.
“Yes,” he assented; “and Princess Tverskaya’s interference in the
most difficult private affairs is utterly uncalled for. She especially...”
“I don’t believe a word of what’s said about her,” said Anna quickly.
“I know she really cares for me.”
Alexey Alexandrovitch sighed and said nothing. She played ner-
vously with the tassel of her dressing-gown, glancing at him with that
torturing sensation of physical repulsion for which she blamed herself,
though she could not control it. Her only desire now was to be rid of his
oppressive presence.
“I have just sent for the doctor,” said Alexey Alexandrovitch.
“I am very well; what do I want the doctor for?”
“No, the little one cries, and they say the nurse hasn’t enough milk.”
“Why didn’t you let me nurse her, when I begged to? Anyway”
(Alexey Alexandrovitch knew what was meant by that “anyway”),
“she’s a baby, and they’re killing her.” She rang the bell and ordered the
baby to be brought her. “I begged to nurse her, I wasn’t allowed to, and
now I’m blamed for it.”
“I don’t blame...”
“Yes, you do blame me! My God! why didn’t I die!” And she broke
into sobs. “Forgive me, I’m nervous, I’m unjust,” she said, controlling
herself, “but do go away...”
“No, it can’t go on like this,” Alexey Alexandrovitch said to himself
decidedly as he left his wife’s room.
Never had the impossibility of his position in the world’s eyes, and
his wife’s hatred of him, and altogether the might of that mysterious
brutal force that guided his life against his spiritual inclinations, and