696 697
And she could not but respond with a smile—not to his words, but
to the love in his eyes. She took his hand and stroked her chilled
cheeks and cropped head with it.
“I don’t know you with this short hair. You’ve grown so pretty. A
boy. But how pale you are!”
“Yes, I’m very weak,” she said, smiling. And her lips began trem-
bling again.
“We’ll go to Italy; you will get strong,” he said.
“Can it be possible we could be like husband and wife, alone, your
family with you?” she said, looking close into his eyes.
“It only seems strange to me that it can ever have been otherwise.”
“Stiva says that HE has agreed to everything, but I can’t accept
HIS generosity,” she said, looking dreamily past Vronsky’s face. “I don’t
want a divorce; it’s all the same to me now. Only I don’t know what he
will decide about Seryozha.”
He could not conceive how at this moment of their meeting she
could remember and think of her son, of divorce. What did it all
matter?
“Don’t speak of that, don’t think of it,” he said, turning her hand in
his, and trying to draw her attention to him; but still she did not look at
him.
“Oh, why didn’t I die! it would have been better,” she said, and
silent tears flowed down both her cheeks; but she tried to smile, so as
not to wound him.
To decline the flattering and dangerous appointment at Tashkend
would have been, Vronsky had till then considered, disgraceful and
impossible. But now, without an instant’s consideration, he declined it,
and observing dissatisfaction in the most exalted quarters at this step,
he immediately retired from the army.
A month later Alexey Alexandrovitch was left alone with his son
in his house at Petersburg, while Anna and Vronsky had gone abroad,
not having obtained a divorce, but having absolutely declined all idea
of one.