(^11841185)
hours, Anna spent in doubts whether everything were over or whether
there were still hope of reconciliation, whether she should go away at
once or see him once more. She was expecting him the whole day, and
in the evening, as she went to her own room, leaving a message for him
that her head ached, she said to herself, “If he comes in spite of what
the maid says, it means that he loves me still. If not, it means that all is
over, and then I will decide what I’m to do!...”
In the evening she heard the rumbling of his carriage stop at the
entrance, his ring, his steps and his conversation with the servant; he
believed what was told him, did not care to find out more, and went to
his own room. So then everything was over.
And death rose clearly and vividly before her mind as the sole
means of bringing back love for her in his heart, of punishing him and
of gaining the victory in that strife which the evil spirit in possession of
her heart was waging with him.
Now nothing mattered: going or not going to Vozdvizhenskoe, get-
ting or not getting a divorce from her husband—all that did not matter.
The one thing that mattered was punishing him. When she poured
herself out her usual dose of opium, and thought that she had only to
drink off the whole bottle to die, it seemed to her so simple and easy,
that she began musing with enjoyment on how he would suffer, and
repent and love her memory when it would be too late. She lay in bed
with open eyes, by the light of a single burned-down candle, gazing at
the carved cornice of the ceiling and at the shadow of the screen that
covered part of it, while she vividly pictured to herself how he would
feel when she would be no more, when she would be only a memory to
him. “How could I say such cruel things to her?” he would say. “How
could I go out of the room without saying anything to her? But now
she is no more. She has gone away from us forever. She is....” Suddenly
the shadow of the screen wavered, pounced on the whole cornice, the
whole ceiling; other shadows from the other side swooped to meet it,
for an instant the shadows flitted back, but then with fresh swiftness
they darted forward, wavered, commingled, and all was darkness.
“Death!” she thought. And such horror came upon her that for a long
while she could not realize where she was, and for a long while her
trembling hands could not find the matches and light another candle,
instead of the one that had burned down and gone out. “No, any-
thing—only to live! Why, I love him! Why, he loves me! This has been
before and will pass,” she said, feeling that tears of joy at the return to
life were trickling down her cheeks. And to escape from her panic she
went hurriedly to his room.
He was asleep there, and sleeping soundly. She went up to him,
and holding the light above his face, she gazed a long while at him.
Now when he was asleep, she loved him so that at the sight of him she
could not keep back tears of tenderness. But she knew that if he
waked up he would look at her with cold eyes, convinced that he was
right, and that before telling him of her love, she would have to prove to
him that he had been wrong in his treatment of her. Without waking
him, she went back, and after a second dose of opium she fell towards
morning into a heavy, incomplete sleep, during which she never quite
lost consciousness.
In the morning she was waked by a horrible nightmare, which had
recurred several times in her dreams, even before her connection with
Vronsky. A little old man with unkempt beard was doing something
bent down over some iron, muttering meaningless French words, and
she, as she always did in this nightmare (it was what made the horror of
it), felt that this peasant was taking no notice of her, but was doing
something horrible with the iron— over her. And she waked up in a
barré
(Barré)
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