(^11981199)
mistake. “He thought he knew me. Well, he knows me as well as
anyone in the world knows me. I don’t know myself. I know my
appetites, as the French say. They want that dirty ice cream, that they
do know for certain,” she thought, looking at two boys stopping an ice
cream seller, who took a barrel off his head and began wiping his
perspiring face with a towel. “We all want what is sweet and nice. If
not sweetmeats, then a dirty ice. And Kitty’s the same—if not Vronsky,
then Levin. And she envies me, and hates me. And we all hate each
other. I Kitty, Kitty me. Yes, that’s the truth. ‘Tiutkin, coiffeur.’ Je me
fais coiffer par Tiutkin.... I’ll tell him that when he comes,” she thought
and smiled. But the same instant she remembered that she had no
one now to tell anything amusing to. “And there’s nothing amusing,
nothing mirthful, really. It’s all hateful. They’re singing for vespers, and
how carefully that merchant crosses himself! as if he were afraid of
missing something. Why these churches and this singing and this
humbug? Simply to conceal that we all hate each other like these cab
drivers who are abusing each other so angrily. Yashvin says, ‘He wants
to strip me of my shirt, and I him of his.’ Yes, that’s the truth!”
She was plunged in these thoughts, which so engrossed her that
she left off thinking of her own position, when the carriage drew up at
the steps of her house. It was only when she saw the porter running
out to meet her that she remembered she had sent the note and the
telegram
“Is there an answer?” she inquired.
“I’ll see this minute,” answered the porter, and glancing into his
room, he took out and gave her the thin square envelope of a telegram.
“I can’t come before ten o’clock.—Vronsky,” she read.
“And hasn’t the messenger come back?”
“No,” answered the porter.
“Then, since it’s so, I know what I must do,” she said, and feeling a
vague fury and craving for revenge rising up within her, she ran up-
stairs. “I’ll go to him myself. Before going away forever, I’ll tell him all.
Never have I hated anyone as I hate that man!” she thought. Seeing
his hat on the rack, she shuddered with aversion. She did not consider
that his telegram was an answer to her telegram and that he had not
yet received her note. She pictured him to herself as talking calmly to
his mother and Princess Sorokina and rejoicing at her sufferings. “Yes,
I must go quickly,” she said, not knowing yet where she was going. She
longed to get away as quickly as possible from the feelings she had
gone through in that awful house. The servants, the walls, the things in
that house—all aroused repulsion and hatred in her and lay like a
weight upon her.
“Yes, I must go to the railway station, and if he’s not there, then go
there and catch him.” Anna looked at the railway timetable in the
newspapers. An evening train went at two minutes past eight. “Yes, I
shall be in time.” She gave orders for the other horses to be put in the
carriage, and packed in a traveling-bag the things needed for a few
days. She knew she would never come back here again.
Among the plans that came into her head she vaguely determined
that after what would happen at the station or at the countess’s house,
she would go as far as the first town on the Nizhni road and stop there.
Dinner was on the table; she went up, but the smell of the bread
and cheese was enough to make her feel that all food was disgusting.
She ordered the carriage and went out. The house threw a shadow
now right across the street, but it was a bright evening and still warm in
the sunshine. Annushka, who came down with her things, and Pyotr,
who put the things in the carriage, and the coachman, evidently out of
humor, were all hateful to her, and irritated her by their words and
barré
(Barré)
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