Anna Karenina (Penguin) - Leo Tolstoy [269]
When Anna appeared in her hat and wrap and paused by him, her beautiful hand playing in quick movements with her parasol, Vronsky tore himself with a sense of relief from the intent gaze of Golenishchev’s complaining eyes, and with renewed love looked at his enchanting friend, full of life and joy. Golenishchev, recovering himself with difficulty, was at first dejected and glum, but Anna, kindly disposed towards everyone (as she was at that time), soon revived him with her simple and gay manner. After trying various topics of conversation, she brought him round to painting, about which he spoke very well, and listened to him attentively. They reached the rented house on foot and looked it over.
‘I’m very glad of one thing,’ Anna said to Golenishchev on their way back. ‘Alexei will have a good atelier.al You must certainly take that room, dear,’ she said to Vronsky in Russian, addressing him familiarly, because she already understood that Golenishchev, in their seclusion, would be close to them and that there was no need to hide anything in front of him.
‘So you paint?’ asked Golenishchev, quickly turning to Vronsky.
‘Yes, I took it up a long time ago and now I’ve begun a little,’ Vronsky said, blushing.
‘He has great talent,’ Anna said with a joyful smile. ‘Of course, I’m no judge. But judges who know have said the same thing.’
VIII
Anna, during this first period of her liberation and quick recovery, felt herself unpardonably happy and filled with the joy of life. The memory of her husband’s unhappiness did not poison her happiness. This memory was, on the one hand, too terrible to think of. On the other hand, her husband’s unhappiness had given her too great a happiness to be repentant. The memory of all that had happened to her after her illness: the reconciliation with her husband, the break-up, the news of Vronsky’s wound, his appearance, the preparation for the divorce, the departure from her husband’s house, the leavetaking from her son - all this seemed to her a feverish dream from which she had awakened abroad, alone with Vronsky. The memory of the evil done to her husband called up in her a feeling akin to revulsion and similar to that experienced by a drowning man who has torn away another man clinging to him. That man drowned. Of course it was bad, but it was the only salvation, and it was better not to remember those dreadful details.
One soothing reflection about her behaviour had occurred to her then, in the first moment of the break-up, and now when she remembered all that had happened, she remembered that one reflection: ‘It was inevitable that I would be this man’s unhappiness,’ she thought, ‘but I don’t want to take advantage of that unhappiness. I, too, suffer and will suffer: I’m deprived of all that I once valued most - my good name and my son. I did a bad thing and therefore I do not want happiness, I do not want a divorce, and will suffer from my disgrace and my separation from my son.’ But however sincerely Anna wanted to suffer, she did not suffer. There was no disgrace. With the tact they both had so much of, they managed, by avoiding Russian ladies abroad, never to put themselves into a false position, and everywhere met people who pretended that they fully understood their mutual position far better than they themselves did. Even the separation from her son, whom she loved, did not torment her at first. The little girl, his child, was so sweet and Anna had become so attached to her, once this little girl was all she had left, that she rarely remembered her son.
The need to live, increased by her recovery, was so strong, and the conditions of life were so new and pleasant, that Anna felt herself unpardonably happy. The more she knew of Vronsky, the more she loved him. She loved him for himself and for his love of her. To possess him fully was a constant joy