Anna Karenina (Penguin) - Leo Tolstoy [404]
‘But what is this all about?’ he said, horrified at the expression of her despair and, leaning towards her again, he took her hand and kissed it. ‘Why? Do I look for outside amusements? Don’t I avoid other women’s company?’
‘I should hope so!’ she said.
‘Well, tell me, what must I do to set you at peace? I’m ready to do anything to make you happy,’ he said, moved by her despair. ‘There’s nothing I won’t do to deliver you from such grief as now, Anna!’ he said.
‘Never mind, never mind!’ she said. ‘I myself don’t know: maybe it’s the lonely life, nerves ... Well, let’s not speak of it. How was the race? You haven’t told me,’ she asked, trying to hide her triumph at the victory, which after all was on her side.
He asked for supper and began telling her the details of the race; but in his tone, in his eyes, which grew colder and colder, she saw that he did not forgive her the victory, that the feeling of obstinacy she had fought against was there in him again. He was colder to her than before, as if he repented of having given in. And, recalling the words that had given her the victory - ‘I’m close to terrible disaster and afraid of myself’ - she realized that this was a dangerous weapon and that she could not use it a second time. She felt that alongside the love that bound them, there had settled between them an evil spirit of some sort of struggle, which she could not drive out of his heart and still less out of her own.
XIII
There are no conditions to which a person cannot grow accustomed, especially if he sees that everyone around him lives in the same way. Levin would not have believed three months earlier that he could fall peacefully asleep in circumstances such as he was in now; that, living an aimless, senseless life, a life also beyond his means, after drunkenness (he could not call what had happened at the club by any other name), an awkward friendliness shown to a man with whom his wife had once been in love, and a still more awkward visit to a woman who could be called nothing other than fallen, and having been attracted to that woman, thus upsetting his wife - that in such circumstances he could fall peacefully asleep. But under the influence of fatigue, a sleepless night and the wine he had drunk, he slept soundly and peacefully.
At five o‘clock he was awakened by the creak of an opening door. He sat up and looked around. Kitty was not in bed beside him. But there was a light moving behind the partition, and he heard her steps.
‘What? ... What is it?’ he asked, half awake. ‘Kitty! What is it?’
‘Nothing,’ she said, coming from behind the partition with a candle in her hand. ‘Nothing. I wasn’t feeling well,’ she said, smiling with an especially sweet and meaningful smile.
‘What? It’s starting? Is it starting?’ he said fearfully. ‘We must send ...’ And he hastily began to get dressed.
‘No, no,’ she said, smiling and holding him back. ‘It’s probably nothing. I just felt slightly unwell. But it’s over now.’
And, coming to the bed, she put out the candle, lay down and was quiet. Though he was suspicious of that quietness, as if she were holding her breath, and most of all of the expression of special tenderness and excitement with which she had said ‘Nothing’ to him, as she came from behind the partition, he was so sleepy that he dozed off at once. Only later did he remember the quietness of her breathing and understand what had been going on in her dear, sweet soul while she lay beside him, without stirring, awaiting the greatest event in a woman’s life. At seven o’clock he was awakened by the touch of her hand on his shoulder and a soft whisper. It was as if she were struggling between being sorry to awaken him and the wish to speak to him.
‘Kostya, don’t be frightened. It’s nothing. But I think ... We must send for Lizaveta Petrovna.’
The candle