Anna Karenina (Penguin) - Leo Tolstoy [430]
When she got up, she recalled the previous day as in a fog.
‘There was a quarrel. There was what had already happened several times. I said I had a headache, and he didn’t come in. Tomorrow we’re leaving, I must see him and get ready for the departure,’ she said to herself. And, learning that he was in his study, she went to him. As she passed through the drawing room she heard a vehicle stop by the entrance, and, looking out the window, she saw a carriage with a young girl in a violet hat leaning out of it and giving orders to the footman who was ringing at the door. After negotiations in the front hall, someone came upstairs, and Vronsky’s steps were heard by the drawing room. He was going downstairs with quick steps. Anna went to the window again. Now he came out on the steps without a hat and went up to the carriage. The young girl in the violet hat handed him a package. Vronsky, smiling, said something to her. The carriage drove off; he quickly ran back up the stairs.
The fog that had covered everything in her soul suddenly cleared. Yesterday’s feelings wrung her aching heart with a new pain. She could not understand now how she could have lowered herself so far as to spend a whole day with him in his house. She went into his study to announce her decision to him.
‘That was Mme Sorokin and her daughter calling by to bring me money and papers from maman. I couldn’t get them yesterday. How’s your head? Better?’ he said calmly, not wishing to see or understand the gloomy and solemn expression on her face.
She stood silently in the middle of the room, gazing fixedly at him. He glanced at her, frowned momentarily, and went on reading a letter. She turned and slowly started out of the room. He could still bring her back, but she reached the door, he remained silent, and only the rustle of the turning page was heard.
‘Ah, incidentally,’ he said, when she was already in the doorway, ‘we’re definitely going tomorrow, aren’t we?’
‘You are, but I’m not,’ she said, turning to him.
‘Anna, we can’t live like this ...’
‘You are, but I’m not,’ she repeated.
‘This is becoming unbearable!’
‘You ... you will regret that,’ she said and walked out.
Frightened by the desperate look with which these words were spoken, he jumped up and was about to run after her, but, recollecting himself, sat down again, clenched his teeth tightly and frowned. This improper -as he found it-threat of something irritated him. ‘I’ve tried everything,’ he thought, ‘the only thing left is to pay no attention,’ and he began getting ready to go to town and again to his mother’s, whose signature he needed on the warrant.
She heard the sound of his steps in the study and the dining room. He stopped by the drawing room. But he did not turn to her, he only gave orders to hand the stallion over to Voitov in his absence. Then she heard the carriage being brought, the door opening, him going out again. But now he was back in the front hall, and someone was running up the stairs. It was his valet running to fetch the gloves he had forgotten. She went to the window and saw him take the gloves without looking, touch the driver’s back and say something to him. Then, without looking at the windows, he assumed his usual posture in the carriage, his legs crossed, and, pulling on a glove, disappeared round the corner.
XXVII
‘He’s gone. It’s over!’ Anna said to herself, standing at the window. And in response to this question the impressions of the horrible dream and of the darkness when the candle had gone out merged into one, filling her heart with cold terror.
‘No, it can’t be!’ she cried out and, crossing the room, loudly rang the bell. She was now so afraid of staying