Part Six: Chapter 24

by Leo Tolstoy

　　"Then there is all the more reason for you to legalize yourposition, if possible," said Dolly.

　　"Yes, if possible," said Anna, speaking all at once in an utterlydifferent tone, subdued and mournful.

　　"Surely you don't mean a divorce is impossible? I was told yourhusband had consented to it."

　　"Dolly, I don't want to talk about that."

　　"Oh, we won't then," Darya Alexandrovna hastened to say, noticingthe expression of suffering on Anna's face. "All I see is thatyou take too gloomy a view of things."

　　"I? Not at all! I'm always bright and happy. You see, je faisdes passions. Veslovsky..."

　　"Yes, to tell the truth, I don't like Veslovsky's tone," saidDarya Alexandrovna, anxious to change the subject.

　　"Oh, that's nonsense! It amuses Alexey, and that's all; but he'sa boy, and quite under my control. You know, I turn him as Iplease. It's just as it might be with your Grisha.... Dolly!"--she suddenly changed the subject--"you say I take too gloomy aview of things. You can't understand. It's too awful! I try notto take any view of it at all."

　　"But I think you ought to. You ought to do all you can."

　　"But what can I do? Nothing. You tell me to marry Alexey, andsay I don't think about it. I don't think about it!" sherepeated, and a flush rose into her face. She got up,straightening her chest, and sighed heavily. With her light stepshe began pacing up and down the room, stopping now and then. "Idon't think of it? Not a day, not an hour passes that I don'tthink of it, and blame myself for thinking of it...becausethinking of that may drive me mad. Drive me mad!" she repeated."When I think of it, I can't sleep without morphine. But nevermind. Let us talk quietly. They tell me, divorce. In the firstplace, he won't give me a divorce. He's under the influence ofCountess Lidia Ivanovna now."

　　Darya Alexandrovna, sitting erect on a chair, turned her head,following Anna with a face of sympathetic suffering.

　　"You ought to make the attempt," she said softly.

　　"Suppose I make the attempt. What does it mean?" she said,evidently giving utterance to a thought, a thousand times thoughtover and learned by heart. "It means that I, hating him, butstill recognizing that I have wronged him--and I consider himmagnanimous--that I humiliate myself to write to him.... Well,suppose I make the effort; I do it. Either I receive ahumiliating refusal or consent.... Well, I have received hisconsent, say..." Anna was at that moment at the furthest endof the room, and she stopped there, doing something to thecurtain at the window. "I receive his consent, but my...myson? They won't give him up to me. He will grow up despisingme, with his father, whom I've abandoned. Do you see, I love...equally, I think, but both more than myself--two creatures,Seryozha and Alexey."

　　She came out into the middle of the room and stood facing Dolly,with her arms pressed tightly across her chest. I her whitedressing gown her figure seemed more than usually grand andbroad. She bent her head, and with shining, wet eyes looked fromunder her brows at Dolly, a thin little pitiful figure in herpatched dressing jacket and nightcap, shaking all over withemotion.

　　"It is only those two creatures that I love, and one excludes theother. I can't have them together, and that's the only thing Iwant. And since I can't have that, I don't care about the rest.I don't care about anything, anything. And it will end one wayor another, and so I can't, I don't like to talk of it. So don'tblame me, don't judge me for anything. You can't with your pureheart understand all that I'm suffering." She went up, sat downbeside Dolly, and with a guilty look, peeped into her face andtook her hand.

　　"What are you thinking? What are you thinking about me? Don'tdespise me. I don't deserve contempt. I'm simply unhappy. Ifanyone is unhappy, I am," she articulated, and turning away, sheburst into tears.

　　Left alone, Darya Alexandrovna said her prayers and went to bed.She had felt for Anna with all her heart while she was speakingto her, but now she could not force herself to think of her. Thememories of home and of her children rose up in her imaginationwith a peculiar charm quite new to her, with a sort of newbrilliance. That world of her own seemed to her now so sweet andprecious that she would not on any account spend an extra dayoutside it, and she made up her mind that she would certainly goback next day.

　　Anna meantime went back to her boudoir, took a wine glass anddropped into it several drops of a medicine, of which theprincipal ingredient was morphine. After drinking it off andsitting still a little while, she went into her bedroom in asoothed and more cheerful frame of mind.

　　When she went into the bedroom, Vronsky looked intently at her.He was looking for traces of the conversation which he knew that,staying so long in Dolly's room, she must have had with her. Butin her expression of restrained excitement, and of a sort ofreserve, he could find nothing but the beauty that alwaysbewitched him afresh though he was used to it, the consciousnessof it, and the desire that it should affect him. He did not wantto ask her what they had been talking of, but he hoped that shewould tell him something of her own accord. But she only said:

　　"I am so glad you like Dolly. You do, don't you?"

　　"Oh, I've known her a long while, you know. She's verygood-hearted, I suppose, mais excessivement terre-a-terre.Still, I'm very glad to see her."

　　He took Anna's hand and looked inquiringly into her eyes.

　　Misinterpreting the look, she smiled to him. Next morning, inspite of the protests of her hosts, Darya Alexandrovna preparedfor her homeward journey. Levin's coachman, in his by no meansnew coat and shabby hat, with his ill-matched horses and hiscoach with the patched mud-guards, drove with gloomydetermination into the covered gravel approach.

　　Darya Alexandrovna disliked taking leave of Princess Varvara andthe gentlemen of the party. After a day spent together, both sheand her hosts were distinctly aware that they did not get ontogether, and that it was better for them not to meet. Only Annawas sad. She knew that now, from Dolly's departure, no one againwould stir up within her soul the feelings that had been rousedby their conversation. It hurt her to stir up these feelings,but yet she knew that that was the best part of her soul, andthat that part of her soul would quickly be smothered in the lifeshe was leading.

　　As she drove out into the open country, Darya Alexandrovna had adelightful sense of relief, and she felt tempted to ask the twomen how they had liked being at Vronsky's, when suddenly thecoachman, Philip, expressed himself unasked:

　　"Rolling in wealth they may be, but three pots of oats was allthey gave us. Everything cleared up till there wasn't a grainleft by cockcrow. What are three pots? A mere mouthful! Andoats now down to forty-five kopecks. At our place, no fear, allcomers may have as much as they can eat."

　　"The master's a screw," put in the counting house clerk.

　　"Well, did you like their horses?" asked Dolly.

　　"The horses!--there's no two opinions about them. And the foodwas good. But it seemed to me sort of dreary there, DaryaAlexandrovna. I don't know what you thought," he said, turninghis handsome, good-natured face to her.

　　"I thought so too. Well, shall we get home by evening?"

　　"Eh, we must!"

　　On reaching home and finding everyone entirely satisfactory andparticularly charming, Darya Alexandrovna began with greatliveliness telling them how she had arrived, how warmly they hadreceived her, of the luxury and good taste in which the Vronskyslived, and of their recreations, and she would not allow a wordto be said against them.

　　"One has to know Anna and Vronsky--I have got to know him betternow--to see how nice they are, and how touching," she said,speaking now with perfect sincerity, and forgetting the vaguefeeling of dissatisfaction and awkwardness she had experiencedthere.