‘Alexei Alexandrovich, really, I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘Explain what it is you find ...’
‘Please allow me to finish. I love you. But I am not speaking of myself. The main persons here are our son and yourself. It may well be, I repeat, that my words will seem completely unnecessary and inappropriate to you; it may be that they are caused by an error on my part. In that case I beg you to pardon me. But if you yourself feel that there are even the slightest grounds, I beg you to think and, if your heart speaks, to tell me ...’
Alexei Alexandrovich, not noticing it himself, was saying something quite other than what he had prepared.
‘There’s nothing for me to tell. And...’ she suddenly said quickly, with a barely restrained smile, ‘really, it’s time for bed.’
Alexei Alexandrovich sighed and, saying no more, went into the bedroom.
When she came into the bedroom, he was already lying down. His lips were sternly compressed, and his eyes were not looking at her. Anna got into her own bed and waited every minute for him to begin talking to her again. She feared that he would, and at the same time she wanted it. But he was silent. For a long time she waited motionless and then forgot about him. She was thinking about another man, she could see him, and felt how at this thought her heart filled with excitement and criminal joy. Suddenly she heard a steady, peaceful nasal whistling. At first, Alexei Alexandrovich seemed startled by this whistling and stopped; but after two breaths the whistling began again with a new, peaceful steadiness.
‘It’s late now, late, late,’ she whispered with a smile. She lay for a long time motionless, her eyes open, and it seemed to her that she herself could see them shining in the darkness.
X
From that evening a new life began for Alexei Alexandrovich and his wife. Nothing special happened. Anna went into society as always, visited Princess Betsy especially often, and met Vronsky everywhere. Alexei Alexandrovich saw it but could do nothing. To all his attempts at drawing her into an explanation she opposed the impenetrable wall of some cheerful perplexity. Outwardly things were the same, but inwardly their relations had changed completely. Alexei Alexandrovich, such a strong man in affairs of state, here felt himself powerless. Like a bull, head lowered obediently, he waited for the axe that he felt was raised over him. Each time he began thinking about it, he felt that he had to try once more, that by kindness, tenderness and persuasion there was still a hope of saving her, of making her come to her senses, and he tried each day to talk with her. But each time he started talking with her, he felt that the spirit of evil and deceit that possessed her also took possession of him, and he said something to her that was not right at all and not in the tone in which he had wanted to speak. He talked with her involuntarily in his habitual tone, which was a mockery of those who would talk that way seriously. And in that tone it was impossible to say what needed to be said to her.
XI
That which for almost a year had constituted the one exclusive desire of Vronsky’s life, replacing all former desires; that which for Anna had been an impossible, horrible, but all the more enchanting dream of happiness - this desire had been satisfied. Pale, his lower jaw trembling, he stood over her and pleaded with her to be calm, himself not knowing why or how.
‘Anna! Anna!’ he kept saying in a trembling voice. ‘Anna, for God’s sake! ...’
But the louder he spoke, the lower she bent her once proud, gay, but now shame-stricken head, and she became all limp, falling from the divan where she had been sitting to the floor at his feet; she would have fallen on the carpet if he had not held her.
‘My God! Forgive me!’ she said, sobbing, pressing his hands to her breast.
She felt herself so criminal and guilty that the only thing left for her was to humble herself and beg forgiveness; but as she had no one else in her life now except him, it was also to him that she addressed her plea for forgiveness. Looking at him, she physically felt her humiliation and could say nothing more. And he felt what a murderer must feel when he looks at the body he has deprived of life. This body deprived of life was their love, the first period of their love. There was something horrible and loathsome in his recollections of what had been paid for with this terrible price of shame. Shame at her spiritual nakedness weighed on her and communicated itself to him. But, despite all the murderer’s horror before the murdered body, he had to cut this body into pieces and hide it, he had to make use of what the murderer had gained by his murder.
And as the murderer falls upon this body with animosity, as if with passion, drags it off and cuts it up, so he covered her face and shoulders with kisses. She held his hand and did not move. Yes, these kisses were what had been bought by this shame. Yes, and this one hand, which will always be mine, is the hand of my accomplice. She raised this hand and kissed it. He knelt down and tried to look at her face; but she hid it and said nothing. Finally, as if forcing herself, she sat up and pushed him away. Her face was still as beautiful, but the more pitiful for that.
‘Everything is finished,’ she said. ‘I have nothing but you. Remember that.’
‘How can I not remember what is my very life? For one minute of this happiness ...’
‘What happiness?’ she said with loathing and horror, and her horror involuntarily communicated itself to him. ‘For God’s sake, not a word, not a word more.’
She quickly stood up and moved away from him.
‘Not a word more,’ she repeated, and with an expression of cold despair on her face, which he found strange, she left him. She felt that at that moment she could not put into words her feeling of shame, joy, and horror before this entry into a new life, and she did not want to speak of it, to trivialize this feeling with imprecise words. But later, too, the next day and the day after that, she not only found no words in which she could express all the complexity of these feelings, but was unable even to find thoughts in which she could reflect with herself on all that was in her soul.
She kept telling herself: ‘No, I can’t think about it now; later, when I’m more calm.’ But this calm for reflection never came; each time the thought occurred to her of what she had done, of what would become of her and what she ought to do, horror came over her, and she drove these thoughts away.
‘Later, later,’ she kept saying, ‘when I’m more calm.’
But in sleep, when she had no power over her thoughts, her situation presented itself to her in all its ugly nakedness. One dream visited her almost every night. She dreamed that they were both her husbands, that they both lavished their caresses on her. Alexei Alexandrovich wept, kissing her hands and saying: ‘It’s so good now!’ And Alexei Vronsky was right there, and he, too, was her husband. And, marvelling that it had once seemed impossible to her, she laughingly explained to them that this was much simpler and that now they were both content and happy. But this dream weighed on her like a nightmare, and she would wake up in horror.
XII
In the first period after his return from Moscow, when he still gave a start and blushed each time he remembered the disgrace of the refusal, Levin said to himself: ‘I blushed and shuddered in the same way, thinking all was lost, when I got the lowest grade in physics and had to repeat my second year; I thought myself lost in the same way after I bungled my sister’s affair, which had been entrusted to me. And what happened? Now that years have passed, I remember it and wonder how it could have upset me. It will be the same with this grief. Time will pass, and I’ll grow indifferent to it.’