Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy [books to read in your 30s .txt] 📗

by his lifted eyebrows, sat down beside Darya Alexandrovna, and smiled affectedly.

“It’s fortunate,” said he, “especially as I was meaning to ask you to excuse me, and to be taking leave. I have to start tomorrow.”

Darya Alexandrovna was firmly convinced of Anna’s innocence, and she felt herself growing pale and her lips quivering with anger at this frigid, unfeeling man, who was so calmly intending to ruin her innocent friend.

“Alexey Alexandrovitch,” she said, with desperate resolution looking him in the face, “I asked you about Anna, you made me no answer. How is she?”

“She is, I believe, quite well, Darya Alexandrovna,” replied Alexey Alexandrovitch, not looking at her.

“Alexey Alexandrovitch, forgive me, I have no right⁠ ⁠… but I love Anna as a sister, and esteem her; I beg, I beseech you to tell me what is wrong between you? what fault do you find with her?”

Alexey Alexandrovitch frowned, and almost closing his eyes, dropped his head.

“I presume that your husband has told you the grounds on which I consider it necessary to change my attitude to Anna Arkadyevna?” he said, not looking her in the face, but eyeing with displeasure Shtcherbatsky, who was walking across the drawing-room.

“I don’t believe it, I don’t believe it, I can’t believe it!” Dolly said, clasping her bony hands before her with a vigorous gesture. She rose quickly, and laid her hand on Alexey Alexandrovitch’s sleeve. “We shall be disturbed here. Come this way, please.”

Dolly’s agitation had an effect on Alexey Alexandrovitch. He got up and submissively followed her to the schoolroom. They sat down to a table covered with an oilcloth cut in slits by penknives.

“I don’t, I don’t believe it!” Dolly said, trying to catch his glance that avoided her.

“One cannot disbelieve facts, Darya Alexandrovna,” said he, with an emphasis on the word “facts.”

“But what has she done?” said Darya Alexandrovna. “What precisely has she done?”

“She has forsaken her duty, and deceived her husband. That’s what she has done,” said he.

“No, no, it can’t be! No, for God’s sake, you are mistaken,” said Dolly, putting her hands to her temples and closing her eyes.

Alexey Alexandrovitch smiled coldly, with his lips alone, meaning to signify to her and to himself the firmness of his conviction; but this warm defense, though it could not shake him, reopened his wound. He began to speak with greater heat.

“It is extremely difficult to be mistaken when a wife herself informs her husband of the fact⁠—informs him that eight years of her life, and a son, all that’s a mistake, and that she wants to begin life again,” he said angrily, with a snort.

“Anna and sin⁠—I cannot connect them, I cannot believe it!”

“Darya Alexandrovna,” he said, now looking straight into Dolly’s kindly, troubled face, and feeling that his tongue was being loosened in spite of himself, “I would give a great deal for doubt to be still possible. When I doubted, I was miserable, but it was better than now. When I doubted, I had hope; but now there is no hope, and still I doubt of everything. I am in such doubt of everything that I even hate my son, and sometimes do not believe he is my son. I am very unhappy.”

He had no need to say that. Darya Alexandrovna had seen that as soon as he glanced into her face; and she felt sorry for him, and her faith in the innocence of her friend began to totter.

“Oh, this is awful, awful! But can it be true that you are resolved on a divorce?”

“I am resolved on extreme measures. There is nothing else for me to do.”

“Nothing else to do, nothing else to do.⁠ ⁠…” she replied, with tears in her eyes. “Oh no, don’t say nothing else to do!” she said.

“What is horrible in a trouble of this kind is that one cannot, as in any other⁠—in loss, in death⁠—bear one’s trouble in peace, but that one must act,” said he, as though guessing her thought. “One must get out of the humiliating position in which one is placed; one can’t live à trois.”

“I understand, I quite understand that,” said Dolly, and her head sank. She was silent for a little, thinking of herself, of her own grief in her family, and all at once, with an impulsive movement, she raised her head and clasped her hands with an imploring gesture. “But wait a little! You are a Christian. Think of her! What will become of her, if you cast her off?”

“I have thought, Darya Alexandrovna, I have thought a great deal,” said Alexey Alexandrovitch. His face turned red in patches, and his dim eyes looked straight before him. Darya Alexandrovna at that moment pitied him with all her heart. “That was what I did indeed when she herself made known to me my humiliation; I left everything as of old. I gave her a chance to reform, I tried to save her. And with what result? She would not regard the slightest request⁠—that she should observe decorum,” he said, getting heated. “One may save anyone who does not want to be ruined; but if the whole nature is so corrupt, so depraved, that ruin itself seems to be her salvation, what’s to be done?”

“Anything, only not divorce!” answered Darya Alexandrovna.

“But what is anything?”

“No, it is awful! She will be no one’s wife, she will be lost!”

“What can I do?” said Alexey Alexandrovitch, raising his shoulders and his eyebrows. The recollection of his wife’s last act had so incensed him that he had become frigid, as at the beginning of the conversation. “I am very grateful for your sympathy, but I must be going,” he said, getting up.

“No, wait a minute. You must not ruin her. Wait a little; I will tell you about myself. I was married, and my husband deceived me; in anger and jealousy, I would have thrown up everything, I would myself.⁠ ⁠… But I came to myself again; and who did it? Anna saved me. And here I am living on.