Leo Tolstoy: Anna Karenina

PART 3 Chapter 22 (continued)

"You see the sort of man he is," she said, with a shaking voice; "he..."

"Forgive me, but I rejoice at it," Vronsky interrupted. "For God's sake, let me finish!" he added, his eyes imploring her to give him time to explain his words. "I rejoice, because things cannot, cannot possibly remain as he supposes."

"Why can't they?" Anna said, restraining her tears, and obviously attaching no sort of consequence to what he said. She felt that her fate was sealed.

Vronsky meant that after the duel--inevitable, he thought-- things could not go on as before, but he said something different.

"It can't go on. I hope that now you will leave him. I hope"-- he was confused, and reddened--"that you will let me arrange and plan our life. Tomorrow..." he was beginning.

She did not let him go on.

"But my child!" she shrieked. "You see what he writes! I should have to leave him, and I can't and won't do that."

"But, for God's sake, which is better?--leave your child, or keep up this degrading position?"

"To whom is it degrading?"

"To all, and most of all to you."

"You say degrading...don't say that. Those words have no meaning for me," she said in a shaking voice. She did not want him now to say what was untrue. She had nothing left her but his love, and she wanted to love him. "Don't you understand that from the day I loved you everything has changed for me? For me there is one thing, and one thing only--your love. If that's mine, I feel so exalted, so strong, that nothing can be humiliating to me. I am proud of my position, because...proud of being... proud...." She could not say what she was proud of. Tears of shame and despair choked her utterance. She stood still and sobbed.