Leo Tolstoy - Anna Karenina

"If she could but speak," said Agathya Mikhailovna. "Even though it's a dog… Yet she understands that her master's come home, and that he's low-spirited."

"Why low-spirited?"

"Do you suppose I don't see it, my dear? It's high time I should know the gentlefolk. Why, I've grown up from a little thing with them. Never mind, sir, so long as one has health and a clear conscience."

Levin looked intently at her, surprised at how well she had fathomed his thoughts.

"Shall I fetch you another cup?" she asked and, taking his cup, went out.

Laska kept poking her head under his hand. He stroked her, and she promptly curled up at his feet, laying her head on a protruding hand-paw. And in token of all now being well and satisfactory, she opened her mouth a little, smacked her lips, and settling her sticky lips more comfortably about her old teeth, she sank into blissful respose. Levin watched her last movements attentively.

"That's what I'll do," he said to himself; "that's what I'll do! Never mind… All's well."

After the ball, early next morning, Anna Arkadyevna sent her husband a telegram that she was leaving Moscow the same day.

"No, I must go, I must go"; she explained the change in her plans to her sister-in-law, in a tone that suggested that she had to remember so many things that there was no enumerating them: "no, really, it had better be today!"

Stepan Arkadyevich was not dining at home, but he promised to come and see his sister off at seven o'clock.

Kitty, too, did not come, sending a note that she had a headache. Dolly and Anna dined alone with the children and the English governess. Whether it was because children are fickle, or because they have acute senses, and they felt that Anna was quite different that day from what she had been when they had taken such a fancy to her, that she was not now interested in them- they had abruptly dropped their play with their aunt, and their love for her, and were quite indifferent to her leaving. Anna was absorbed the whole morning in preparations for her departure. She wrote notes to her Moscow acquaintances, jotted down her accounts, and packed. Altogether Dolly fancied she was not in a placid state of mind, but in that worried mood which Dolly knew so well in her own case, and which does not come without cause, and for the most part covers dissatisfaction with oneself. After dinner, Anna went up to her room to dress, and Dolly followed her.

"How queer you are today!" Dolly said to her.

"I? Do you think so? I'm not queer, but I'm nasty. I am like that sometimes. I keep feeling as if I could cry. It's very stupid, but it'll pass off," said Anna quickly, and she bent her flushed face over a tiny bag in which she was packing a nightcap and some cambric handkerchiefs. Her eyes were particularly bright, and were continually dimmed with tears. "In the same way I didn't want to leave Peterburg- and now I don't want to go away from here."

"You came here and did a good deed," said Dolly, looking intently at her.

Anna's eyes were wet with tears as she looked at her.

"Don't say that, Dolly. I've done nothing, and could do nothing. I often wonder why people are all in league to spoil me. What have I done, and what could I do? In your heart there was found love enough to forgive…"

If it had not been for you, God knows what would have happened! How happy you are, Anna!" said Dolly. "Everything is clear and good in your heart."

"Every heart has its own skeleton, as the English say."

"You have no sort of skeleton, have you? Everything is so clear in you."

"I have!" said Anna suddenly, and, unexpectedly after her tears, a sly, mocking smile puckered her lips.

"Come, he's amusing, anyway, your skeleton, and not depressing," said Dolly, smiling.

"No, he is depressing. Do you know why I'm going today instead of tomorrow? This is a confession that weighs on me; I want to make you its recipient," said Anna resolutely letting herself drop into an armchair, and looking straight into Dolly's face.

And to her surprise Dolly saw that Anna was blushing up to her ears, up to the curly black ringlets on her neck.

"Yes," Anna went on. "Do you know why Kitty didn't come to dinner? She's jealous of me. I have spoiled… I've been the cause of that ball being a torture to her instead of a pleasure. But truly, truly, it's not my fault, or only my fault a little bit," she said, daintily drawling the words "a little bit."

"Oh, how like Stiva you said that!" said Dolly, laughing.

Anna was hurt.

"Oh no, oh no! I'm not Stiva," she said, knitting her brows. "That's why I'm telling you, just because I do not even for an instant permit myself to doubt about myself," said Anna.

But at the very moment she was uttering the words, she felt that they were not true. She was not merely doubting about herself- she felt emotion at the thought of Vronsky, and was going away sooner than she had meant, solely to avoid meeting him.

"Yes, Stiva told me you danced the mazurka with him, and that he…"

"You can't imagine how absurdly it all came about. I only meant to be matchmaking, and all at once it turned out quite differently. Possibly against my own will…"

She flushed and stopped.

"Oh, they feel it immediately!" said Dolly.

"But I should be in despair if there were anything serious in it on his side," Anna interrupted her. "And I'm certain it will all be forgotten, and Kitty will leave off hating me."

"All the same, Anna, to tell you the truth, I'm not very anxious for this marriage for Kitty. And it's better it should come to nothing, if he, Vronsky, is capable of falling in love with you in a single day."

"Oh, heavens, that would be too silly!" said Anna, and again a deep flush of pleasure appeared on her face, as she heard the idea that absorbed her put into words. "And so here I am, going away, having made an enemy of Kitty, whom I liked so much! Ah, how sweet she is! But you'll make it right, Dolly? Eh?"

Dolly could scarcely suppress a smile. She loved Anna, but she was pleased to see that she, too, had her weaknesses.

"An enemy? That can't be."

"I did so want you all to care for me, as I do for you, and now I care for you more than ever," said Anna, with tears in her eyes. "Ah, how silly I am today!"

She passed her handkerchief over her face and began dressing.

At the very moment of starting Stepan Arkadyevich arrived, late, rosy and good-humored, smelling of wine and cigars.

Anna's emotionalism infected Dolly, and when she embraced her sister-in-law for the last time, she whispered:

"Remember, Anna, what you've done for me- I shall never forget. And remember that I love you, and shall always love you as my dearest friend!"

"I don't know why," said Anna, kissing her and hiding her tears.

"You understand me, and still understand. Good-by, my darling!"

"Now, it's all over- God be praised!" was the first thought that came to Anna Arkadyevna, when she had said good-by for the last time to her brother, who had stood blocking up the entrance to the carriage till the third bell rang. She sat down on her lounge beside Annushka, and looked about her in the twilight of the sleeping carriage. "Thank God! tomorrow I shall see Seriozha and Alexei Alexandrovich, and my life, good and familiar, will go on in the old way."

Still in the same anxious frame of mind in which she had been all that day, Anna took a meticulous pleasure in making herself comfortable for the journey. With her tiny, deft hands she opened and shut her little red bag, took out a cushion, laid it on her knees, and, carefully wrapping up her feet, settled herself comfortably. An invalid lady had already lain down to sleep. Two other ladies began talking to Anna, and a stout elderly lady tucked up her feet, and made observations about the heating of the train. Anna answered the ladies in a few words, but not foreseeing any entertainment from the conversation, she asked Annushka to get a small lantern, hooked it on the arm of her seat, and took from her bag a paper knife and an English novel. At first she could not get interested in her reading. The fuss and stir were disturbing; then, when the train had started, she could not help listening to the noises; then the snow beating on the left window and sticking to the pane, and the sight of the muffled guard passing by, covered with snow on one side, and the conversations about the terrible blizzard raging outside, distracted her attention. And after that everything was the same and the same: the same jouncing and rattling, the same snow lashing the window, the same rapid transitions from steaming heat to cold, and back again to heat, the same flitting of the same faces in the half-murk, and the same voices; and then Anna began to read, and to grasp what she read. Annushka was already dozing, the red bag on her lap, clutched by her broad hands, in gloves, of which one was torn. Anna Arkadyevna read and grasped the sense, yet it was annoying to her to read- that is, to follow the reflection of other people's lives. She had too great a desire to live herself. If she read that the heroine of the novel were nursing a sick man, she longed to move with noiseless steps about his sickroom; if she read of a member of Parliament delivering a speech, she longed to deliver it; if she read of how Lady Mary had ridden after the hounds, and had provoked her sister-in-law, and had surprised everyone by her daring- she, too, longed to be doing the same. But there was no chance of doing anything; and, her little hands toying with the smooth paper knife, she forced herself to read.