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324 "She does n't seem to be in her usual state to-day. I thought she came near bursting into tears, when I accompanied her into the anteroom."

took her seat in her carriage in an even unhappier state of mind than she had been when she left her house. In addition to her former sufferings, she now felt the humiliation and sense of moral degeneracy which her meeting with Kitty had clearly made evident.

"Where would you wish to go now? Home?" asked Piotr.

"Yes, home," she replied, now not thinking at all where she was going.

"They looked on me as some strange, incomprehensible curiosity.—What can that man be saying so eagerly to the other?" thought she, seeing two passersby talking together. "Is it possible to say what one really feels? I wanted to confess to Dolly, and I am glad that I kept still. How she would have rejoiced at my unhappiness! She would have tried to hide it, but at heart she would have been glad; she would have thought it just that I should be punished for that happiness which she begrudged me. And Kitty would have been still more pleased. How I read her through and through! She knows her husband liked me uncommonly well, and she is jealous, and hates me; and, what's more, she despises me. In her eyes, I am an immoral woman. If I had been an immoral woman I might have made him fall in love with me, if I had wanted to! I confess I thought of it.—There goes a man who is delighted with his own looks," she said to herself, as a tall, florid man went by, and, mistaking her for an acquaintance, lifted his shiny hat from his shiny bald head, and instantly recognized his mistake.

"He thought he knew me! He knows me quite as well as any one in the world knows me. I don't know myself; I only know my appetites as the French say.—