Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/106

 a little calmer, she began again to speak of what hurt her most cruelly.

"She is young, you see, she is pretty," she went on to say. "Do you realize, Anna, for whom I have sacrificed my youth, my beauty? For him and his children! I have worn myself out in his service, I have given him the best that I had; and now, of course, some one younger and fresher than I am is more pleasing to him. They have, certainly, discussed me between them,—or, worse, have insulted me with their silence, do you understand?"

And again her jealousy flamed up in her eyes.

"And after this he will tell me .... What! could I believe it? No, never! it is all over, all that gave me recompense for my sufferings, for my sorrows. .... Would you believe it? just now I was teaching Grisha. It used to be a pleasure to me; now it is a torment. Why should I take the trouble? Why have I children? It is terrible, because my whole soul is in revolt; instead of love, tenderness, I am filled with nothing but hate, yes, hate! I could kill him and .... "

"Dushenka! Dolly! I understand you; but don't torment yourself so! You are too excited, too angry, to see things in their right light."

Dolly grew calmer, and for a few moments neither spoke.

"What is to be done, Anna? Consider and help me. I have thought of everything, but I cannot see any way out of it."

Anna herself did not see any, but her heart responded to every word, to every expression in her sister-in-law's face.

"I will tell you one thing," said she at last. "I am his sister; I know his character, his peculiarity of forgetting everything,"—she touched her forehead,—"this peculiarity of his which is so conducive to sudden temptation, but also to repentance. At the present moment, he does not understand how it was possible for him to have done what he did."

"Not so! He does understand and he did under-