Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/205

 then, if it is so necessary; but I would much rather go to sleep."

Anna said what came to her tongue, and was astonished to hear herself, astonished at her own facility at telling a lie. How perfectly natural her words sounded, and how probable that she wanted to go to sleep; she felt herself clad in an impenetrable armor of falsehood. She felt that some invisible power assisted her and sustained her.

"Anna, I must give you a warning."

"A warning?" she exclaimed; "why?"

She looked at him so innocently, so gayly, that any one who did not know her as her husband did would have noticed nothing unnatural either in the tone of her voice or in the meaning of what she said. But for him, who knew her, who knew that when he was five minutes later than usual she always remarked on it, and asked the reason, for him who knew that her first impulse was always to tell him of her pleasures and her sorrows, for him now to see the fact that Anna took special pains not to observe his agitation, that she took special pains not to say a word about herself, all this was very significant. He saw that the depths of her soul, hitherto always opened to his gaze, were now shut away from him. Moreover, by her tone he perceived that she was not confused by this; but as it were she said openly and without dissimulation, "Yes, I am a sealed book, and so it must be, and will be from henceforth."

He felt as a man would who should come home and find his house barricaded against him.

"Perhaps the key will yet be found," thought Alekseï Aleksandrovitch.

"I want to warn you," said he, in a gentle voice, "lest by your imprudence and your thoughtlessness you give people cause to talk about you. Your rather too lively conversation this evening with Count Vronsky"—he pronounced this name slowly and distinctly—"attracted attention."

He finished speaking, and looked at Anna's laughing eyes, now terrible to him because they were so impene-