Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/438

 sitting down near her, and evidently desiring to talk with her. Several times he began to speak, but hesitated.

Although she was prepared for this interview, and had made up her mind to defend herself, and accuse him, she did not know what to say to him, and she felt sorry for him. And so the silence lasted some little time.

"Is Serozha well?" at length he asked; and, without waiting for an answer, he added, "I shall not dine at home to-day; I have to leave immediately."

"I intended to start for Moscow," said Anna.

"No; you did very, very well to come home," he replied, and again was silent.

Seeing that it was beyond his strength to begin the conversation, she herself began:—

"Alekseï Aleksandrovitch," said she, looking at him, and not dropping her eyes under his gaze, which was still concentrated on her head-dress, "I am a guilty woman; I am a wicked woman; but I am what I have been,—what I told you I was,—and I have come to tell you that I cannot change."

"I did not ask you about this," he replied instantly, with sudden resolution, and, with an expression of hate, looking straight into her eyes. "I presuppose that." Under the influence of anger, he apparently regained control of all his faculties. "But as I told you then, and wrote you,"—he spoke in a sharp, shrill voice,—"I now repeat, that I am not obliged to know this. I ignore it. Not all women are so good as you are, to hasten to give their husbands such very pleasant news." He laid a special stress on the word priyatnoye, "pleasant." " I will ignore it for the present, as long as the world does not know,—as long as my name is not dishonored. I, therefore, only warn you that our relations must remain as they always have been, and that only in case of your compromising yourself, shall I be forced to take measures to protect my honor."

"But our relations cannot remain as they have been," she said with timid accents, looking at him in terror.

As she once more saw his undemonstrative gestures, heard his mocking voice with its. sharp, childish tones,