Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/577

 "I have come for that; that is to say, not entirely for that .... I have just been made chamberlain, so I had to show my gratitude; but the main thing was to arrange this matter."

"Well! may the Lord help you!" said Betsy.

Stepan Arkadyevitch accompanied the Princess Betsy to the door, once more kissed her wrist just above her glove, where the pulse beats, and after paying her such an impudent compliment that she did not know whether to laugh or take offense, he left her to go to his sister. He found her in tears.

In spite of the exuberance of his lively spirits, Stepan Arkadyevitch fell instantly and with perfect genuineness into the tone of sympathetic and poetical tenderness which suited his sister's frame of mind. He asked how she felt, and how she had passed the day.

"Wretchedly, very wretchedly! Night and day, the future and the past, all .... wretched," she replied.

"It seems to me, you have yielded to the blues. You must have courage; look life in the face. It is hard, I know, but...."

"I have heard that some women love men for their very vices," began Anna, suddenly; "but I hate him for his virtue. I cannot live with him. Understand me, the sight of him has a physical effect on me which drives me out of my mind. I cannot, cannot live with him! What shall I do? I have been unhappy before, and I thought it impossible to be more so, but this horrible state of things surpasses all that I could have imagined. Can you believe that, though I know how good and perfect he is, and how unworthy of him I am, still I hate him! I hate him for his magnanimity. There is absolutely nothing left for me but to ...."

She was going to add "die," but Stepan Arkadyevitch did not let her finish.

"You are ill and nervous, believe me; you exaggerate everything. There is really nothing so very terrible."

And Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled. No one except Stepan Arkadyevitch, meeting such despair, would have