Anna Karenina

‘I? ... Yes,’ said Anna. ‘My God, Tanya! The same age as my Seryozha,’ she added, turning to the girl who came running in. She took her in her arms and kissed her. ‘A lovely girl, lovely! Show them all to me.’

She called them all by name, remembering not only the names, but the years, months, characters, illnesses of all the children, and Dolly could not help appreciating it.

‘Well, let’s go to them then,’ she said. ‘A pity Vasya’s asleep.’

After looking at the children, they sat down, alone now, to have coffee in the drawing room. Anna reached for the tray, then pushed it aside.

‘Dolly,’ she said, ‘he told me.’

Dolly looked coldly at Anna. She expected falsely compassionate phrases now, but Anna said nothing of the sort.

‘Dolly, dear!’ she said, ‘I don’t want either to defend him or to console you - that is impossible. But, darling, I simply feel sorry for you, sorry with all my heart!’

Tears suddenly showed behind the thick lashes of her bright eyes. She moved closer to her sister-in-law and took her hand in her own energetic little hand. Dolly did not draw back, but the dry expression on her face did not change. She said:

‘It’s impossible to console me. Everything is lost after what’s happened, everything is gone!’

And as soon as she had said it, the expression on her face suddenly softened. Anna raised Dolly’s dry, thin hand, kissed it and said: ‘But, Dolly, what’s to be done, what’s to be done? What’s the best way to act in this terrible situation? - that’s what we must think about.’

‘Everything’s over, that’s all,’ said Dolly. ‘And the worst of it, you understand, is that I can’t leave him. There are the children, I’m tied. And I can’t live with him, it pains me to see him.’

‘Dolly, darling, he told me, but I want to hear it from you, tell me everything.’

Dolly gave her a questioning look.

Unfeigned concern and love could be seen on Anna’s face.

‘Very well,’ she said suddenly. ‘But I’ll tell it from the beginning. You know how I got married. With maman’s upbringing, I was not only innocent, I was stupid. I didn’t know anything. They say, I know, that husbands tell their wives their former life, but Stiva ...’ - she corrected herself - ‘Stepan Arkadyich told me nothing. You won’t believe it, but until now I thought I was the only woman he had known. I lived like that for eight years. You must understand that I not only didn’t suspect his unfaithfulness, I considered it impossible, and here, imagine, with such notions, suddenly to learn the whole horror, the whole vileness ... You must understand me. To be fully certain of my own happiness, and suddenly ...’ Dolly went on, repressing her sobs, ‘and to get a letter ... his letter to his mistress, to my governess. No, it’s too terrible!’ She hastily took out a handkerchief and covered her face with it. ‘I could even understand if it was a passion,’ she went on after a pause, ‘but to deceive me deliberately, cunningly ... and with whom? ... To go on being my husband together with her ... it’s terrible! You can’t understand...’

‘Oh, no, I do understand! I understand, dear Dolly, I understand,’ said Anna, pressing her hand.

‘And do you think he understands all the horror of my position?’ Dolly went on. ‘Not a bit! He’s happy and content.’

‘Oh, no!’ Anna quickly interrupted. ‘He’s pitiful, he’s overcome with remorse ...’

‘Is he capable of remorse?’ Dolly interrupted, peering intently into her sister-in-law’s face.

‘Yes, I know him. I couldn’t look at him without pity. We both know him. He’s kind, but he’s proud, and now he’s so humiliated. What moved me most of all ...’ (and here Anna guessed what might move Dolly most of all) ‘there are two things tormenting him: that he’s ashamed before the children, and that, loving you as he does ... yes, yes, loving you more than anything in the world,’ she hastily interrupted Dolly, who was about to object, ‘he has hurt you, crushed you. “No, no, she won’t forgive me,” he keeps saying.’

Dolly pensively stared past her sister-in-law, listening to her words.

‘Yes, I understand that his position is terrible; it’s worse for the guilty than for the innocent,’ she said, ‘if he feels guilty for the whole misfortune. But how can I forgive him, how can I be his wife again after her? For me to live with him now would be torture, precisely because I loved him as I did, because I love my past love for him ...’

And sobs interrupted her words.

But as if on purpose, each time she softened, she again began to speak of what irritated her.