Anna Karenina - Part 3

Though Anna had obstinately and with exasperation contradicted

Vronsky when he told her their position was impossible, at the

bottom of her heart she regarded her own position as false and

dishonorable, and she longed with her whole soul to change it.

On the way home from the races she had told her husband the truth

in a moment of excitement, and in spite of the agony she had

suffered in doing so, she was glad of it. After her husband had

left her, she told herself that she was glad, that now everything

was made clear, and at least there would be no more lying and

deception. It seemed to her beyond doubt that her position was

now made clear forever. It might be bad, this new position, but

it would be clear; there would be no indefiniteness or falsehood

about it. The pain she had caused herself and her husband in

uttering those words would be rewarded now by everything being

made clear, she thought. That evening she saw Vronsky, but she

did not tell him of what had passed between her and her husband,

though, to make the position definite, it was necessary to tell

him.

When she woke up next morning the first thing that rose to her

mind was what she had said to her husband, and those words seemed

to her so awful that she could not conceive now how she could

have brought herself to utter those strange, coarse words, and

could not imagine what would come of it. But the words were

spoken, and Alexey Alexandrovitch had gone away without saying

anything. "I saw Vronsky and did not tell him. At the very

instant he was going away I would have turned him back and told

him, but I changed my mind, because it was strange that I had

not told him the first minute. Why was it I wanted to tell him

and did not tell him?" And in answer to this question a burning

blush of shame spread over her face. She knew what had kept her

from it, she knew that she had been ashamed. Her position, which

had seemed to her simplified the night before, suddenly struck

her now as not only not simple, but as absolutely hopeless. She

felt terrified at the disgrace, of which she had not ever thought

before. Directly she thought of what her husband would do, the

most terrible ideas came to her mind. She had a vision of being

turned out of the house, of her shame being proclaimed to all the

world. She asked herself where she should go when she was turned

out of the house, and she could not find an answer.