"Yes, yes, that's better, a thousand times better! I know how
painful it was," he said. But she was not listening to his
words, she was reading his thoughts from the expression of his
face. She could not guess that that expression arose from the
first idea that presented itself to Vronsky--that a duel was now
inevitable. The idea of a duel had never crossed her mind, and
so she put a different interpretation on this passing expression
of hardness.
When she got her husband's letter, she knew then at the bottom of
her heart that everything would go on in the old way, that she
would not have the strength of will to forego her position, to
abandon her son, and to join her lover. The morning spent at
Princess Tverskaya's had confirmed her still more in this. But
this interview was still of the utmost gravity for her. She
hoped that this interview would transform her position, and save
her. If on hearing this news he were to say to her resolutely,
passionately, without an instant's wavering: "Throw up everything
and come with me!" she would give up her son and go away with
him. But this news had not produced what she had expected in
him; he simply seemed as though he were resenting some affront.
"It was not in the least painful to me. It happened of itself,"
she said irritably; "and see..." she pulled her husband's letter
out of her glove.
"I understand, I understand," he interrupted her, taking the
letter, but not reading it, and trying to soothe her. "The one
thing I longed for, the one thing I prayed for, was to cut
short this position, so as to devote my life to your happiness."
"Why do you tell me that?" she said. "Do you suppose I can doubt
it? If I doubted..."
"Who's that coming?" said Vronsky suddenly, pointing to two
ladies walking towards them. "Perhaps they know us!" and he
hurriedly turned off, drawing her after him into a side path.
"Oh, I don't care!" she said. Her lips were quivering. And he
fancied that her eyes looked with strange fury at him from under
the veil. "I tell you that's not the point--I can't doubt that;
but see what he writes to me. Read it." She stood still again.
Again, just as at the first moment of hearing of her rupture with
her husband, Vronsky, on reading the letter, was unconsciously
carried away by the natural sensation aroused in him by his own
relation to the betrayed husband. Now while he held his letter
in his hands, he could not help picturing the challenge, which he
would most likely find at home today or tomorrow, and the duel
itself, in which, with the same cold and haughty expression that
his face was assuming at this moment he would await the injured
husband's shot, after having himself fired into the air. And at
that instant there flashed across his mind the thought of what
Serpuhovskoy had just said to him, and what he had himself been
thinking in the morning--that it was better not to bind himself
--and he knew that this thought he could not tell her.