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Anna Karenina - Part 7

Page 103

"I am very sorry your note did not reach me. I will be home at

ten," Vronsky had written carelessly....

"Yes, that's what I expected!" she said to herself with an evil

smile.

"Very good, you can go home then," she said softly, addressing

Mihail. She spoke softly because the rapidity of her heart's

beating hindered her breathing. "No, I won't let you make me

miserable," she thought menacingly, addressing not him, not

herself, but the power that made her suffer, and she walked along

the platform.

Two maidservants walking along the platform turned their heads,

staring at her and making some remarks about her dress. "Real,"

they said of the lace she was wearing. The young men would not

leave her in peace. Again they passed by, peering into her face,

and with a laugh shouting something in an unnatural voice. The

station-master coming up asked her whether she was going by

train. A boy selling kvas never took his eyes off her. "My God!

where am I to go?" she thought, going farther and farther along

the platform. At the end she stopped. Some ladies and children,

who had come to meet a gentleman in spectacles, paused in their

loud laughter and talking, and stared at her as she reached them.

She quickened her pace and walked away from them to the edge of

the platform. A luggage train was coming in. The platform began

to sway, and she fancied she was in the train again.

And all at once she thought of the man crushed by the train the

day she had first met Vronsky, and she knew what she had to do.

With a rapid, light step she went down the steps that led from

the tank to the rails and stopped quite near the approaching

train.

She looked at the lower part of the carriages, at the screws and

chains and the tall cast-iron wheel of the first carriage slowly

moving up, and trying to measure the middle between the front and

back wheels, and the very minute when that middle point would be

opposite her.

"There," she said to herself, looking into the shadow of the

carriage, at the sand and coal dust which covered the sleepers--

"there, in the very middle, and I will punish him and escape

from everyone and from myself."

She tried to fling herself below the wheels of the first carriage

as it reached her; but the red bag which she tried to drop out of

her hand delayed her, and she was too late; she missed the

moment. She had to wait for the next carriage. A feeling such

as she had known when about to take the first plunge in bathing

came upon her, and she crossed herself. That familiar gesture

brought back into her soul a whole series of girlish and childish

memories, and suddenly the darkness that had covered everything

for her was torn apart, and life rose up before her for an

instant with all its bright past joys. But she did not take her

eyes from the wheels of the second carriage. And exactly at the

moment when the space between the wheels came opposite her, she

dropped the red bag, and drawing her head back into her

shoulders, fell on her hands under the carriage, and lightly, as

though she would rise again at once, dropped on to her knees.

And at the same instant she was terror-stricken at what she was

doing. "Where am I? What am I doing? What for?" She tried to

get up, to drop backwards; but something huge and merciless

struck her on the head and rolled her on her back. "Lord,

forgive me all!" she said, feeling it impossible to struggle. A

peasant muttering something was working at the iron above her.

And the light by which she had read the book filled with

troubles, falsehoods, sorrow, and evil, flared up more brightly

than ever before, lighted up for her all that had been in

darkness, flickered, began to grow dim, and was quenched forever.

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