Anna Karenina - Part 7

"But what are you talking about?" he said, horrified at her

expression of despair, and again bending over her, he took her

hand and kissed it. "What is it for? Do I seek amusements

outside our home? Don't I avoid the society of women?"

"Well, yes! If that were all!" she said.

"Come, tell me what I ought to do to give you peace of mind? I

am ready to do anything to make you happy," he said, touched by

her expression of despair; "what wouldn't I do to save you from

distress of any sort, as now, Anna!" he said.

"It's nothing, nothing!" she said. "I don't know myself whether

it's the solitary life, my nerves.... Come, don't let us talk

of it. What about the race? You haven't told me!" she inquired,

trying to conceal her triumph at the victory, which had anyway

been on her side.

He asked for supper, and began telling her about the races; but

in his tone, in his eyes, which became more and more cold, she

saw that he did not forgive her for her victory, that the feeling

of obstinacy with which she had been struggling had asserted

itself again in him. He was colder to her than before, as though

he were regretting his surrender. And she, remembering the words

that had given her the victory, "how I feel on the brink of

calamity, how afraid I am of myself," saw that this weapon was a

dangerous one, and that it could not be used a second time. And

she felt that beside the love that bound them together there had

grown up between them some evil spirit of strife, which she could

not exorcise from his, and still less from her own heart.