"What do you mean by that?" she cried, looking with terror at the
undisguised hatred in his whole face, and especially in his
cruel, menacing eyes.
"I mean to say..." he was beginning, but he checked himself. "I
must ask what it is you want of me?"
"What can I want? All I can want is that you should not desert
me, as you think of doing," she said, understanding all he had
not uttered. "But that I don't want; that's secondary. I want
love, and there is none. So then all is over."
She turned towards the door.
"Stop! sto-op!" said Vronsky, with no change in the gloomy lines
of his brows, though he held her by the hand. "What is it all
about? I said that we must put off going for three days, and on
that you told me I was lying, that I was not an honorable man."
"Yes, and I repeat that the man who reproaches me with having
sacrificed everything for me," she said, recalling the words of a
still earlier quarrel, "that he's worse than a dishonorable man--
he's a heartless man."
"Oh, there are limits to endurance!" he cried, and hastily let go
her hand.
"He hates me, that's clear," she thought, and in silence, without
looking round, she walked with faltering steps out of the room.
"He loves another woman, that's even clearer," she said to
herself as she went into her own room. "I want love, and there
is none. So, then, all is over." She repeated the words she had
said, "and it must be ended."
"But how?" she asked herself, and she sat down in a low chair
before the looking glass.
Thoughts of where she would go now, whether to the aunt who had
brought her up, to Dolly, or simply alone abroad, and of what
_he_ was doing now alone in his study; whether this was the final
quarrel, or whether reconciliation were still possible; and of
what all her old friends at Petersburg would say of her now; and
of how Alexey Alexandrovitch would look at it, and many other
ideas of what would happen now after this rupture, came into her
head; but she did not give herself up to them with all her heart.
At the bottom of her heart was some obscure idea that alone
interested her, but she could not get clear sight of it.
Thinking once more of Alexey Alexandrovitch, she recalled the
time of her illness after her confinement, and the feeling which
never left her at that time. "Why didn't I die?" and the words
and the feeling of that time came back to her. And all at once
she knew what was in her soul. Yes, it was that idea which alone
solved all. "Yes, to die!... And the shame and disgrace of
Alexey Alexandrovitch and of Seryozha, and my awful shame, it
will all be saved by death. To die! and he will feel remorse;
will be sorry; will love me; he will suffer on my account." With
the trace of a smile of commiseration for herself she sat down in
the armchair, taking off and putting on the rings on her left
hand, vividly picturing from different sides his feelings after
her death.