Anna Karenina - Part 7

Now nothing mattered: going or not going to Vozdvizhenskoe,

getting or not getting a divorce from her husband--all that did

not matter. The one thing that mattered was punishing him. When

she poured herself out her usual dose of opium, and thought that

she had only to drink off the whole bottle to die, it seemed to

her so simple and easy, that she began musing with enjoyment on

how he would suffer, and repent and love her memory when it would

be too late. She lay in bed with open eyes, by the light of a

single burned-down candle, gazing at the carved cornice of the

ceiling and at the shadow of the screen that covered part of it,

while she vividly pictured to herself how he would feel when she

would be no more, when she would be only a memory to him. "How

could I say such cruel things to her?" he would say. "How could

I go out of the room without saying anything to her? But now she

is no more. She has gone away from us forever. She is...."

Suddenly the shadow of the screen wavered, pounced on the whole

cornice, the whole ceiling; other shadows from the other side

swooped to meet it, for an instant the shadows flitted back, but

then with fresh swiftness they darted forward, wavered,

commingled, and all was darkness. "Death!" she thought. And

such horror came upon her that for a long while she could not

realize where she was, and for a long while her trembling hands

could not find the matches and light another candle, instead of

the one that had burned down and gone out. "No, anything--only

to live! Why, I love him! Why, he loves me! This has been

before and will pass," she said, feeling that tears of joy at the

return to life were trickling down her cheeks. And to escape

from her panic she went hurriedly to his room.

He was asleep there, and sleeping soundly. She went up to him,

and holding the light above his face, she gazed a long while at

him. Now when he was asleep, she loved him so that at the sight

of him she could not keep back tears of tenderness. But she knew

that if he waked up he would look at her with cold eyes,

convinced that he was right, and that before telling him of her

love, she would have to prove to him that he had been wrong in

his treatment of her. Without waking him, she went back, and

after a second dose of opium she fell towards morning into a

heavy, incomplete sleep, during which she never quite lost

consciousness.