Anna Karenina - Part 7

Anna got into the carriage again in an even worse frame of mind

than when she set out from home. To her previous tortures was

added now that sense of mortification and of being an outcast

which she had felt so distinctly on meeting Kitty.

"Where to? Home?" asked Pyotr.

"Yes, home," she said, not even thinking now where she was going.

"How they looked at me as something dreadful, incomprehensible,

and curious! What can he be telling the other with such warmth?"

she thought, staring at two men who walked by. "Can one ever

tell anyone what one is feeling? I meant to tell Dolly, and it's

a good thing I didn't tell her. How pleased she would have been

at my misery! She would have concealed it, but her chief feeling

would have been delight at my being punished for the happiness

she envied me for. Kitty, she would have been even more pleased.

How I can see through her! She knows I was more than usually

sweet to her husband. And she's jealous and hates me. And she

despises me. In her eyes I'm an immoral woman. If I were an

immoral woman I could have made her husband fall in love with me

...if I'd cared to. And, indeed, I did care to. There's someone

who's pleased with himself," she thought, as she saw a fat,

rubicund gentleman coming towards her. He took her for an

acquaintance, and lifted his glossy hat above his bald, glossy

head, and then perceived his mistake. "He thought he knew me.

Well, he knows me as well as anyone in the world knows me. I

don't know myself. I know my appetites, as the French say. They

want that dirty ice cream, that they do know for certain," she

thought, looking at two boys stopping an ice cream seller, who

took a barrel off his head and began wiping his perspiring face

with a towel. "We all want what is sweet and nice. If not

sweetmeats, then a dirty ice. And Kitty's the same--if not

Vronsky, then Levin. And she envies me, and hates me. And we

all hate each other. I Kitty, Kitty me. Yes, that's the truth.

_'Tiutkin, coiffeur.' Je me fais coiffer par Tiutkin...._ I'll

tell him that when he comes," she thought and smiled. But the

same instant she remembered that she had no one now to tell

anything amusing to. "And there's nothing amusing, nothing

mirthful, really. It's all hateful. They're singing for

vespers, and how carefully that merchant crosses himself! as if

he were afraid of missing something. Why these churches and this

singing and this humbug? Simply to conceal that we all hate each

other like these cab drivers who are abusing each other so

angrily. Yashvin says, 'He wants to strip me of my shirt, and I

him of his.' Yes, that's the truth!"