"Here it is again! Again I understand it all!" Anna said to
herself, as soon as the carriage had started and swaying lightly,
rumbled over the tiny cobbles of the paved road, and again one
impression followed rapidly upon another.
"Yes; what was the last thing I thought of so clearly?" she tried
to recall it. "_'Tiutkin, coiffeur?'_--no, not that. Yes, of what
Yashvin says, the struggle for existence and hatred is the one
thing that holds men together. No, it's a useless journey you're
making," she said, mentally addressing a party in a coach and
four, evidently going for an excursion into the country. "And
the dog you're taking with you will be no help to you. You can't
get away from yourselves." Turning her eyes in the direction
Pyotr had turned to look, she saw a factory hand almost dead
drunk, with hanging head, being led away by a policeman. "Come,
he's found a quicker way," she thought. "Count Vronsky and I did
not find that happiness either, though we expected so much from
it." And now for the first time Anna turned that glaring light
in which she was seeing everything on to her relations with him,
which she had hitherto avoided thinking about. "What was it he
sought in me? Not love so much as the satisfaction of vanity."
She remembered his words, the expression of his face, that
recalled an abject setter-dog, in the early days of their
connection. And everything now confirmed this. "Yes, there was
the triumph of success in him. Of course there was love too, but
the chief element was the pride of success. He boasted of me.
Now that's over. There's nothing to be proud of. Not to be
proud of, but to be ashamed of. He has taken from me all he
could, and now I am no use to him. He is weary of me and is
trying not to be dishonorable in his behavior to me. He let that
out yesterday--he wants divorce and marriage so as to burn his
ships. He loves me, but how? The zest is gone, as the English
say. That fellow wants everyone to admire him and is very much
pleased with himself," she thought, looking at a red-faced clerk,
riding on a riding school horse. "Yes, there's not the same
flavor about me for him now. If I go away from him, at the
bottom of his heart he will be glad."
This was not mere supposition, she saw it distinctly in the
piercing light, which revealed to her now the meaning of life and
human relations.