第316章

Vronsky's valet came in to ask him to sign a receipt for a telegram from Peterburg. There was nothing out of the way in Vronsky's getting a telegram, but he said, as though anxious to conceal something from her, that the receipt was in his study, and he turned hurriedly to her.

`By tomorrow, without fail, I will finish it all.'

`From whom is the telegram?' she asked, not hearing him.

`From Stiva,' he answered reluctantly.

`Why didn't you show it to me? What secret can there be between Stiva and me?'

Vronsky called the valet back, and told him to bring the telegram.

`I didn't want to show it to you, because Stiva has such a passion for telegraphing: why telegraph when nothing is settled?'

`About the divorce?'

`Yes; but he says he has not been able to come at anything yet.

He has promised a decisive answer in a day or two. But here it is; read it.'

With trembling hands Anna took the telegram, and read what Vronsky had told her. At the end was added: `little hope; but I will do everything possible and impossible.'

`I said yesterday that it's absolutely nothing to me when I get a divorce, or whether I never get it,' she said, flushing crimson. `There was not the slightest necessity to hide it from me.' - `So he may hide, and does hide, his correspondence with women from me,' she thought.

`Iashvin meant to come this morning with Voitov,' said Vronsky;`I believe he's won from Pievtsov all and more than he can pay - about sixty thousand.'

`No,' she said, further irritated by his so obviously showing by this change of subject that he knew she was irritated, `why did you suppose that this news would affect me so, that you must even try to hide it? I said I don't want to consider it, and I should have liked you to care as little about it as I do.'

`I care about it because I like definiteness,' he said.

`Definiteness is not in the form, but in love,' she said, more and more irritated, not by his words, but by the tone of cool composure in which he spoke. `What do you want it for?'

`My God! Love again,' he thought, frowning.

`Oh, you know what for; for your sake and your children's in the future.'

`There won't be any children in the future.'

`That's a great pity,' he said.

`You want it for the children's sake, but you don't think of me?'

she said, quite forgetting, or not having heard that he had said, `For your sake and the children's.'

The question of the possibility of having children had long been a subject of dispute and irritation to her. His desire to have children she interpreted as a proof he did not prize her beauty.

`Oh, I said: for your sake. Above all for your sake,' he repeated, frowning as though in pain, `because I am certain that the greater part of your irritability comes from the indefiniteness of the position.'

`Yes, now he has laid aside all pretense, and all his cold hatred for me is apparent,' she thought, not hearing his words, but watching with terror the cold, cruel judge who, mocking her, looked out of his eyes.

`The cause isn't that,' she said, `and, indeed, I don't see how the cause of my irritability, as you call it, can be in my being completely in your power. What indefiniteness is there in the position? On the contrary.'

`I am very sorry that you don't care to understand,' he interrupted, obstinately anxious to give utterance to his thought. `The indefiniteness consists in your imagining that I am free.'

`On that score you can set your mind quite at rest,' she said, and turning away from him, she began drinking her coffee.

She lifted her cup, with her little finger held apart, and put it to her lips. After drinking a few sips she glanced at him, and by his expression she saw clearly that he was repelled by her hand, and her gesture, and the sound made by her lips.

`I don't care in the least what your mother thinks, and what match she wants to make for you,' she said, putting the cup down with a shaking hand.

`But we are not talking about that.'

`Yes, that's just what we are talking about. And let me tell you that a heartless woman, whether she's old or not old, your mother or anyone else, is of no consequence to me, and I would not consent to know her.'

`Anna, I beg you not to speak disrespectfully of my mother.'

`A woman whose heart does not tell her where her son's happiness and honor lie has no heart.'

`I repeat my request that you will not speak disrespectfully of my mother, whom I respect,' he said, raising his voice and looking sternly at her.

She did not answer. Looking intently at him, at his face, his hands, she recalled all the details of their reconciliation the previous day, and his passionate caresses. `There, just such caresses he has lavished, and will lavish, and longs to lavish on other women!' she thought.

`You don't love your mother. That's all talk, and talk, and talk!'

she said, looking at him with hatred in her eyes.

`Even if so, you must...'

`Must decide, and I have decided,' she said, and she would have gone away, but at that moment Iashvin walked into the room. Anna greeted him and remained.

Why, when there was a tempest in her soul, and she felt she was standing at a turning point in her life, which might have fearful consequences - why, at that minute, she had to keep up appearances before an outsider, who sooner or later must know it all - she did not know. But at once quelling the storm within her, she sat down and began talking to their guest.

`Well, how are you getting on? Has your debt been paid you?' she asked Iashvin.

`Oh, pretty fair; I fancy I shan't get it all, while I ought to go on Wednesday. And when are you off?' said Iashvin, looking at Vronsky, and unmistakably surmising a quarrel.

`The day after tomorrow, I think,' said Vronsky.

`You've been intending to go so long, though.'

`But now it's quite decided,' said Anna, looking Vronsky straight in the face with a look which told him not to dream of the possibility of reconciliation.

`Don't you feel sorry for that unlucky Pievtsov?' she went on, talking to Iashvin.