"What am I coming for?" he repeated, looking straight into her

eyes. "You know that I have come to be where you are," he said;

"I can't help it."

At that moment the wind, as it were, surmounting all obstacles,

sent the snow flying from the carriage roofs, and clanked some

sheet of iron it had torn off, while the hoarse whistle of the

engine roared in front, plaintively and gloomily. All the

awfulness of the storm seemed to her more splendid now. He had

said what her soul longed to hear, though she feared it with her

reason. She made no answer, and in her face he saw conflict.

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"Forgive me, if you dislike what I said," he said humbly.

He had spoken courteously, deferentially, yet so firmly, so

stubbornly, that for a long while she could make no answer.

"It's wrong, what you say, and I beg you, if you're a good man,

to forget what you've said, as I forget it," she said at last.

"Not one word, not one gesture of yours shall I, could I, ever

forget..."

"Enough, enough!" she cried trying assiduously to give a stern

expression to her face, into which he was gazing greedily. And

clutching at the cold door post, she clambered up the steps and

got rapidly into the corridor of the carriage. But in the little

corridor she paused, going over in her imagination what had

happened. Though she could not recall her own words or his, she

realized instinctively that the momentary conversation had

brought them fearfully closer; and she was panic-stricken and

blissful at it. After standing still a few seconds, she went

into the carriage and sat down in her place. The overstrained

condition which had tormented her before did not only come back,

but was intensified, and reached such a pitch that she was afraid

every minute that something would snap within her from the

excessive tension. She did not sleep all night. But in that

nervous tension, and in the visions that filled her imagination,

there was nothing disagreeable or gloomy: on the contrary there

was something blissful, glowing, and exhilarating. Towards

morning Anna sank into a doze, sitting in her place, and when she

waked it was daylight and the train was near Petersburg. At once

thoughts of home, of husband and of son, and the details of that

day and the following came upon her.

At Petersburg, as soon as the train stopped and she got out, the

first person that attracted her attention was her husband. "Oh,

mercy! why do his ears look like that?" she thought, looking at

his frigid and imposing figure, and especially the ears that

struck her at the moment as propping up the brim of his round

hat. Catching sight of her, he came to meet her, his lips

falling into their habitual sarcastic smile, and his big, tired

eyes looking straight at her. An unpleasant sensation gripped at

her heart when she met his obstinate and weary glance, as though

she had expected to see him different. She was especially struck

by the feeling of dissatisfaction with herself that she

experienced on meeting him. That feeling was an intimate,

familiar feeling, like a consciousness of hypocrisy, which she

experienced in her relations with her husband. But hitherto she

had not taken note of the feeling, now she was clearly and

painfully aware of it.




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