"To sleep! To forget!" he said to himself with the serene

confidence of a healthy man that if he is tired and sleepy, he

will go to sleep at once. And the same instant his head did

begin to feel drowsy and he began to drop off into forgetfulness.

The waves of the sea of unconsciousness had begun to meet over

his head, when all at once--it was as though a violent shock of

electricity had passed over him. He started so that he leaped up

on the springs of the sofa, and leaning on his arms got in a

panic onto his knees. His eyes were wide open as though he had

never been asleep. The heaviness in his head and the weariness

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in his limbs that he had felt a minute before had suddenly gone.

"You may trample me in the mud," he heard Alexey Alexandrovitch's

words and saw him standing before him, and saw Anna's face with

its burning flush and glittering eyes, gazing with love and

tenderness not at him but at Alexey Alexandrovitch; he saw his

own, as he fancied, foolish and ludicrous figure when Alexey

Alexandrovitch took his hands away from his face. He stretched

out his legs again and flung himself on the sofa in the same

position and shut his eyes.

"To sleep! To forget!" he repeated to himself. But with his

eyes shut he saw more distinctly than ever Anna's face as it had

been on the memorable evening before the races.

"That is not and will not be, and she wants to wipe it out of her

memory. But I cannot live without it. How can we be reconciled?

how can we be reconciled?" he said aloud, and unconsciously began

to repeat these words. This repetition checked the rising up of

fresh images and memories, which he felt were thronging in his

brain. But repeating words did not check his imagination for

long. Again in extraordinarily rapid succession his best moments

rose before his mind, and then his recent humiliation. "Take

away his hands," Anna's voice says. He takes away his hands and

feels the shamestruck and idiotic expression of his face.

He still lay down, trying to sleep, though he felt there was not

the smallest hope of it, and kept repeating stray words from some

chain of thought, trying by this to check the rising flood of

fresh images. He listened, and heard in a strange, mad whisper

words repeated: "I did not appreciate it, did not make enough of

it. I did not appreciate it, did not make enough of it."




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