And being jealous of him, Anna was indignant against him and
found grounds for indignation in everything. For everything that
was difficult in her position she blamed him. The agonizing
condition of suspense she had passed in Moscow, the tardiness and
indecision of Alexey Alexandrovitch, her solitude--she put it all
down to him. If he had loved her he would have seen all the
bitterness of her position, and would have rescued her from it.
For her being in Moscow and not in the country, he was to blame
too. He could not live buried in the country as she would have
liked to do. He must have society, and he had put her in this
awful position, the bitterness of which he would not see. And
again, it was his fault that she was forever separated from her
son.
Even the rare moments of tenderness that came from time to time
did not soothe her; in his tenderness now she saw a shade of
complacency, of self-confidence, which had not been of old,
and which exasperated her.
It was dusk. Anna was alone, and waiting for him to come back
from a bachelor dinner. She walked up and down in his study (the
room where the noise from the street was least heard), and
thought over every detail of their yesterday's quarrel. Going
back from the well-remembered, offensive words of the quarrel to
what had been the ground of it, she arrived at last at its
origin. For a long while she could hardly believe that their
dissension had arisen from a conversation so inoffensive, of so
little moment to either. But so it actually had been. It all
arose from his laughing at the girls' high schools, declaring
they were useless, while she defended them. He had spoken
slightingly of women's education in general, and had said that
Hannah, Anna's English protegée, had not the slightest need to
know anything of physics.
This irritated Anna. She saw in this a contemptuous reference to
her occupations. And she bethought her of a phrase to pay him
back for the pain he had given her. "I don't expect you to
understand me, my feelings, as anyone who loved me might, but
simple delicacy I did expect," she said.
And he had actually flushed with vexation, and had said something
unpleasant. She could not recall her answer, but at that point,
with an unmistakable desire to wound her too, he had said: "I feel no interest in your infatuation over this girl, that's
true, because I see it's unnatural."
The cruelty with which he shattered the world she had built up
for herself so laboriously to enable her to endure her hard life,
the injustice with which he had accused her of affectation, of
artificiality, aroused her.