Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/489

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ANNA KARENINA
161

"Yes, thank the Lord, it is all done with! You have no idea how intolerable this week has seemed to me."

"Why so? Here you have not been leading the life customary to young men," she said, frowning, and, without looking at Vronsky, she took up some crocheting that was lying on the table and pulled out the needle.

"I renounced that life long ago," he replied, wondering at the sudden change in her beautiful face, and trying to discover what it portended. "I assure you," he added, smiling, and showing his white teeth, "that it was overpoweringly unpleasant to me to look at that old life again, as it were, in a mirror."

She kept her crocheting in her hand, though she did not work, but looked at him with strange, brilliant, not quite friendly eyes.

"Liza came to see me this morning—they are not yet afraid to come to my house, in spite of the Countess Lidya Ivanovna"—and here she stood up—"and told me about your Athenian nights. What an abomination!"

"I only wanted to tell you that...."

She interrupted him:—

"That it was Thérèse whom you used to know?"

"I was going to say...."

"How odious you men are! How can you suppose that a woman forgets?" said she, growing more and more animated, and then disclosing the cause of her irritation,—"and above all a woman who can know nothing of your life? What do I know? What can I know?" she kept repeating. "What can I know except what you wish to tell me? And how can I know whether it is the truth?" ....

"Anna, you insult me! have you no longer any faith in me? Have I not told you that I have no thoughts which I would conceal from you?"

"Yes, yes," she said, trying to drive away her jealous fears; "but if you only knew how I suffer! I believe in you, I do believe in you. .... But what did you want to say to me?"

But he could not instantly remember what he wanted