datcha, he would have broken off with you, and provoked a duel with me; but how can he endure such a situation? He suffers, that is evident."
"He?" said she, with a sneer. "Oh! he is perfectly content."
"Why should we all torture ourselves in this way, when everything might be so easily arranged?"
"Only that does n't suit him. Oh, don't I know him, and the falsity on which he subsists. How could he live as he lives with me if he had any feelings? He has no susceptibilities, no feelings! Could a man of any susceptibilities live in the same house with his guilty wife? How can he talk with her? How can he address her familiarly?"[1]
And again she imitated the way her husband would say, "Tui, ma chère, tui, Anna."
"He is not a man, I tell you; he is a puppet. No one knows it, but I know it. Oh, if I had been in his place, I would long ago have killed, have torn in pieces, a wife like myself, instead of saying, "Tui, ma chère Anna," to her; but he is not a man; he is a ministerial machine. He does not understand that I am your wife, that he is nothing to. me, that he is in the way No, no, let us not talk about him."
"You are unjust, my dear," said Vronsky, trying to calm her; "but all the same, let us not talk any more about him. Tell me how you do. How are you? You wrote me you were ill; what did the doctor say?"
She looked at him with gay raillery. Evidently she still saw ridiculous and abominable traits in her husband, and would willingly have continued to speak about them.
But he added:—
"I suspect you were not really ill, but that it comes from your condition .... when will it be?"
The sarcastic gleam disappeared from Anna's eyes,
- ↑ Literally, "say tui, thou, to her." In Russian, as in French and German, the second person singular is used in familiar intercourse among relatives and friends.—Ed.
