`Then what did you stay for?' she asked, suddenly lifting her eyes to him. The expression of her face was cold and ungracious. `You told Stiva you were staying on to get Iashvin away. And you have left him there.'
The same expression of cold readiness for the conflict appeared on his face too.
`In the first place, I did not ask him to give you any message;and secondly, I never tell lies. But the chief point is, I wanted to stay, and I stayed,' he said, frowning. `Anna, what is it for, why will you do this?' he said after a moment's silence, bending over toward her; and he opened his hand, hoping she would lay hers in it.
She was glad of this appeal for tenderness. But some strange force of evil would not let her give herself up to her feelings, as though the rules of warfare would not permit her to surrender.
`Of course you wanted to stay, and you stayed. You do everything you want to. But what do you tell me that for? With what object?' she said, getting more and more excited. `Does anyone contest your rights? But you want to be right, and you're welcome to be right.'
His hand closed, he turned away, and his face wore a still more obstinate expression.
`For you it's a matter of obstinacy,' she said, watching him intently and suddenly finding the right word for that expression that irritated her, `simply obstinacy. For you it's a question of whether you keep the upper hand of me, while for me...' Again she felt sorry for herself, and she almost burst into tears. `If you knew what it is for me! When I feel as I do now, that you are hostile - yes, hostile to me - if you knew what this means for me! If you knew how I feel on the brink of calamity at this instant, how afraid I am of myself!' And she turned away, hiding her sobs.
`But what are you talking about?' he said, horrified at her expression of despair and again bending over her, he took her hand and kissed it.
`What is it for? Do I seek amusements outside our home? Don't I avoid the society of women?'
`Well, yes! If that were all!' she said.
`Come, tell me what I ought to do to give you peace of mind? Iam ready to do anything to make you happy,' he said, touched by her expression of despair; `what wouldn't I do to save you from distress of any sort, as now, Anna!' he said.
`It's nothing, nothing!' she said. `I don't know myself whether it's the solitary life, my nerves... Come, don't let us talk of it. What about the race? You haven't told me!' she inquired, trying to conceal her triumph at the victory, which had been on her side after all.
He asked for supper, and began telling her about the races; but in his tone, in his eyes, which became more and more cold, she saw that he did not forgive her for her victory, that the feeling of obstinacy with which she had been struggling had asserted itself again in him. He was colder to her than before, as though he were regretting his surrender.
And she, remembering the words that had given her the victory, `how I feel on the brink of calamity, how afraid I am of myself,' saw that this weapon was a dangerous one, and that it could not be used a second time. And she felt that beside the love that bound them together there had grown up between them some evil spirit of strife, which she could not exorcise from his heart, and still less from her own.
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TOLSTOY: Anna Karenina Part 7, Chapter 13[Previous Chapter] [Table of Contents] Chapter 13 There are no conditions to which a man cannot become used, especially if he sees that all around him are living in the same way. Levin could not have believed three months before that he could have gone quietly to sleep in the state in which he was that day - that leading an aimless, irrational life, also living beyond his means, after drinking to excess (he could not call what happened at the club anything else), forming inappropriately friendly relations with a man with whom his wife had once been in love, and after a still more inappropriate call upon a woman who could only be called a lost woman, after being fascinated by that woman and causing his wife distress - he could still go quietly to sleep. But under the influence of fatigue, a sleepless night, and the wine he had drunk, his sleep was sound and untroubled.
At five o'clock the creak of a door opening waked him. He jumped up and looked round. Kitty was not in bed beside him. But there was a light moving behind the screen, and he heard her steps.
`What is it?... What is it?' he said, half-asleep. `Kitty! What is it?'
`Nothing,' she said, coming from behind the screen with a candle in her hand. `I felt unwell,' she said, smiling a particularly sweet and meaning smile.
`What? Has it begun?' he said in terror. `We ought to send...'
and hurriedly he reached after his clothes.
`No, no,' she said, smiling and holding his hand. `It's sure to be nothing. I was rather unwell, only a little. It's all over now.'
And, getting into bed, she blew out the candle, lay down and was still. Though he thought her stillness suspicious, as though she were holding her breath, and still more suspicious the expression of peculiar tenderness and excitement with which, as she came from behind the screen, she had said `Nothing,' he was so sleepy that he fell asleep at once. Only later he remembered the stillness of her breathing, and understood all that must have been passing in her sweet, precious heart while she lay beside him, not stirring, in anticipation of the greatest event in a woman's life.
At seven o'clock he was waked by the touch of her hand on his shoulder, and a gentle whisper. She seemed struggling between regret at waking him, and the desire to talk to him.
`Kostia, don't be frightened. It's all right. But I fancy... We ought to send for Lizaveta Petrovna.'
The candle was lighted again. She was sitting up in bed, holding some knitting, which she had been busy upon during the last few days.
`Please, don't be frightened, it's all right. I'm not a bit afraid,'
she said, seeing his scared face, and she pressed his hand to her bosom and then to her lips.