Anna Karenina - Part 3 - Page 54/120

Up to this point she wrote rapidly and naturally, but the appeal

to his generosity, a quality she did not recognize in him, and

the necessity of winding up the letter with something touching,

pulled her up. "Of my fault and my remorse I cannot speak,

because..."

She stopped again, finding no connection in her ideas. "No," she

said to herself, "there's no need of anything," and tearing up

the letter, she wrote it again, leaving out the allusion to

generosity, and sealed it up.

Another letter had to be written to Vronsky. "I have told my

husband," she wrote, and she sat a long while unable to write

more. It was so coarse, so unfeminine. "And what more am I to

write to him?" she said to herself. Again a flush of shame spread

over her face; she recalled his composure, and a feeling of anger

against him impelled her to tear the sheet with the phrase she

had written into tiny bits. "No need of anything," she said to

herself, and closing her blotting-case she went upstairs, told

the governess and the servants that she was going that day to

Moscow, and at once set to work to pack up her things.