Anna Karenina - Part 6 - Page 79/121

"Oh, yes," answered Darya Alexandrovna, putting down her

sunshade, "but..."

"No," he broke in, and unconsciously, oblivious of the awkward

position into which he was putting his companion, he stopped

abruptly, so that she had to stop short too. "No one feels more

deeply and intensely than I do all the difficulty of Anna's

position; and that you may well understand, if you do me the

honor of supposing I have any heart. I am to blame for that

position, and that is why I feel it."

"I understand," said Darya Alexandrovna, involuntarily admiring

the sincerity and firmness with which he said this. "But just

because you feel yourself responsible, you exaggerate it, I am

afraid," she said. "Her position in the world is difficult, I

can well understand."

"In the world it is hell!" he brought out quickly, frowning

darkly. "You can't imagine moral sufferings greater than what

she went through in Petersburg in that fortnight...and I beg you

to believe it."

"Yes, but here, so long as neither Anna...nor you miss

society..."

"Society!" he said contemptuously, "how could I miss society?"

"So far--and it may be so always--you are happy and at peace. I

see in Anna that she is happy, perfectly happy, she has had time

to tell me so much already," said Darya Alexandrovna, smiling;

and involuntarily, as she said this, at the same moment a doubt

entered her mind whether Anna really were happy.

But Vronsky, it appeared, had no doubts on that score.

"Yes, yes," he said, "I know that she has revived after all her

sufferings; she is happy. She is happy in the present. But

I?... I am afraid of what is before us...I beg your pardon, you

would like to walk on?"

"No, I don't mind."

"Well, then, let us sit here."

Darya Alexandrovna sat down on a garden seat in a corner of the

avenue. He stood up facing her.

"I see that she is happy," he repeated, and the doubt whether she

were happy sank more deeply into Darya Alexandrovna's mind. "But

can it last? Whether we have acted rightly or wrongly is another

question, but the die is cast," he said, passing from Russian to

French, "and we are bound together for life. We are united by

all the ties of love that we hold most sacred. We have a child,

we may have other children. But the law and all the conditions

of our position are such that thousands of complications arise

which she does not see and does not want to see. And that one

can well understand. But I can't help seeing them. My daughter

is by law not my daughter, but Karenin's. I cannot bear this

falsity!" he said, with a vigorous gesture of refusal, and he

looked with gloomy inquiry towards Darya Alexandrovna.