"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.