<h3>Chapter 20</h3>
<p>Alexey Alexandrovitch took leave of Betsy in the drawing-room, and went to his
wife. She was lying down, but hearing his steps she sat up hastily in her
former attitude, and looked in a scared way at him. He saw she had been crying.</p>
<p>“I am very grateful for your confidence in me.” He repeated gently
in Russian the phrase he had said in Betsy’s presence in French, and sat
down beside her. When he spoke to her in Russian, using the Russian
“thou” of intimacy and affection, it was insufferably irritating to
Anna. “And I am very grateful for your decision. I, too, imagine that
since he is going away, there is no sort of necessity for Count Vronsky to come
here. However, if....”</p>
<p>“But I’ve said so already, so why repeat it?” Anna suddenly
interrupted him with an irritation she could not succeed in repressing.
“No sort of necessity,” she thought, “for a man to come and
say good-bye to the woman he loves, for whom he was ready to ruin himself, and
has ruined himself, and who cannot live without him. No sort of
necessity!” she compressed her lips, and dropped her burning eyes to his
hands with their swollen veins. They were rubbing each other.</p>
<p>“Let us never speak of it,” she added more calmly.</p>
<p>“I have left this question to you to decide, and I am very glad to
see....” Alexey Alexandrovitch was beginning.</p>
<p>“That my wish coincides with your own,” she finished quickly,
exasperated at his talking so slowly while she knew beforehand all he would
say.</p>
<p>“Yes,” he assented; “and Princess Tverskaya’s
interference in the most difficult private affairs is utterly uncalled for. She
especially....”</p>
<p>“I don’t believe a word of what’s said about her,” said
Anna quickly. “I know she really cares for me.”</p>
<p>Alexey Alexandrovitch sighed and said nothing. She played nervously with the
tassel of her dressing-gown, glancing at him with that torturing sensation of
physical repulsion for which she blamed herself, though she could not control
it. Her only desire now was to be rid of his oppressive presence.</p>
<p>“I have just sent for the doctor,” said Alexey Alexandrovitch.</p>
<p>“I am very well; what do I want the doctor for?”</p>
<p>“No, the little one cries, and they say the nurse hasn’t enough
milk.”</p>
<p>“Why didn’t you let me nurse her, when I begged to? Anyway”
(Alexey Alexandrovitch knew what was meant by that “anyway”),
“she’s a baby, and they’re killing her.” She rang the
bell and ordered the baby to be brought her. “I begged to nurse her, I
wasn’t allowed to, and now I’m blamed for it.”</p>
<p>“I don’t blame....”</p>
<p>“Yes, you do blame me! My God! why didn’t I die!” And she
broke into sobs. “Forgive me, I’m nervous, I’m unjust,”
she said, controlling herself, “but do go away....”</p>
<p>“No, it can’t go on like this,” Alexey Alexandrovitch said to
himself decidedly as he left his wife’s room.</p>
<p>Never had the impossibility of his position in the world’s eyes, and his
wife’s hatred of him, and altogether the might of that mysterious brutal
force that guided his life against his spiritual inclinations, and exacted
conformity with its decrees and change in his attitude to his wife, been
presented to him with such distinctness as that day. He saw clearly that all
the world and his wife expected of him something, but what exactly, he could
not make out. He felt that this was rousing in his soul a feeling of anger
destructive of his peace of mind and of all the good of his achievement. He
believed that for Anna herself it would be better to break off all relations
with Vronsky; but if they all thought this out of the question, he was even
ready to allow these relations to be renewed, so long as the children were not
disgraced, and he was not deprived of them nor forced to change his position.
Bad as this might be, it was anyway better than a rupture, which would put her
in a hopeless and shameful position, and deprive him of everything he cared
for. But he felt helpless; he knew beforehand that everyone was against him,
and that he would not be allowed to do what seemed to him now so natural and
right, but would be forced to do what was wrong, though it seemed the proper
thing to them.</p>
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