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Chapter 11
That which for Vronsky had been almost a whole year the one
absorbing desire of his life, replacing all his old desires; that
which for Anna had been an impossible, terrible, and even for
that reason more entrancing dream of bliss, that desire had been
fulfilled. He stood before her, pale, his lower jaw quivering,
and besought her to be calm, not knowing how or why.
"Anna! Anna!" he said with a choking voice, "Anna, for pity's
sake!..."
But the louder he spoke, the lower she dropped her once proud and
gay, now shame-stricken head, and she bowed down and sank from
the sofa where she was sitting, down on the floor, at his feet;
she would have fallen on the carpet if he had not held her.
"My God! Forgive me!" she said, sobbing, pressing his hands to
her bosom.
She felt so sinful, so guilty, that nothing was left her but to
humiliate herself and beg forgiveness; and as now there was no
one in her life but him, to him she addressed her prayer for
forgiveness. Looking at him, she had a physical sense of her
humiliation, and she could say nothing more. He felt what a
murderer must feel, when he sees the body he has robbed of life.
That body, robbed by him of life, was their love, the first stage
of their love. There was something awful and revolting in the
memory of what had been bought at this fearful price of shame.
Shame at their spiritual nakedness crushed her and infected him.
But in spite of all the murderer's horror before the body of his
victim, he must hack it to pieces, hide the body, must use what
he has gained by his murder.
And with fury, as it were with passion, the murderer falls on the
body, and drags it and hacks at it; so he covered her face and
shoulders with kisses. She held his hand, and did not stir.
"Yes, these kisses--that is what has been bought by this shame.
Yes, and one hand, which will always be mine--the hand of my
accomplice." She lifted up that hand and kissed it. He sank on
his knees and tried to see her face; but she hid it, and said
nothing. At last, as though making an effort over herself, she
got up and pushed him away. Her face was still as beautiful, but
it was only the more pitiful for that.
"All is over," she said; "In have nothing but you. Remember
that."
"I can never forget what is my whole life. For one instant of
this happiness..."
"Happiness!" she said with horror and loathing and her horror
unconsciously infected him. "For pity's sake, not a word, not a
word more."
She rose quickly and moved away from him.
"Not a word more," she repeated, and with a look of chill
despair, incomprehensible to him, she parted from him. She felt
that at that moment she could not put into words the sense of
shame, of rapture, and of horror at this stepping into a new
life, and she did not want to speak of it, to vulgarize this
feeling by inappropriate words. But later too, and the next day
and the third day, she still found no words in which she could
express the complexity of her feelings; indeed, she could not
even find thoughts in which she could clearly think out all that
was in her soul.
She said to herself: "No, just now I can't think of it, later on,
when I am calmer." But this calm for thought never came; every
time the thought rose of what she had done and what would happen
to her, and what she ought to do, a horror came over her and she
drove those thoughts away.
"Later, later," she said--"when I am calmer."
But in dreams, when she had no control over her thoughts, her
position presented itself to her in all its hideous nakedness.
Once dream haunted her almost every night. She dreamed that both
were her husbands at once, that both were lavishing caresses on
her. Alexey Alexandrovitch was weeping, kissing her hands, and
saying, "How happy we are now!" And Alexey Vronsky was there
too, and he too was her husband. And she was marveling that it
had once seemed impossible to her, was explaining to them,
laughing, that this was ever so much simpler, and that now both
of them were happy and contented. But this dream weighed on her
like a nightmare, and she awoke from it in terror.
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