صفحة 809 من 2288

That evening she saw Vronsky, but she did not tell him of what

had passed between her and her husband, though, to make the

position definite, it was necessary to tell him.

When she woke up next morning the first thing that rose to her

mind was what she had said to her husband, and those words seemed

to her so awful that she could not conceive now how she could

have brought herself to utter those strange, coarse words, and

could not imagine what would come of it. But the words were

spoken, and Alexey Alexandrovitch had gone away without saying

anything. "I saw Vronsky and did not tell him. At the very

instant he was going away I would have turned him back and told

him, but I changed my mind, because it was strange that I had not

told him the first minute. Why was it I wanted to tell him and

did not tell him?" And in answer to this question a burning blush

of shame spread over her face. She knew what had kept her from

it, she knew that she had been ashamed. Her position, which had

seemed to her simplified the night before, suddenly struck her

now as not only not simple, but as absolutely hopeless.