duty, but cannot be what I must have, that would be a thousand times worse than to have him angry with me. That would be — hell! And so it is. He has long ceased to love me. When love ceases, hate begins. — I don't know these streets at all. What hosts of houses! in them, people, people, — no end of them! and they all hate one another!
"Well! let me think what could happen to me now that would give me happiness again? Suppose that Alekseï Aleksandrovitch should consent to the divorce, and would give me back Serozha, and that I should marry Vronsky?"
And as she thought of Alekseï Aleksandrovitch, Anna could see him with extraordinary vividness before her, as if alive, with his dull, lifeless, faded eyes, his white, blue-veined hands, and his cracking joints, and the intonations of his voice, and, as she recalled their relation to each other, which had been called love, she shuddered with aversion.
"Well! Suppose I got the divorce, and were married to Vronsky, would not Kitty still look at me as she looked at me to-day? She certainly would. Would not Serozha ask and wonder why I had two husbands? But between me and Vronsky what new feeling could I imagine? Is it possible that our relations might be, if not pleasanter, at least not so tormenting as they are now? No, and no!" she replied, without the least hesitation. "Impossible! We are growing apart; and I make him unhappy; he makes me unhappy, and I cannot change him; every means has been tried. The screw has been turned for the last time. ....
"Now, there's a beggar with a child. She thinks she inspires pity. Were we not thrown into the world to hate one another, and to torment ourselves and everybody else? Here come the schoolboys out to play! Serozha?"
It reminded her of her son.
"I used to think that I loved him, and I was touched by his gentleness. I have lived without him, I have given him up for my love, and was not sorry for the
