or your confidence, but..." he said,
feeling with confusion and annoyance that what he could decide
easily and clearly by himself, he could not discuss before
Princess Tverskaya, who to him stood for the incarnation of that
brute force which would inevitably control him in the life he led
in the eyes of the world, and hinder him from giving way to his
feeling of love and forgiveness. He stopped short, looking at
Princess Tverskaya.

"Well, good-bye, my darling," said Betsy, getting up. She kissed
Anna, and went out. Alexey Alexandrovitch escorted her out.

"Alexey Alexandrovitch! I know you are a truly magnanimous man,"
said Betsy, stopping in the little drawing-room, and with special
warmth shaking hands with him once more. "I am an outsider, but
I so love her and respect you that I venture to advise. Receive
him. Alexey Vronsky is the soul of honor, and he is going away
to Tashkend."

"Thank you, princess, for your sympathy and advice. But the
question of whether my wife can or cannot see anyone she must
decide herself."

He said this from habit, lifting his brows with dignity, and
reflected immediately that whatever his words might be, there
could be no dignity in his position. And he saw this by the
suppressed, malicious, and ironical smile with which Betsy
glanced at him after this phrase.

Chapter 20

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.

"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..."

"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