me. We
walked to meet each other up to the time of our love, and then we
have been irresistibly drifting in different directions. And
there's no altering that. He tells me I'm insanely jealous, and
I have told myself that I am insanely jealous; but it's not true.
I'm not jealous, but I'm unsatisfied. But..." she opened her
lips, and shifted her place in the carriage in the excitement,
aroused by the thought that suddenly struck her. "If I could be
anything but a mistress, passionately caring for nothing but his
caresses; but I can't and I don't care to be anything else. And
by that desire I rouse aversion in him, and he rouses fury in me,
and it cannot be different. Don't I know that he wouldn't
deceive me, that he has no schemes about Princess Sorokina, that
he's not in love with Kitty, that he won't desert me! I know all
that, but it makes it no better for me. If without loving me,
from _duty_ he'll be good and kind to me, without what I want,
that's a thousand times worse than unkindness! That's--hell!
And that's just how it is. For a long while now he hasn't loved
me. And where love ends, hate begins. I don't know these
streets at all. Hills it seems, and still houses, and houses
.... And in the houses always people and people.... How many of
them, no end, and all hating each other! Come, let me try and
think what I want, to make me happy. Well? Suppose I am
divorced, and Alexey Alexandrovitch lets me have Seryozha, and I
marry Vronsky." Thinking of Alexey Alexandrovitch, she at once
pictured him with extraordinary vividness as though he were alive
before her, with his mild, lifeless, dull eyes, the blue veins in
his white hands, his intonations and the cracking of his fingers,
and remembering the feeling which had existed between them, and
which was also called love, she shuddered with loathing. "Well,
I'm divorced, and become Vronsky's wife. Well, will Kitty cease
looking at me as she looked at me today? No. And will Seryozha
leave off asking and wondering about my two husbands? And is
there any new feeling I can awaken between Vronsky and me? Is
there possible, if not happiness, some sort of ease from misery?
No, no!" she answered now without the slightest hesitation.
"Impossible! We are drawn apart by life, and I make his
unhappiness, and he mine, and there's no altering him or me.
Every attempt has been made, the screw has come unscrewed. Oh, a
beggar woman with a baby. She thinks