n benefit.
Having filled a sheet of paper, he got up, rang, and sent a note
to the chief secretary of his department to look up certain
necessary facts for him. Getting up and walking about the room,
he glanced again at the portrait, frowned, and smiled
contemptuously. After reading a little more of the book on
Egyptian hieroglyphics, and renewing his interest in it, Alexey
Alexandrovitch went to bed at eleven o'clock, and recollecting as
he lay in bed the incident with his wife, he saw it now in by no
means such a gloomy light.

Chapter 15

Though Anna had obstinately and with exasperation contradicted
Vronsky when he told her their position was impossible, at the
bottom of her heart she regarded her own position as false and
dishonorable, and she longed with her whole soul to change it.
On the way home from the races she had told her husband the truth
in a moment of excitement, and in spite of the agony she had
suffered in doing so, she was glad of it. After her husband had
left her, she told herself that she was glad, that now everything
was made clear, and at least there would be no more lying and
deception. It seemed to her beyond doubt that her position was
now made clear forever. It might be bad, this new position, but
it would be clear; there would be no indefiniteness or falsehood
about it. The pain she had caused herself and her husband in
uttering those words would be rewarded now by everything being
made clear, she thought. 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 p