e your husband and make our life one."

"It is one as it is," she answered, scarcely audibly.

"Yes, but altogether; altogether."

"But how, Alexey, tell me how?" she said in melancholy mockery at
the hopelessness of her own position. "Is there any way out of
such a position? Am I not the wife of my husband?"

"There is a way out of every position. We must take our line,"
he said. "Anything's better than the position in which you're
living. Of course, I see how you torture yourself over
everything--the world and your son and your husband."

"Oh, not over my husband," she said, with a quiet smile. "I
don't know him, I don't think of him. He doesn't exist."

"You're not speaking sincerely. I know you. You worry about him
too."

"Oh, he doesn't even know," she said, and suddenly a hot flush
came over her face; her cheeks, her brow, her neck crimsoned, and
tears of shame came into her eyes. "But we won't talk of him."

Chapter 23

Vronsky had several times already, though not so resolutely as
now, tried to bring her to consider their position, and every
time he had been confronted by the same superficiality and
triviality with which she met his appeal now. It was as though
there were something in this which she could not or would not
face, as though directly she began to speak of this, she, the
real Anna, retreated somehow into herself, and another strange
and unaccountable woman came out, whom he did not love, and whom
he feared, and who was in opposition to him. But today he was
resolved to have it out.

"Whether he knows or not," said Vronsky, in his usual quiet and
resolute tone, "that's nothing to do with us. We cannot...you
cannot stay like this, especially now."

"What's to be done, according to you?" she asked with the same
frivolous irony. She who had so feared he would take her
condition too lightly was now vexed with him for deducing from it
the necessity of taking some step.

"Tell him everything, and leave him."

"Very well, let us suppose I do that," she said. "Do you know
what the result of that would be? I can tell you it all
beforehand," and a wicked light gleamed in her eyes, that had
been so soft a minute before. "'Eh, you love another man, and
have entered into criminal intrigues with him?'" (Mimicking her
husband, she threw an emphasis on the word "criminal," as Alexey
Alexandrovitch did.) "'I warned you of the results in the
religious, the civil, and the domes