Emma Watson Pussy
Books:
Anna Karenina
War And Peace
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done the same. Even to this day I dont feel sure
I did right in listening to her at that terrible time when she
came to me in Moscow. I ought then to have cast off my husband
and have begun my life fresh. I might have loved and have been
loved in reality. And is it any better as it is? I dont
respect him. Hes necessary to me," she thought about her
husband, "and I put up with him. Is that any better? At that
time I could still have been admired, I had beauty left me
still," Darya Alexandrovna pursued her thoughts, and she would
have liked to look at herself in the looking glass. She had a
traveling looking glass in her handbag, and she wanted to take
it out; but looking at the backs of the coachman and the swaying
counting house clerk, she felt that she would be ashamed if
either of them were to look round, and she did not take out the
glass.
But without looking in the glass, she thought that even now it
was not too late; and she thought of Sergey Ivanovitch, who was
always particularly attentive to her, of Stivas good-hearted
friend, Turovtsin, who had helped her nurse her children through
the scarlatina, and was in love with her. And there was someone
else, a quite young man, who--her husband had told her it as a
joke--thought her more beautiful than either of her sisters. And
the most passionate and impossible romances rose before Darya
Alexandrovnas imagination. "Anna did quite right, and certainly
I shall never reproach her for it. She is happy, she makes
another person happy, and shes not broken down as I am, but most
likely just as she always was, bright, clever, open to every
impression," thought Darya Alexandrovna,--and a sly smile curved
her lips, for, as she pondered on Annas love affair, Darya
Alexandrovna constructed on parallel lines an almost identical
love affair for herself, with an imaginary composite figure, the
ideal man who was in love with her. She, like Anna, confessed
the whole affair to her husband. And the amazement and
perplexity of Stepan Arkadyevitch at this avowal made her smile.
In such daydreams she reached the turning of the highroad that
led to Vozdvizhenskoe.
Chapter 17
The coachman pulled up his four horses and looked round to the
right, to a field of rye, where some peasants were sitting on a
cart. The counting house clerk was just going to jump down, but
on second thoughts he shouted peremptorily to the peasants
instead, and beckoned to them to come up. The wind, that seemed
to blow as they drove, dropped when the carriage stood still;
gadflies settled on the steaming horses that angrily shook them
off. The metallic clank of a whetstone against a scythe, that
came to them from the cart, ceased. One of the peasants got up
and came towards the carriage.
"Well, you are slow!" the counting house clerk shouted angrily to
the peasant who was stepping slowly with his bare feet over the
ruts of the rough dry road. "Come along, do!"
A curly-headed old man with a bit of bast tied round his hair,
and his bent back dark with perspiration, came towards the
carriage, quickening his steps, and took hold of the mud-guard
with his sunburnt hand.
"Vozdvizhenskoe, the manor house? the counts?" he repeated; "go
on to the end of this track. Then turn to the left. Straight
along the avenue and youll come right upon it. But whom do you
want? The count himself?"
"Well, are they at home, my good man?" Darya Alexandrovna said
vaguely, not knowing how to ask about Anna, even of this peasant.
"At home for sure," said the peasant, shifting from one bare foot
to the other, and leaving a distinct print of five toes and a
heel in the dust. "Sure to be at home," he repeated, evidently
eager to talk. "Only yesterday visitors arrived. Theres a
sight of visitors come. What do you want?" He turned round and
called to a lad, who was shouting something to him from the cart.
"Oh! They all rode by here not long since, to look at a reaping
machine. Theyll be home by now. And who will you be belonging
to?..."
"Weve come a long way," said the coachman, climbing onto the
box. "So its
Anna Karenina page 348 Anna Karenina page 350
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