"Can I help loving him?" she said to herself, looking deeply into his scared and at the same time delighted eyes. "And can he ever join his father in punishing me?
Is it possible he will not feel for me?"
Tears were already flowing down her face, and to hide them she got up abruptly and almost ran out on to the terrace.
After the thunder showers of the last few days, cold, bright weather had set in.
The air was cold in the bright sun that filtered through the freshly washed leaves.
She shivered, both from the cold and from the inward horror which had clutched her with fresh force in the open air.
"Run along, run along to Mariette," she said to Seryozha, who had followed her out, and she began walking up and down on the straw matting of the terrace.
"Can it be that they won't forgive me, won't understand how it all couldn't be helped?" she said to herself.
Standing still, and looking at the tops of the aspen trees waving in the wind, with their freshly washed, brightly shining leaves in the cold sunshine, she knew that they would not forgive her, that everyone and everything would be merciless to her now as was that sky, that green.
And again she felt that everything was split in two in her soul.
"I mustn't, mustn't think," she said to herself. "I must get ready.
To go where?
When?
Whom to take with me?
Yes, to Moscow by the evening train.
Annushka and Seryozha, and only the most necessary things.
But first I must write to them both."
She went quickly indoors into her boudoir, sat down at the table, and wrote to her husband:--"After what has happened, I cannot remain any longer in your house.
I am going away, and taking my son with me.
I don't know the law, and so I don't know with which of the parents the son should remain; but I take him with me because I cannot live without him.
Be generous, leave him to me."
Up to this point she wrote rapidly and naturally, but the appeal to his generosity, a quality she did not recognize in him, and the necessity of winding up the letter with something touching, pulled her up.
"Of my fault and my remorse I cannot speak, because..."
She stopped again, finding no connection in her ideas.
"No," she said to herself, "there's no need of anything," and tearing up the letter, she wrote it again, leaving out the allusion to generosity, and sealed it up.
Another letter had to be written to Vronsky.
"I have told my husband," she wrote, and she sat a long while unable to write more.
It was so coarse, so unfeminine.
"And what more am I to write to him?" she said to herself.
Again a flush of shame spread over her face; she recalled his composure, and a feeling of anger against him impelled her to tear the sheet with the phrase she had written into tiny bits.
"No need of anything," she said to herself, and closing her blotting-case she went upstairs, told the governess and the servants that she was going that day to Moscow, and at once set to work to pack up her things.
Chapter 16
All the rooms of the summer villa were full of porters, gardeners, and footmen going to and fro carrying out things.
Cupboards and chests were open; twice they had sent to the shop for cord; pieces of newspaper were tossing about on the floor.
Two trunks, some bags and strapped-up rugs, had been carried down into the hall.
The carriage and two hired cabs were waiting at the steps.
Anna, forgetting her inward agitation in the work of packing, was standing at a table in her boudoir, packing her traveling bag, when Annushka called her attention to the rattle of some carriage driving up.
Anna looked out of the window and saw Alexey Alexandrovitch's courier on the steps, ringing at the front door bell.
"Run and find out what it is," she said, and with a calm sense of being prepared for anything, she sat down in a low chair, folding her hands on her knees.
A footman brought in a thick packet directed in Alexey Alexandrovitch's hand.
"The courier has orders to wait for an answer," he said.
"Very well," she said, and as soon as he had left the room she tore open the letter with trembling fingers.
A roll of unfolded notes done up in a wrapper fell out of it.
She disengaged the letter and began reading it at the end.
"Preparations shall be made for your arrival here...I attach particular significance to compliance..." she read.
She ran on, then back, read it all through, and once more read the letter all through again from the beginning.
When she had finished, she felt that she was cold all over, and that a fearful calamity, such as she had not expected, had burst upon her.
In the morning she had regretted that she had spoken to her husband, and wished for nothing so much as that those words could be unspoken.
And here this letter regarded them as unspoken, and gave her what she had wanted.
But now this letter seemed to her more awful than anything she had been able to conceive.