After the conversation with Alexey Alexandrovitch, Vronsky went out onto the steps of the Karenins' house and stood still, with difficulty remembering where he was, and where he ought to walk or drive. He felt disgraced, humiliated1, guilty, and deprived of all possibility of washing away his humiliation2. He felt thrust out of the beaten track along which he had so proudly and lightly walked till then. All the habits and rules of his life that had seemed so firm, had turned out suddenly false and inapplicable. The betrayed husband, who had figured till that time as a pitiful creature, an incidental and somewhat ludicrous obstacle to his happiness, had suddenly been summoned by her herself, elevated to an awe-inspiring pinnacle3, and on the pinnacle that husband had shown himself, not malignant4, not false, not ludicrous, but kind and straightforward5 and large. Vronsky could not but feel this, and the parts were suddenly reversed. Vronsky felt his elevation6 and his own abasement7, his truth and his own falsehood. He felt that the husband was magnanimous even in his sorrow, while he had been base and petty in his deceit. But this sense of his own humiliation before the man he had unjustly despised made up only a small part of his misery8. He felt unutterably wretched now, for his passion for Anna, which had seemed to him of late to be growing cooler, now that he knew he had lost her forever, was stronger than ever it had been. He had seen all of her in her illness, had come to know her very soul, and it seemed to him that he had never loved her till then. And now when he had learned to know her, to love her as she should be loved, he had been humiliated before her, and had lost her forever, leaving with her nothing of himself but a shameful9 memory. Most terrible of all had been his ludicrous, shameful position when Alexey Alexandrovitch had pulled his hands away from his humiliated face. He stood on the steps of the Karenins' house like one distraught, and did not know what to do.
"A sledge10, sir?" asked the porter.
"Yes, a sledge."
On getting home, after three sleepless11 nights, Vronsky, without undressing, lay down fiat12 on the sofa, clasping his hands and laying his head on them. His head was heavy. Images, memories, and ideas of the strangest description followed one another with extraordinary rapidity and vividness. First it was the medicine he had poured out for the patient and spilt over the spoon, then the midwife's white hands, then the queer posture13 of Alexey Alexandrovitch on the floor beside the bed.
"To sleep! To forget!" he said to himself with the serene14 confidence of a healthy man that if he is tired and sleepy, he will go to sleep at once. And the same instant his head did begin to feel drowsy15 and he began to drop off into forgetfulness. The waves of the sea of unconsciousness had begun to meet over his head, when all at once--it was as though a violent shock of electricity had passed over him. He started so that he leaped up on the springs of the sofa, and leaning on his arms got in a panic onto his knees. His eyes were wide open as though he had never been asleep. The heaviness in his head and the weariness in his limbs that he had felt a minute before had suddenly gone.
"You may trample16 me in the mud," he heard Alexey Alexandrovitch's words and saw him standing17 before him, and saw Anna's face with its burning flush and glittering eyes, gazing with love and tenderness not at him but at Alexey Alexandrovitch; he saw his own, as he fancied, foolish and ludicrous figure when Alexey Alexandrovitch took his hands away from his face. He stretched out his legs again and flung himself on the sofa in the same position and shut his eyes.
"To sleep! To forget!" he repeated to himself. But with his eyes shut he saw more distinctly than ever Anna's face as it had been on the memorable18 evening before the races.
"That is not and will not be, and she wants to wipe it out of her memory. But I cannot live without it. How can we be reconciled? how can we be reconciled?" he said aloud, and unconsciously began to repeat these words. This repetition checked the rising up of fresh images and memories, which he felt were thronging19 in his brain. But repeating words did not check his imagination for long. Again in extraordinarily20 rapid succession his best moments rose before his mind, and then his recent humiliation. "Take away his hands," Anna's voice says. He takes away his hands and feels the shamestruck and idiotic21 expression of his face.
He still lay down, trying to sleep, though he felt there was not the smallest hope of it, and kept repeating stray words from some chain of thought, trying by this to check the rising flood of fresh images. He listened, and heard in a strange, mad whisper words repeated: "I did not appreciate it, did not make enough of it. I did not appreciate it, did not make enough of it."
"What's this? Am I going out of my mind?" he said to himself. "Perhaps. What makes men go out of their minds; what makes men shoot themselves?" he answered himself, and opening his eyes, he saw with wonder an embroidered22 cushion beside him, worked by Varya, his brother's wife. He touched the tassel23 of the cushion, and tried to think of Varya, of when he had seen her last. But to think of anything extraneous24 was an agonizing25 effort. "No, I must sleep!" He moved the cushion up, and pressed his head into it, but he had to make an effort to keep his eyes shut. He jumped up and sat down. "That's all over for me," he said to himself. "I must think what to do. What is left?" His mind rapidly ran through his life apart from his love of Anna.
"Ambition? Serpuhovskoy? Society? The court?" He could not come to a pause anywhere. All of it had had meaning before, but now there was no reality in it. He got up from the sofa, took off his coat, undid26 his belt, and uncovering his hairy chest to breathe more freely, walked up and down the room. "This is how people go mad," he repeated, "and how they shoot themselves...to escape humiliation," he added slowly.
He went to the door and closed it, then with fixed27 eyes and clenched28 teeth he went up to the table, took a revolver, looked round him, turned it to a loaded barrel, and sank into thought. For two minutes, his head bent29 forward with an expression of an intense effort of thought, he stood with the revolver in his hand, motionless, thinking.
"Of course," he said to himself, as though a logical, continuous, and clear chain of reasoning had brought him to an indubitable conclusion. In reality this "of course," that seemed convincing to him, was simply the result of exactly the same circle of memories and images through which he had passed ten times already during the last hour--memories of happiness lost forever. There was the same conception of the senselessness of everything to come in life, the same consciousness of humiliation. Even the sequence of these images and emotions was the same.
"Of course," he repeated, when for the third time his thought passed again round the same spellbound circle of memories and images, and pulling the revolver to the left side of his chest, and clutching it vigorously with his whole hand, as it were, squeezing it in his fist, he pulled the trigger. He did not hear the sound of the shot, but a violent blow on his chest sent him reeling. He tried to clutch at the edge of the table, dropped the revolver, staggered, and sat down on the ground, looking about him in astonishment30. He did not recognize his room, looking up from the ground, at the bent legs of the table, at the wastepaper basket, and the tiger-skin rug. The hurried, creaking steps of his servant coming through the drawing room brought him to his senses. He made an effort at thought, and was aware that he was on the floor; and seeing blood on the tiger-skin rug and on his arm, he knew he had shot himself.
"Idiotic! Missed!" he said, fumbling31 after the revolver. The revolver was close beside him--he sought further off. Still feeling for it, he stretched out to the other side, and not being strong enough to keep his balance, fell over, streaming with blood.
The elegant, whiskered manservant, who used to be continually complaining to his acquaintances of the delicacy32 of his nerves, was so panic-stricken on seeing his master lying on the floor, that he left him losing blood while he ran for assistance. An hour later Varya, his brother's wife, had arrived, and with the assistance of three doctors, whom she had sent for in all directions, and who all appeared at the same moment, she got the wounded man to bed, and remained to nurse him.
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humiliated
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| 感到羞愧的 | |
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humiliation
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| n.羞辱 | |
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pinnacle
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| n.尖塔，尖顶，山峰；(喻)顶峰 | |
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malignant
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| adj.恶性的，致命的；恶意的，恶毒的 | |
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straightforward
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| adj.正直的，坦率的；易懂的，简单的 | |
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elevation
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| n.高度；海拔；高地；上升；提高 | |
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abasement
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| n.滥用 | |
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misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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shameful
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| adj.可耻的，不道德的 | |
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sledge
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| n.雪橇，大锤；v.用雪橇搬运，坐雪橇往 | |
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sleepless
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| adj.不睡眠的，睡不著的，不休息的 | |
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fiat
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| n.命令，法令，批准；vt.批准，颁布 | |
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posture
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| n.姿势，姿态，心态，态度；v.作出某种姿势 | |
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serene
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| adj. 安详的，宁静的，平静的 | |
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drowsy
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| adj.昏昏欲睡的，令人发困的 | |
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trample
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| vt.踩，践踏；无视，伤害，侵犯 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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memorable
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| adj.值得回忆的，难忘的，特别的，显著的 | |
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thronging
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| v.成群，挤满( throng的现在分词 ) | |
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extraordinarily
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| adv.格外地；极端地 | |
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idiotic
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| adj.白痴的 | |
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embroidered
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| adj．绣花的 | |
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tassel
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| n.流苏，穗；v.抽穗， （玉米）长穗须 | |
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extraneous
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| adj.体外的；外来的；外部的 | |
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agonizing
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| adj.痛苦难忍的；使人苦恼的v.使极度痛苦；折磨(agonize的ing形式) | |
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Undid
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| v. 解开, 复原 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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clenched
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| v.紧握，抓紧，咬紧( clench的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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astonishment
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| n.惊奇，惊异 | |
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fumbling
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| n. 摸索,漏接 v. 摸索,摸弄,笨拙的处理 | |
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delicacy
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| n.精致，细微，微妙，精良；美味，佳肴 | |
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