Chapter 45 — Anna Karenina

The desire that consumed Vronsky for a year and haunted Anna as impossible bliss is fulfilled, and the first aftermath is not triumph but shock. He stands pale, jaw quivering, begging her to be calm; she drops from the sofa to his feet sobbing for forgiveness, humiliated and wordless. Shame hits them both like a crime that must be hidden even while he covers her with kisses and cannot let go of what they have taken from Karenin and from themselves.

She pushes him away, says all is over and she has nothing but him, and recoils when he says happiness. Words would vulgarize what she cannot think clearly yet; she keeps postponing reflection until a calm that never comes, telling herself she will understand later what she has done and how to live with it.

In dreams both Alexeys become her husbands at once, lavishing caresses while she laughs that it is simpler than she thought, then wakes in terror because the mind knows what daylight denies and what Seryozha must never see. Awake she lives between ecstasy and dread, unable to name either without breaking the life she still shares with Karenin and the son who waits at home for his mother.