“This cruelty is something new I did not know in you.”
“You call it cruelty for a husband to give his wife liberty, giving her the honorable protection of his name, simply on the condition of observing the proprieties: is that cruelty?”
“It’s worse than cruel—it’s base, if you want to know!” Anna cried, in a rush of hatred, and getting up, she was going away.
“No!” he shrieked, in his shrill voice, which pitched a note higher than usual even, and his big hands clutching her by the arm so violently that red marks were left from the bracelet he was squeezing, he forcibly sat her down in her place.
“Base! If you care to use that word, what is base is to forsake husband and child for a lover, while you eat your husband’s bread!”
She bowed her head. She did not say what she had said the evening before to her lover, that he was her husband, and her husband was superfluous; she did not even think that. She felt all the justice of his words, and only said softly:
“You cannot describe my position as worse than I feel it to be myself; but what are you saying all this for?”
“What am I saying it for? what for?” he went on, as angrily. “That you may know that since you have not carried out my wishes in regard to observing outward decorum, I will take measures to put an end to this state of things.”
“Soon, very soon, it will end, anyway,” she said; and again, at the thought of death near at hand and now desired, tears came into her eyes.
“It will end sooner than you and your lover have planned! If you must have the satisfaction of animal passion. …”