Android Karenina

CHAPTER 10

SHE IS AWAKE,” Vronsky called to A

“I shall be delighted,” answered Darya Alexandrovna, rather astonished. She saw by Vronsky’s face that he wanted something from her. She was not mistaken. As soon as they had passed through the little gate back into the garden, he looked in the direction A

“You guess that I have something I want to say to you,” he said, looking at her with laughing eyes. “I am not wrong in believing you to be a friend of A

“You have so much influence with A

Darya Alexandrovna looked with timid inquiry into his energetic face, which under the lime trees was continually being lighted up in patches by the sunshine, and then passing into complete shadow again. She waited for him to say more, but he walked in silence beside her, scratching with his cane in the gravel.

“You have come to see us, you, the only woman of A

“Oh, yes,” answered Dolly, retracting her I/Sunshade/6, “but…”

“No,” he broke in, and unconsciously, oblivious of the awkward position into which he was putting his companion, he stopped abruptly, so that she had to stop short too. “No one feels more deeply and intensely than I do all the difficulty of A

“Yes, but here, so far-and it may be so always-you are happy and at peace. Not literally at peace, far from it given the severity of the threats that face you, but at peace in your hearts, which is after all the more valuable. I see in A

But Vronsky, it appeared, had no doubts on that score. “Yes, yes,” he said, “I know that she has revived after all her sufferings; she is happy. She is happy in the present. But I?… I am afraid of what is before us… I beg your pardon, you would like to walk on?”

“No, I don’t mind.”

“Well, then, let us sit here.”

Darya Alexandrovna sat down on a garden seat in a corner of the avenue. He stood up facing her.

“I see that she is happy,” he repeated, and the doubt whether she was happy sank more deeply into Darya Alexandrovna’s mind. “But can it last?”

A junker named Vespidae, employing a very limited propeller-driven hovering capacity as he patrolled the perimeter of the camp, swung low overheard and flashed an all-clear light on its undercarriage to Vronsky, who gave a desultory wave in return and continued.

“Whether A

“My child,” he said suddenly. “Can we raise her here, in such a situation? And what of the future? My daughter will be hunted for all her life, bearing the mark of the rebel, whether she would choose to or not, for she will never be given the choice. We have made it for her, by our actions. Can I will her such an existence!” he said, with a vigorous gesture of refusal, and he looked with gloomy inquiry toward Darya Alexandrovna.

She made no answer, but simply gazed at him. He went on: “One day a son may be born, my son, and he too will have the results of this choice, he too will have the consequences thrust upon him. He will be an outcast, an escapee from society, and worse-if this redoubt of ours should be found and our defenses destroyed, my child would in the course of events be killed, or worse, raised by him: as a Karenin! You can understand the bitterness and horror of this position! I have tried to speak of this to A

He paused, evidently much moved.

“Yes, indeed, I see that. But what can A

“Yes, that brings me to the object of my conversation,” he said, calming himself with an effort. “It is my great hope that I might give up this life and marry A

“I am surprised to hear you say so,” replied Dolly. She looked about her, her gesture taking in the whole of Vozdvizhenskoe. “I would have said you were so happy here, at the head of your robot regiment…”

“But they could be brought into service! With me at their head! Can you imagine…”

“Into service?”

“Of the state, of the Ministry,” Vronsky turned his gaze back toward the farmhouse, as if ensuring A

“I have built this world in the woods because I have stood for the honor of A

“But after your departure… your disappearance… how can the Higher Branches allow your return? How could Karenin?”

“If A