Anna Karenina by Part 2 Chapter 22 Page 8

feeling that he had to be afraid and be on his guard.

“No, I’m quite well,” she said, getting up and pressing his outstretched hand tightly. “I did not expect...thee.”

“Mercy! what cold hands!” he said.

“You startled me,” she said. “I’m alone, and expecting Seryozha; he’s out for a walk; they’ll come in from this side.”

But, in spite of her efforts to be calm, her lips were quivering.

“Forgive me for coming, but I couldn’t pass the day without seeing you,” he went on, speaking French, as he always did to avoid using the stiff Russian plural form, so impossibly frigid between them, and the dangerously intimate singular.