Anna Karenina by Part 5 Chapter 8 Page 2

what a drowning man might feel who has shaken off another man clinging to him. That man did drown. It was an evil action, of course, but it was the sole means of escape, and better not to brood over these fearful facts.

One consolatory reflection upon her conduct had occurred to her at the first moment of the final rupture, and when now she recalled all the past, she remembered that one reflection. “I have inevitably made that man wretched,” she thought; “but I don’t want to profit by his misery. I too am suffering, and shall suffer; I am losing what I prized above everything — I am losing my good name and my son. I have done wrong, and

so I don’t want happiness, I don’t want a divorce, and shall suffer from my shame and the separation from my child.”