I told Alexei about the affair. I told him in the carriage after the horse race. It began with another accusation after seeing my countenance so harrowed by Vronsky’s fall off his horse. I denied him once more, and he resigned himself again to troubling doubt. “‘Perhaps you are mistaken,’ he said. ‘In that case I beg your pardon.’” I felt so constrained by the whole lot of it, and after a year of making not-so-inconspicuous love and spinning the web of scandal, I broke and told him the truth that he didn’t want to believe. “‘No, you are not mistaken,’ [I] said. I was and could not help being in despair. I listen to you and think about him. I love him, I am his mistress, I cannot stand you, I’m afraid of you, I hate you … Do what you like with me’” (213). He showed no emotion at all, just as I had expected. He was indeed troubled by it, though. He was troubled that it would put a black smudge on his sparkling white reputation and that he, in turn, would fall out of the favor of the government. However routine his dull, unfeeling excuse for love becomes, I could not help but sob over his reaction. He made light of what took me months of consideration and deliberation and brought me deeper into disheartenment. Vronsky saw no problem in all this or in his novel idea of us running away together. I can assure you that Vronsky has not half the personal concerns that I do. He has no spouse protecting his honor nor a child in need of his love. I cannot continue to be ruined by his angelic visage, but if he, my life, should ever leave me, vehemently I believe that I, in turn, would leave my life.