But, before Alexey Alexandrovitch had time to finish his sentence,

Stepan Arkadyevitch was behaving not at all as he had expected. He

groaned and sank into an armchair.

“No, Alexey Alexandrovitch! What are you saying?” cried Oblonsky, and

his suffering was apparent in his face.

“It is so.”

“Excuse me, I can’t, I can’t believe it!”

Alexey Alexandrovitch sat down, feeling that his words had not had the

effect he anticipated, and that it would be unavoidable for him to

explain his position, and that, whatever explanations he might make,

his relations with his brother-in-law would remain unchanged.

“Yes, I am brought to the painful necessity of seeking a divorce,” he

said.

“I will say one thing, Alexey Alexandrovitch. I know you for an

excellent, upright man; I know Anna—excuse me, I can’t change my

opinion of her—for a good, an excellent woman; and so, excuse me, I

cannot believe it. There is some misunderstanding,” said he.

“Oh, if it were merely a misunderstanding!...”

“Pardon, I understand,” interposed Stepan Arkadyevitch. “But of

course.... One thing: you must not act in haste. You must not, you must

not act in haste!”

“I am not acting in haste,” Alexey Alexandrovitch said coldly, “but one

cannot ask advice of anyone in such a matter. I have quite made up my

mind.”

“This is awful!” said Stepan Arkadyevitch. “I would do one thing,

Alexey Alexandrovitch. I beseech you, do it!” he said. “No action has

yet been taken, if I understand rightly. Before you take advice, see my

wife, talk to her. She loves Anna like a sister, she loves you, and

she’s a wonderful woman. For God’s sake, talk to her! Do me that favor,

I beseech you!”

Alexey Alexandrovitch pondered, and Stepan Arkadyevitch looked at him

sympathetically, without interrupting his silence.

“You will go to see her?”

“I don’t know. That was just why I have not been to see you. I imagine

our relations must change.”

“Why so? I don’t see that. Allow me to believe that apart from our

connection you have for me, at least in part, the same friendly feeling

I have always had for you ... and sincere esteem,” said Stepan

Arkadyevitch, pressing his hand. “Even if your worst suppositions were

correct, I don’t—and never would—take on myself to judge either side,

and I see no reason why our relations should be affected. But now, do

this, come and see my wife.”

“Well, we look at the matter differently,” said Alexey Alexandrovitch

coldly. “However, we won’t discuss it.”

“No; why shouldn’t you come today to dine, anyway? My wife’s expecting

you. Please, do come. And, above all, talk it over with her. She’s a

wonderful woman. For God’s sake, on my knees, I implore you!”

“If you so much wish it, I will come,” said Alexey Alexandrovitch,

sighing.

And, anxious to change the conversation, he inquired about what

interested them both—the new head of Stepan Arkadyevitch’s department,

a man not yet old, who had suddenly been promoted to so high a

position.

Alexey Alexandrovitch had previously felt no liking for Count

Anitchkin, and had always differed from him in his opinions. But now,

from a feeling readily comprehensible to officials—that hatred felt by

one who has suffered a defeat in the service for one who has received a

promotion, he could not endure him.

“Well, have you seen him?” said Alexey Alexandrovitch with a malignant

smile.

“Of course; he was at our sitting yesterday. He seems to know his work

capitally, and to be very energetic.”

“Yes, but what is his energy directed to?” said Alexey Alexandrovitch.

“Is he aiming at doing anything, or simply undoing what’s been done?

It’s the great misfortune of our government—this paper administration,

of which he’s a worthy representative.”

“Really, I don’t know what fault one could find with him. His policy I

don’t know, but one thing—he’s a very nice fellow,” answered Stepan

Arkadyevitch. “I’ve just been seeing him, and he’s really a capital

fellow. We lunched together, and I taught him how to make, you know

that drink, wine and oranges. It’s so cooling. And it’s a wonder he

didn’t know it. He liked it awfully. No, really he’s a capital fellow.”

Stepan Arkadyevitch glanced at his watch.

“Why, good heavens, it’s four already, and I’ve still to go to

Dolgovushin’s! So please come round to dinner. You can’t imagine how

you will grieve my wife and me.”

The way in which Alexey Alexandrovitch saw his brother-in-law out was

very different from the manner in which he had met him.

“I’ve promised, and I’ll come,” he answered wearily.

“Believe me, I appreciate it, and I hope you won’t regret it,” answered

Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling.

And, putting on his coat as he went, he patted the footman on the head,

chuckled, and went out.

“At five o’clock, and not evening dress, please,” he shouted once more,

turning at the door.

Chapter 9

It was past five, and several guests had already arrived, before the

host himself got home. He went in together with Sergey Ivanovitch

Koznishev and Pestsov, who had reached the street door at the same

moment. These were the two leading representatives of the Moscow

intellectuals, as Oblonsky had called them. Both were men respected for

their character and their intelligence. They respected each other, but

were in complete and hopeless disagreement upon almost every subject,

not because they belonged to opposite parties, but precisely because

they were of the same party (their enemies refused to see any

distinction between their views); but, in that party, each had his own

special shade of opinion. And since no difference is less easily

overcome than the difference of opinion about semi-abstract questions,

they never agreed in any opinion, and had long, indeed, been accustomed

to jeer without anger, each at the other’s incorrigible aberrations.

They were just going in at the door, talking of the weather, when

Stepan Arkadyevitch overtook them. In the drawing-room there were

already sitting Prince Alexander Dmitrievitch Shtcherbatsky, young

Shtcherbatsky, Turovtsin, Kitty, and Karenin.

Stepan Arkadyevitch saw immediately that things were not going well in

the drawing-room without him. Darya Alexandrovna, in her best gray silk

gown, obviously worried about the children, who were to have their

dinner by themselves in the nursery, and by her husband’s absence, was

not equal to the task of making the party mix without him. All were

sitting like so many priests’ wives on a visit (so the old prince

expressed it), obviously wondering why they were there, and pumping up

remarks simply to avoid being silent. Turovtsin—good, simple man—felt

unmistakably a fish out of water, and the smile with which his thick

lips greeted Stepan Arkadyevitch said, as plainly as words: “Well, old

boy, you have popped me down in a learned set! A drinking party now, or

the _Château des Fleurs_, would be more in my line!” The old prince sat

in silence, his bright little eyes watching Karenin from one side, and

Stepan Arkadyevitch saw that he had already formed a phrase to sum up

that politician of whom guests were invited to partake as though he

were a sturgeon. Kitty was looking at the door, calling up all her

energies to keep her from blushing at the entrance of Konstantin Levin.

Young Shtcherbatsky, who had not been introduced to Karenin, was trying

to look as though he were not in the least conscious of it. Karenin

himself had followed the Petersburg fashion for a dinner with ladies

and was wearing evening dress and a white tie. Stepan Arkadyevitch saw

by his face that he had come simply to keep his promise, and was

performing a disagreeable duty in being present at this gathering. He

was indeed the person chiefly responsible for the chill benumbing all

the guests before Stepan Arkadyevitch came in.

On entering the drawing-room Stepan Arkadyevitch apologized, explaining

that he had been detained by that prince, who was always the scapegoat

for all his absences and unpunctualities, and in one moment he had made

all the guests acquainted with each other, and, bringing together

Alexey Alexandrovitch and Sergey Koznishev, started them on a

discussion of the Russification of Poland, into which they immediately

plunged with Pestsov. Slapping Turovtsin on the shoulder, he whispered

something comic in his ear, and set him down by his wife and the old

prince. Then he told Kitty she was looking very pretty that evening,

and presented Shtcherbatsky to Karenin. In a moment he had so kneaded

together the social dough that the drawing-room became very lively, and

there was a merry buzz of voices. Konstantin Levin was the only person

who had not arrived. But this was so much the better, as going into the

dining-room, Stepan Arkadyevitch found to his horror that the port and

sherry had been procured from Depré, and not from Levy, and, directing

that the coachman should be sent off as speedily as possible to Levy’s,

he was going back to the drawing-room.

In the dining-room he was met by Konstantin Levin.

“I’m not late?”

“You can never help being late!” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, taking his

arm.

“Have you a lot of people? Who’s here?” asked Levin, unable to help

blushing, as he knocked the snow off his cap with his glove.

“All our own set. Kitty’s here. Come along, I’ll introduce you to

Karenin.”

Stepan Arkadyevitch, for all his liberal views, was well aware that to

meet Karenin was sure to be felt a flattering distinction, and so

treated his best friends to this honor. But at that instant Konstantin

Levin was not in a condition to feel all the gratification of making

such an acquaintance. He had not seen Kitty since that memorable

evening when he met Vronsky, not counting, that is, the moment when he

had had a glimpse of her on the highroad. He had known at the bottom of

his heart that he would see her here today. But to keep his thoughts

free, he had tried to persuade himself that he did not know it. Now

when he heard that she was here, he was suddenly conscious of such

delight, and at the same time of such dread, that his breath failed him

and he could not utter what he wanted to say.

“What is she like, what is she like? Like what she used to be, or like

what she was in the carriage? What if Darya Alexandrovna told the

truth? Why shouldn’t it be the truth?” he thought.

“Oh, please, introduce me to Karenin,” he brought out with an effort,

and with a desperately determined step he walked into the drawing-room

and beheld her.

She was not the same as she used to be, nor was she as she had been in

the carriage; she was quite different.

She was scared, shy, shame-faced, and still more charming from it. She

saw him the very instant he walked into the room. She had been

expecting him. She was delighted, and so confused at her own delight

that there was a moment, the moment when he went up to her sister and

glanced again at her, when she, and he, and Dolly, who saw it all,

thought she would break down and would begin to cry. She crimsoned,

turned white, crimsoned again, and grew faint, waiting with quivering

lips for him to come to her. He went up to her, bowed, and held out his

hand without speaking. Except for the slight quiver of her lips and the

moisture in her eyes that made them brighter, her smile was almost calm

as she said:

“How long it is since we’ve seen each other!” and with desperate

determination she pressed his hand with her cold hand.

“You’ve not seen me, but I’ve seen you,” said Levin, with a radiant

smile of happiness. “I saw you when you were driving from the railway

station to Ergushovo.”

“When?” she asked, wondering.

“You were driving to Ergushovo,” said Levin, feeling as if he would sob

with the rapture that was flooding his heart. “And how dared I

associate a thought of anything not innocent with this touching

creature? And, yes, I do believe it’s true what Darya Alexandrovna told

me,” he thought.

Stepan Arkadyevitch took him by the arm and led him away to Karenin.

“Let me introduce you.” He mentioned their names.

“Very glad to meet you again,” said Alexey Alexandrovitch coldly,

shaking hands with Levin.

“You are acquainted?” Stepan Arkadyevitch asked in surprise.

“We spent three hours together in the train,” said Levin smiling, “but

got out, just as in a masquerade, quite mystified—at least I was.”

“Nonsense! Come along, please,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, pointing in

the direction of the dining-room.

The men went into the dining-room and went up to a table, laid with six

sorts of spirits and as many kinds of cheese, some with little silver

spades and some without, caviar, herrings, preserves of various kinds,

and plates with slices of French bread.

The men stood round the strong-smelling spirits and salt delicacies,

and the discussion of the Russification of Poland between Koznishev,

Karenin, and Pestsov died down in anticipation of dinner.

Sergey Ivanovitch was unequaled in his skill in winding up the most

heated and serious argument by some unexpected pinch of Attic salt that

changed the disposition of his opponent. He did this now.

Alexey Alexandrovitch had been maintaining that the Russification of

Poland could only be accomplished as a result of larger measures which

ought to be introduced by the Russian government.

Pestsov insisted that one country can only absorb another when it is

the more densely populated.

Koznishev admitted both points, but with limitations. As they were

going out of the drawing-room to conclude the argument, Koznishev said,

smiling:

“So, then, for the Russification of our foreign populations there is

but one method—to bring up as many children as one can. My brother and

I are terribly in fault, I see. You married men, especially you, Stepan

Arkadyevitch, are the real patriots: what number have you reached?” he

said, smiling genially at their host and holding out a tiny wine-glass

to him.

Everyone laughed, and Stepan Arkadyevitch with particular good humor.

“Oh, yes, that’s the best method!” he said, munching cheese and filling

the wine-glass with a special sort of spirit. The conversation dropped

at the jest.

“This cheese is not bad. Shall I give you some?” said the master of the

house. “Why, have you been going in for gymnastics again?” he asked

Levin, pinching his muscle with his left hand. Levin smiled, bent his

arm, and under Stepan Arkadyevitch’s fingers the muscles swelled up

like a sound cheese, hard as a knob of iron, through the fine cloth of

the coat.

“What biceps! A perfect Samson!”

“I imagine great strength is needed for hunting bears,” observed Alexey

Alexandrovitch, who had the mistiest notions about the chase. He cut

off and spread with cheese a wafer of bread fine as a spider-web.

Levin smiled.

“Not at all. Quite the contrary; a child can kill a bear,” he said,

with a slight bow moving aside for the ladies, who were approaching the

table.

“You have killed a bear, I’ve been told!” said Kitty, trying

assiduously to catch with her fork a perverse mushroom that would slip

away, and setting the lace quivering over her white arm. “Are there

bears on your place?” she added, turning her charming little head to

him and smiling.

There was apparently nothing extraordinary in what she said, but what

unutterable meaning there was for him in every sound, in every turn of

her lips, her eyes, her hand as she said it! There was entreaty for

forgiveness, and trust in him, and tenderness—soft, timid

tenderness—and promise and hope and love for him, which he could not

but believe in and which choked him with happiness.

“No, we’ve been hunting in the Tver province. It was coming back from

there that I met your _beau-frère_ in the train, or your _beau-frère’s_

brother-in-law,” he said with a smile. “It was an amusing meeting.”

And he began telling with droll good-humor how, after not sleeping all

night, he had, wearing an old fur-lined, full-skirted coat, got into

Alexey Alexandrovitch’s compartment.

“The conductor, forgetting the proverb, would have chucked me out on

account of my attire; but thereupon I began expressing my feelings in

elevated language, and ... you, too,” he said, addressing Karenin and

forgetting his name, “at first would have ejected me on the ground of

the old coat, but afterwards you took my part, for which I am extremely

grateful.”

“The rights of passengers generally to choose their seats are too

ill-defined,” said Alexey Alexandrovitch, rubbing the tips of his

fingers on his handkerchief.

“I saw you were in uncertainty about me,” said Levin, smiling

good-naturedly, “but I made haste to plunge into intellectual

conversation to smooth over the defects of my attire.” Sergey

Ivanovitch, while he kept up a conversation with their hostess, had one

ear for his brother, and he glanced askance at him. “What is the matter

with him today? Why such a conquering hero?” he thought. He did not

know that Levin was feeling as though he had grown wings. Levin knew

she was listening to his words and that she was glad to listen to him.

And this was the only thing that interested him. Not in that room only,

but in the whole world, there existed for him only himself, with

enormously increased importance and dignity in his own eyes, and she.

He felt himself on a pinnacle that made him giddy, and far away down

below were all those nice excellent Karenins, Oblonskys, and all the

world.

Quite without attracting notice, without glancing at them, as though

there were no other places left, Stepan Arkadyevitch put Levin and

Kitty side by side.

“Oh, you may as well sit there,” he said to Levin.

The dinner was as choice as the china, in which Stepan Arkadyevitch was

a connoisseur. The _soupe Marie-Louise_ was a splendid success; the

tiny pies eaten with it melted in the mouth and were irreproachable.

The two footmen and Matvey, in white cravats, did their duty with the

dishes and wines unobtrusively, quietly, and swiftly. On the material

side the dinner was a success; it was no less so on the immaterial. The

conversation, at times general and at times between individuals, never

paused, and towards the end the company was so lively that the men rose

from the table, without stopping speaking, and even Alexey

Alexandrovitch thawed.

Chapter 10

Pestsov liked thrashing an argument out to the end, and was not

satisfied with Sergey Ivanovitch’s words, especially as he felt the

injustice of his view.

“I did not mean,” he said over the soup, addressing Alexey

Alexandrovitch, “mere density of population alone, but in conjunction

with fundamental ideas, and not by means of principles.”

“It seems to me,” Alexey Alexandrovitch said languidly, and with no

haste, “that that’s the same thing. In my opinion, influence over

another people is only possible to the people which has the higher

development, which....”

“But that’s just the question,” Pestsov broke in in his bass. He was

always in a hurry to speak, and seemed always to put his whole soul

into what he was saying. “In what are we to make higher development

consist? The English, the French, the Germans, which is at the highest

stage of development? Which of them will nationalize the other? We see

the Rhine provinces have been turned French, but the Germans are not at

a lower stage!” he shouted. “There is another law at work there.”

“I fancy that the greater influence is always on the side of true

civilization,” said Alexey Alexandrovitch, slightly lifting his

eyebrows.

“But what are we to lay down as the outward signs of true

civilization?” said Pestsov.

“I imagine such signs are generally very well known,” said Alexey

Alexandrovitch.

“But are they fully known?” Sergey Ivanovitch put in with a subtle

smile. “It is the accepted view now that real culture must be purely

classical; but we see most intense disputes on each side of the

question, and there is no denying that the opposite camp has strong

points in its favor.”

“You are for classics, Sergey Ivanovitch. Will you take red wine?” said

Stepan Arkadyevitch.

“I am not expressing my own opinion of either form of culture,” Sergey

Ivanovitch said, holding out his glass with a smile of condescension,

as to a child. “I only say that both sides have strong arguments to

support them,” he went on, addressing Alexey Alexandrovitch. “My

sympathies are classical from education, but in this discussion I am

personally unable to arrive at a conclusion. I see no distinct grounds

for classical studies being given a preeminence over scientific

studies.”

“The natural sciences have just as great an educational value,” put in

Pestsov. “Take astronomy, take botany, or zoology with its system of

general principles.”

“I cannot quite agree with that,” responded Alexey Alexandrovitch. “It

seems to me that one must admit that the very process of studying the

forms of language has a peculiarly favorable influence on intellectual

development. Moreover, it cannot be denied that the influence of the

classical authors is in the highest degree moral, while, unfortunately,

with the study of the natural sciences are associated the false and

noxious doctrines which are the curse of our day.”

Sergey Ivanovitch would have said something, but Pestsov interrupted

him in his rich bass. He began warmly contesting the justice of this

view. Sergey Ivanovitch waited serenely to speak, obviously with a

convincing reply ready.

“But,” said Sergey Ivanovitch, smiling subtly, and addressing Karenin,

“One must allow that to weigh all the advantages and disadvantages of

classical and scientific studies is a difficult task, and the question

which form of education was to be preferred would not have been so

quickly and conclusively decided if there had not been in favor of

classical education, as you expressed it just now, its moral—_disons le

mot_—anti-nihilist influence.”

“Undoubtedly.”

“If it had not been for the distinctive property of anti-nihilistic

influence on the side of classical studies, we should have considered

the subject more, have weighed the arguments on both sides,” said

Sergey Ivanovitch with a subtle smile, “we should have given elbow-room

to both tendencies. But now we know that these little pills of

classical learning possess the medicinal property of anti-nihilism, and

we boldly prescribe them to our patients.... But what if they had no

such medicinal property?” he wound up humorously.

At Sergey Ivanovitch’s little pills, everyone laughed; Turovtsin in

especial roared loudly and jovially, glad at last to have found

something to laugh at, all he ever looked for in listening to

conversation.

Stepan Arkadyevitch had not made a mistake in inviting Pestsov. With

Pestsov intellectual conversation never flagged for an instant.

Directly Sergey Ivanovitch had concluded the conversation with his

jest, Pestsov promptly started a new one.

“I can’t agree even,” said he, “that the government had that aim. The

government obviously is guided by abstract considerations, and remains

indifferent to the influence its measures may exercise. The education

of women, for instance, would naturally be regarded as likely to be

harmful, but the government opens schools and universities for women.”

And the conversation at once passed to the new subject of the education

of women.

Alexey Alexandrovitch expressed the idea that the education of women is

apt to be confounded with the emancipation of women, and that it is

only so that it can be considered dangerous.

“I consider, on the contrary, that the two questions are inseparably

connected together,” said Pestsov; “it is a vicious circle. Woman is

deprived of rights from lack of education, and the lack of education

results from the absence of rights. We must not forget that the

subjection of women is so complete, and dates from such ages back that

we are often unwilling to recognize the gulf that separates them from

us,” said he.

“You said rights,” said Sergey Ivanovitch, waiting till Pestsov had

finished, “meaning the right of sitting on juries, of voting, of

presiding at official meetings, the right of entering the civil

service, of sitting in parliament....”

“Undoubtedly.”

“But if women, as a rare exception, can occupy such positions, it seems

to me you are wrong in using the expression ‘rights.’ It would be more

correct to say duties. Every man will agree that in doing the duty of a

juryman, a witness, a telegraph clerk, we feel we are performing

duties. And therefore it would be correct to say that women are seeking

duties, and quite legitimately. And one can but sympathize with this

desire to assist in the general labor of man.”

“Quite so,” Alexey Alexandrovitch assented. “The question, I imagine,

is simply whether they are fitted for such duties.”

“They will most likely be perfectly fitted,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch,

“when education has become general among them. We see this....”

“How about the proverb?” said the prince, who had a long while been

intent on the conversation, his little comical eyes twinkling. “I can

say it before my daughter: her hair is long, because her wit is....”

“Just what they thought of the negroes before their emancipation!” said

Pestsov angrily.

“What seems strange to me is that women should seek fresh duties,” said

Sergey Ivanovitch, “while we see, unhappily, that men usually try to

avoid them.”

“Duties are bound up with rights—power, money, honor; those are what

women are seeking,” said Pestsov.

“Just as though I should seek the right to be a wet-nurse and feel

injured because women are paid for the work, while no one will take

me,” said the old prince.

Turovtsin exploded in a loud roar of laughter and Sergey Ivanovitch

regretted that he had not made this comparison. Even Alexey

Alexandrovitch smiled.

“Yes, but a man can’t nurse a baby,” said Pestsov, “while a woman....”

“No, there was an Englishman who did suckle his baby on board ship,”

said the old prince, feeling this freedom in conversation permissible

before his own daughters.

“There are as many such Englishmen as there would be women officials,”

said Sergey Ivanovitch.

“Yes, but what is a girl to do who has no family?” put in Stepan

Arkadyevitch, thinking of Masha Tchibisova, whom he had had in his mind

all along, in sympathizing with Pestsov and supporting him.

“If the story of such a girl were thoroughly sifted, you would find she

had abandoned a family—her own or a sister’s, where she might have

found a woman’s duties,” Darya Alexandrovna broke in unexpectedly in a

tone of exasperation, probably suspecting what sort of girl Stepan

Arkadyevitch was thinking of.

“But we take our stand on principle as the ideal,” replied Pestsov in

his mellow bass. “Woman desires to have rights, to be independent,

educated. She is oppressed, humiliated by the consciousness of her

disabilities.”

“And I’m oppressed and humiliated that they won’t engage me at the

Foundling,” the old prince said again, to the huge delight of

Turovtsin, who in his mirth dropped his asparagus with the thick end in

the sauce.

Chapter 11

Everyone took part in the conversation except Kitty and Levin. At

first, when they were talking of the influence that one people has on

another, there rose to Levin’s mind what he had to say on the subject.

But these ideas, once of such importance in his eyes, seemed to come

into his brain as in a dream, and had now not the slightest interest

for him. It even struck him as strange that they should be so eager to

talk of what was of no use to anyone. Kitty, too, should, one would

have supposed, have been interested in what they were saying of the

rights and education of women. How often she had mused on the subject,

thinking of her friend abroad, Varenka, of her painful state of

dependence, how often she had wondered about herself what would become

of her if she did not marry, and how often she had argued with her

sister about it! But it did not interest her at all. She and Levin had

a conversation of their own, yet not a conversation, but some sort of

mysterious communication, which brought them every moment nearer, and

stirred in both a sense of glad terror before the unknown into which

they were entering.

At first Levin, in answer to Kitty’s question how he could have seen

her last year in the carriage, told her how he had been coming home

from the mowing along the highroad and had met her.

“It was very, very early in the morning. You were probably only just

awake. Your mother was asleep in the corner. It was an exquisite

morning. I was walking along wondering who it could be in a

four-in-hand? It was a splendid set of four horses with bells, and in a

second you flashed by, and I saw you at the window—you were sitting

like this, holding the strings of your cap in both hands, and thinking

awfully deeply about something,” he said, smiling. “How I should like

to know what you were thinking about then! Something important?”

“Wasn’t I dreadfully untidy?” she wondered, but seeing the smile of

ecstasy these reminiscences called up, she felt that the impression she

had made had been very good. She blushed and laughed with delight;

“Really I don’t remember.”

“How nicely Turovtsin laughs!” said Levin, admiring his moist eyes and

shaking chest.

“Have you known him long?” asked Kitty.

“Oh, everyone knows him!”

“And I see you think he’s a horrid man?”

“Not horrid, but nothing in him.”

“Oh, you’re wrong! And you must give up thinking so directly!” said

Kitty. “I used to have a very poor opinion of him too, but he, he’s an

awfully nice and wonderfully good-hearted man. He has a heart of gold.”

“How could you find out what sort of heart he has?”

“We are great friends. I know him very well. Last winter, soon after

... you came to see us,” she said, with a guilty and at the same time

confiding smile, “all Dolly’s children had scarlet fever, and he

happened to come and see her. And only fancy,” she said in a whisper,

“he felt so sorry for her that he stayed and began to help her look

after the children. Yes, and for three weeks he stopped with them, and

looked after the children like a nurse.”

“I am telling Konstantin Dmitrievitch about Turovtsin in the scarlet

fever,” she said, bending over to her sister.

“Yes, it was wonderful, noble!” said Dolly, glancing towards Turovtsin,

who had become aware they were talking of him, and smiling gently to

him. Levin glanced once more at Turovtsin, and wondered how it was he

had not realized all this man’s goodness before.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, and I’ll never think ill of people again!” he

said gaily, genuinely expressing what he felt at the moment.

Chapter 12

Connected with the conversation that had sprung up on the rights of

women there were certain questions as to the inequality of rights in

marriage improper to discuss before the ladies. Pestsov had several

times during dinner touched upon these questions, but Sergey Ivanovitch

and Stepan Arkadyevitch carefully drew him off them.

When they rose from the table and the ladies had gone out, Pestsov did

not follow them, but addressing Alexey Alexandrovitch, began to expound

the chief ground of inequality. The inequality in marriage, in his

opinion, lay in the fact that the infidelity of the wife and the

infidelity of the husband are punished unequally, both by the law and

by public opinion. Stepan Arkadyevitch went hurriedly up to Alexey

Alexandrovitch and offered him a cigar.

“No, I don’t smoke,” Alexey Alexandrovitch answered calmly, and as

though purposely wishing to show that he was not afraid of the subject,

he turned to Pestsov with a chilly smile.

“I imagine that such a view has a foundation in the very nature of

things,” he said, and would have gone on to the drawing-room. But at

this point Turovtsin broke suddenly and unexpectedly into the

conversation, addressing Alexey Alexandrovitch.

“You heard, perhaps, about Pryatchnikov?” said Turovtsin, warmed up by

the champagne he had drunk, and long waiting for an opportunity to

break the silence that had weighed on him. “Vasya Pryatchnikov,” he

said, with a good-natured smile on his damp, red lips, addressing

himself principally to the most important guest, Alexey Alexandrovitch,

“they told me today he fought a duel with Kvitsky at Tver, and has

killed him.”

Just as it always seems that one bruises oneself on a sore place, so

Stepan Arkadyevitch felt now that the conversation would by ill luck

fall every moment on Alexey Alexandrovitch’s sore spot. He would again

have got his brother-in-law away, but Alexey Alexandrovitch himself

inquired, with curiosity:

“What did Pryatchnikov fight about?”

“His wife. Acted like a man, he did! Called him out and shot him!”

“Ah!” said Alexey Alexandrovitch indifferently, and lifting his

eyebrows, he went into the drawing-room.

“How glad I am you have come,” Dolly said with a frightened smile,

meeting him in the outer drawing-room. “I must talk to you. Let’s sit

here.”

Alexey Alexandrovitch, with the same expression of indifference, given

him by his lifted eyebrows, sat down beside Darya Alexandrovna, and

smiled affectedly.

“It’s fortunate,” said he, “especially as I was meaning to ask you to

excuse me, and to be taking leave. I have to start tomorrow.”

Darya Alexandrovna was firmly convinced of Anna’s innocence, and she

felt herself growing pale and her lips quivering with anger at this

frigid, unfeeling man, who was so calmly intending to ruin her innocent

friend.

“Alexey Alexandrovitch,” she said, with desperate resolution looking

him in the face, “I asked you about Anna, you made me no answer. How is

she?”

“She is, I believe, quite well, Darya Alexandrovna,” replied Alexey

Alexandrovitch, not looking at her.

“Alexey Alexandrovitch, forgive me, I have no right ... but I love Anna

as a sister, and esteem her; I beg, I beseech you to tell me what is

wrong between you? what fault do you find with her?”

Alexey Alexandrovitch frowned, and almost closing his eyes, dropped his

head.

“I presume that your husband has told you the grounds on which I

consider it necessary to change my attitude to Anna Arkadyevna?” he

said, not looking her in the face, but eyeing with displeasure

Shtcherbatsky, who was walking across the drawing-room.

“I don’t believe it, I don’t believe it, I can’t believe it!” Dolly

said, clasping her bony hands before her with a vigorous gesture. She

rose quickly, and laid her hand on Alexey Alexandrovitch’s sleeve. “We

shall be disturbed here. Come this way, please.”

Dolly’s agitation had an effect on Alexey Alexandrovitch. He got up and

submissively followed her to the schoolroom. They sat down to a table

covered with an oilcloth cut in slits by penknives.

“I don’t, I don’t believe it!” Dolly said, trying to catch his glance

that avoided her.

“One cannot disbelieve facts, Darya Alexandrovna,” said he, with an

emphasis on the word “facts.”

“But what has she done?” said Darya Alexandrovna. “What precisely has

she done?”

“She has forsaken her duty, and deceived her husband. That’s what she

has done,” said he.

“No, no, it can’t be! No, for God’s sake, you are mistaken,” said

Dolly, putting her hands to her temples and closing her eyes.

Alexey Alexandrovitch smiled coldly, with his lips alone, meaning to

signify to her and to himself the firmness of his conviction; but this

warm defense, though it could not shake him, reopened his wound. He

began to speak with greater heat.

“It is extremely difficult to be mistaken when a wife herself informs

her husband of the fact—informs him that eight years of her life, and a

son, all that’s a mistake, and that she wants to begin life again,” he

said angrily, with a snort.

“Anna and sin—I cannot connect them, I cannot believe it!”

“Darya Alexandrovna,” he said, now looking straight into Dolly’s

kindly, troubled face, and feeling that his tongue was being loosened

in spite of himself, “I would give a great deal for doubt to be still

possible. When I doubted, I was miserable, but it was better than now.

When I doubted, I had hope; but now there is no hope, and still I doubt

of everything. I am in such doubt of everything that I even hate my

son, and sometimes do not believe he is my son. I am very unhappy.”

He had no need to say that. Darya Alexandrovna had seen that as soon as

he glanced into her face; and she felt sorry for him, and her faith in

the innocence of her friend began to totter.

“Oh, this is awful, awful! But can it be true that you are resolved on

a divorce?”

“I am resolved on extreme measures. There is nothing else for me to

do.”

“Nothing else to do, nothing else to do....” she replied, with tears in

her eyes. “Oh no, don’t say nothing else to do!” she said.

“What is horrible in a trouble of this kind is that one cannot, as in

any other—in loss, in death—bear one’s trouble in peace, but that one

must act,” said he, as though guessing her thought. “One must get out

of the humiliating position in which one is placed; one can’t live _à

trois_.”

“I understand, I quite understand that,” said Dolly, and her head sank.

She was silent for a little, thinking of herself, of her own grief in

her family, and all at once, with an impulsive movement, she raised her

head and clasped her hands with an imploring gesture. “But wait a

little! You are a Christian. Think of her! What will become of her, if

you cast her off?”

“I have thought, Darya Alexandrovna, I have thought a great deal,” said

Alexey Alexandrovitch. His face turned red in patches, and his dim eyes

looked straight before him. Darya Alexandrovna at that moment pitied

him with all her heart. “That was what I did indeed when she herself

made known to me my humiliation; I left everything as of old. I gave

her a chance to reform, I tried to save her. And with what result? She

would not regard the slightest request—that she should observe

decorum,” he said, getting heated. “One may save anyone who does not

want to be ruined; but if the whole nature is so corrupt, so depraved,

that ruin itself seems to be her salvation, what’s to be done?”

“Anything, only not divorce!” answered Darya Alexandrovna

“But what is anything?”

“No, it is awful! She will be no one’s wife, she will be lost!”

“What can I do?” said Alexey Alexandrovitch, raising his shoulders and

his eyebrows. The recollection of his wife’s last act had so incensed

him that he had become frigid, as at the beginning of the conversation.

“I am very grateful for your sympathy, but I must be going,” he said,

getting up.

“No, wait a minute. You must not ruin her. Wait a little; I will tell

you about myself. I was married, and my husband deceived me; in anger

and jealousy, I would have thrown up everything, I would myself.... But

I came to myself again; and who did it? Anna saved me. And here I am

living on. The children are growing up, my husband has come back to his

family, and feels his fault, is growing purer, better, and I live

on.... I have forgiven it, and you ought to forgive!”

Alexey Alexandrovitch heard her, but her words had no effect on him

now. All the hatred of that day when he had resolved on a divorce had

sprung up again in his soul. He shook himself, and said in a shrill,

loud voice:

“Forgive I cannot, and do not wish to, and I regard it as wrong. I have

done everything for this woman, and she has trodden it all in the mud

to which she is akin. I am not a spiteful man, I have never hated

anyone, but I hate her with my whole soul, and I cannot even forgive

her, because I hate her too much for all the wrong she has done me!” he

said, with tones of hatred in his voice.

“Love those that hate you....” Darya Alexandrovna whispered timorously.

Alexey Alexandrovitch smiled contemptuously. That he knew long ago, but

it could not be applied to his case.

“Love those that hate you, but to love those one hates is impossible.

Forgive me for having troubled you. Everyone has enough to bear in his

own grief!” And regaining his self-possession, Alexey Alexandrovitch

quietly took leave and went away.

Chapter 13

When they rose from table, Levin would have liked to follow Kitty into

the drawing-room; but he was afraid she might dislike this, as too

obviously paying her attention. He remained in the little ring of men,

taking part in the general conversation, and without looking at Kitty,

he was aware of her movements, her looks, and the place where she was

in the drawing-room.

He did at once, and without the smallest effort, keep the promise he

had made her—always to think well of all men, and to like everyone

always. The conversation fell on the village commune, in which Pestsov

saw a sort of special principle, called by him the “choral” principle.

Levin did not agree with Pestsov, nor with his brother, who had a

special attitude of his own, both admitting and not admitting the

significance of the Russian commune. But he talked to them, simply

trying to reconcile and soften their differences. He was not in the

least interested in what he said himself, and even less so in what they

said; all he wanted was that they and everyone should be happy and

contented. He knew now the one thing of importance; and that one thing

was at first there, in the drawing-room, and then began moving across

and came to a standstill at the door. Without turning round he felt the

eyes fixed on him, and the smile, and he could not help turning round.

She was standing in the doorway with Shtcherbatsky, looking at him.

“I thought you were going towards the piano,” said he, going up to her.

“That’s something I miss in the country—music.”

“No; we only came to fetch you and thank you,” she said, rewarding him

with a smile that was like a gift, “for coming. What do they want to

argue for? No one ever convinces anyone, you know.”

“Yes; that’s true,” said Levin; “it generally happens that one argues

warmly simply because one can’t make out what one’s opponent wants to

prove.”

Levin had often noticed in discussions between the most intelligent

people that after enormous efforts, and an enormous expenditure of

logical subtleties and words, the disputants finally arrived at being

aware that what they had so long been struggling to prove to one

another had long ago, from the beginning of the argument, been known to

both, but that they liked different things, and would not define what

they liked for fear of its being attacked. He had often had the

experience of suddenly in a discussion grasping what it was his

opponent liked and at once liking it too, and immediately he found

himself agreeing, and then all arguments fell away as useless.

Sometimes, too, he had experienced the opposite, expressing at last

what he liked himself, which he was devising arguments to defend, and,

chancing to express it well and genuinely, he had found his opponent at

once agreeing and ceasing to dispute his position. He tried to say

this.

She knitted her brow, trying to understand. But directly he began to

illustrate his meaning, she understood at once.

“I know: one must find out what he is arguing for, what is precious to

him, then one can....”

She had completely guessed and expressed his badly expressed idea.

Levin smiled joyfully; he was struck by this transition from the

confused, verbose discussion with Pestsov and his brother to this

laconic, clear, almost wordless communication of the most complex

ideas.

Shtcherbatsky moved away from them, and Kitty, going up to a

card-table, sat down, and, taking up the chalk, began drawing diverging

circles over the new green cloth.

They began again on the subject that had been started at dinner—the

liberty and occupations of women. Levin was of the opinion of Darya

Alexandrovna that a girl who did not marry should find a woman’s duties

in a family. He supported this view by the fact that no family can get

on without women to help; that in every family, poor or rich, there are

and must be nurses, either relations or hired.

“No,” said Kitty, blushing, but looking at him all the more boldly with

her truthful eyes; “a girl may be so circumstanced that she cannot live

in the family without humiliation, while she herself....”

At the hint he understood her.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “Yes, yes, yes—you’re right; you’re right!”

And he saw all that Pestsov had been maintaining at dinner of the

liberty of woman, simply from getting a glimpse of the terror of an old

maid’s existence and its humiliation in Kitty’s heart; and loving her,

he felt that terror and humiliation, and at once gave up his arguments.

A silence followed. She was still drawing with the chalk on the table.

Her eyes were shining with a soft light. Under the influence of her

mood he felt in all his being a continually growing tension of

happiness.

“Ah! I’ve scribbled all over the table!” she said, and, laying down the

chalk, she made a movement as though to get up.

“What! shall I be left alone—without her?” he thought with horror, and

he took the chalk. “Wait a minute,” he said, sitting down to the table.

“I’ve long wanted to ask you one thing.”

He looked straight into her caressing, though frightened eyes.

“Please, ask it.”

“Here,” he said; and he wrote the initial letters, _w, y, t, m, i, c,

n, b, d, t, m, n, o, t_. These letters meant, “When you told me it

could never be, did that mean never, or then?” There seemed no

likelihood that she could make out this complicated sentence; but he

looked at her as though his life depended on her understanding the

words. She glanced at him seriously, then leaned her puckered brow on

her hands and began to read. Once or twice she stole a look at him, as

though asking him, “Is it what I think?”

“I understand,” she said, flushing a little.

“What is this word?” he said, pointing to the _n_ that stood for

_never_.

“It means _never_,” she said; “but that’s not true!”

He quickly rubbed out what he had written, gave her the chalk, and

stood up. She wrote, _t, i, c, n, a, d_.

Dolly was completely comforted in the depression caused by her

conversation with Alexey Alexandrovitch when she caught sight of the

two figures: Kitty with the chalk in her hand, with a shy and happy

smile looking upwards at Levin, and his handsome figure bending over

the table with glowing eyes fastened one minute on the table and the

next on her. He was suddenly radiant: he had understood. It meant,

“Then I could not answer differently.”

He glanced at her questioningly, timidly.

“Only then?”

“Yes,” her smile answered.

“And n... and now?” he asked.

“Well, read this. I’ll tell you what I should like—should like so

much!” she wrote the initial letters, _i, y, c, f, a, f, w, h._ This

meant, “If you could forget and forgive what happened.”

He snatched the chalk with nervous, trembling fingers, and breaking it,

wrote the initial letters of the following phrase, “I have nothing to

forget and to forgive; I have never ceased to love you.”

She glanced at him with a smile that did not waver.

“I understand,” she said in a whisper.

He sat down and wrote a long phrase. She understood it all, and without

asking him, “Is it this?” took the chalk and at once answered.

For a long while he could not understand what she had written, and

often looked into her eyes. He was stupefied with happiness. He could

not supply the word she had meant; but in her charming eyes, beaming

with happiness, he saw all he needed to know. And he wrote three

letters. But he had hardly finished writing when she read them over her

arm, and herself finished and wrote the answer, “Yes.”

“You’re playing _secrétaire_?” said the old prince. “But we must really

be getting along if you want to be in time at the theater.”

Levin got up and escorted Kitty to the door.

In their conversation everything had been said; it had been said that

she loved him, and that she would tell her father and mother that he

would come tomorrow morning.

Chapter 14

When Kitty had gone and Levin was left alone, he felt such uneasiness

without her, and such an impatient longing to get as quickly, as

quickly as possible, to tomorrow morning, when he would see her again

and be plighted to her forever, that he felt afraid, as though of

death, of those fourteen hours that he had to get through without her.

It was essential for him to be with someone to talk to, so as not to be

left alone, to kill time. Stepan Arkadyevitch would have been the

companion most congenial to him, but he was going out, he said, to a

_soirée_, in reality to the ballet. Levin only had time to tell him he

was happy, and that he loved him, and would never, never forget what he

had done for him. The eyes and the smile of Stepan Arkadyevitch showed

Levin that he comprehended that feeling fittingly.

“Oh, so it’s not time to die yet?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, pressing

Levin’s hand with emotion.

“N-n-no!” said Levin.

Darya Alexandrovna too, as she said good-bye to him, gave him a sort of

congratulation, saying, “How glad I am you have met Kitty again! One

must value old friends.” Levin did not like these words of Darya

Alexandrovna’s. She could not understand how lofty and beyond her it

all was, and she ought not to have dared to allude to it. Levin said

good-bye to them, but, not to be left alone, he attached himself to his

brother.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going to a meeting.”

“Well, I’ll come with you. May I?”

“What for? Yes, come along,” said Sergey Ivanovitch, smiling. “What is

the matter with you today?”

“With me? Happiness is the matter with me!” said Levin, letting down

the window of the carriage they were driving in. “You don’t mind?—it’s

so stifling. It’s happiness is the matter with me! Why is it you have

never married?”

Sergey Ivanovitch smiled.

“I am very glad, she seems a nice gi....” Sergey Ivanovitch was

beginning.

“Don’t say it! don’t say it!” shouted Levin, clutching at the collar of

his fur coat with both hands, and muffling him up in it. “She’s a nice

girl” were such simple, humble words, so out of harmony with his

feeling.

Sergey Ivanovitch laughed outright a merry laugh, which was rare with

him. “Well, anyway, I may say that I’m very glad of it.”

“That you may do tomorrow, tomorrow and nothing more! Nothing, nothing,

silence,” said Levin, and muffling him once more in his fur coat, he

added: “I do like you so! Well, is it possible for me to be present at

the meeting?”

“Of course it is.”

“What is your discussion about today?” asked Levin, never ceasing

smiling.

They arrived at the meeting. Levin heard the secretary hesitatingly

read the minutes which he obviously did not himself understand; but

Levin saw from this secretary’s face what a good, nice, kind-hearted

person he was. This was evident from his confusion and embarrassment in

reading the minutes. Then the discussion began. They were disputing

about the misappropriation of certain sums and the laying of certain

pipes, and Sergey Ivanovitch was very cutting to two members, and said

something at great length with an air of triumph; and another member,

scribbling something on a bit of paper, began timidly at first, but

afterwards answered him very viciously and delightfully. And then

Sviazhsky (he was there too) said something too, very handsomely and

nobly. Levin listened to them, and saw clearly that these missing sums

and these pipes were not anything real, and that they were not at all

angry, but were all the nicest, kindest people, and everything was as

happy and charming as possible among them. They did no harm to anyone,

and were all enjoying it. What struck Levin was that he could see

through them all today, and from little, almost imperceptible signs

knew the soul of each, and saw distinctly that they were all good at

heart. And Levin himself in particular they were all extremely fond of

that day. That was evident from the way they spoke to him, from the

friendly, affectionate way even those he did not know looked at him.

“Well, did you like it?” Sergey Ivanovitch asked him.

“Very much. I never supposed it was so interesting! Capital! Splendid!”

Sviazhsky went up to Levin and invited him to come round to tea with

him. Levin was utterly at a loss to comprehend or recall what it was he

had disliked in Sviazhsky, what he had failed to find in him. He was a

clever and wonderfully good-hearted man.

“Most delighted,” he said, and asked after his wife and sister-in-law.

And from a queer association of ideas, because in his imagination the

idea of Sviazhsky’s sister-in-law was connected with marriage, it

occurred to him that there was no one to whom he could more suitably

speak of his happiness, and he was very glad to go and see them.

Sviazhsky questioned him about his improvements on his estate,

presupposing, as he always did, that there was no possibility of doing

anything not done already in Europe, and now this did not in the least

annoy Levin. On the contrary, he felt that Sviazhsky was right, that

the whole business was of little value, and he saw the wonderful

softness and consideration with which Sviazhsky avoided fully

expressing his correct view. The ladies of the Sviazhsky household were

particularly delightful. It seemed to Levin that they knew all about it

already and sympathized with him, saying nothing merely from delicacy.

He stayed with them one hour, two, three, talking of all sorts of

subjects but the one thing that filled his heart, and did not observe

that he was boring them dreadfully, and that it was long past their

bedtime.

Sviazhsky went with him into the hall, yawning and wondering at the

strange humor his friend was in. It was past one o’clock. Levin went

back to his hotel, and was dismayed at the thought that all alone now

with his impatience he had ten hours still left to get through. The

servant, whose turn it was to be up all night, lighted his candles, and

would have gone away, but Levin stopped him. This servant, Yegor, whom

Levin had noticed before, struck him as a very intelligent, excellent,

and, above all, good-hearted man.

“Well, Yegor, it’s hard work not sleeping, isn’t it?”

“One’s got to put up with it! It’s part of our work, you see. In a

gentleman’s house it’s easier; but then here one makes more.”

It appeared that Yegor had a family, three boys and a daughter, a

sempstress, whom he wanted to marry to a cashier in a saddler’s shop.

Levin, on hearing this, informed Yegor that, in his opinion, in

marriage the great thing was love, and that with love one would always

be happy, for happiness rests only on oneself.

Yegor listened attentively, and obviously quite took in Levin’s idea,

but by way of assent to it he enunciated, greatly to Levin’s surprise,

the observation that when he had lived with good masters he had always

been satisfied with his masters, and now was perfectly satisfied with

his employer, though he was a Frenchman.

“Wonderfully good-hearted fellow!” thought Levin.

“Well, but you yourself, Yegor, when you got married, did you love your

wife?”

“Ay! and why not?” responded Yegor.

And Levin saw that Yegor too was in an excited state and intending to

express all his most heartfelt emotions.

“My life, too, has been a wonderful one. From a child up....” he was

beginning with flashing eyes, apparently catching Levin’s enthusiasm,

just as people catch yawning.

But at that moment a ring was heard. Yegor departed, and Levin was left

alone. He had eaten scarcely anything at dinner, had refused tea and

supper at Sviazhsky’s, but he was incapable of thinking of supper. He

had not slept the previous night, but was incapable of thinking of

sleep either. His room was cold, but he was oppressed by heat. He

opened both the movable panes in his window and sat down to the table

opposite the open panes. Over the snow-covered roofs could be seen a

decorated cross with chains, and above it the rising triangle of

Charles’s Wain with the yellowish light of Capella. He gazed at the

cross, then at the stars, drank in the fresh freezing air that flowed

evenly into the room, and followed as though in a dream the images and

memories that rose in his imagination. At four o’clock he heard steps

in the passage and peeped out at the door. It was the gambler Myaskin,

whom he knew, coming from the club. He walked gloomily, frowning and

coughing. “Poor, unlucky fellow!” thought Levin, and tears came into

his eyes from love and pity for this man. He would have talked with

him, and tried to comfort him, but remembering that he had nothing but

his shirt on, he changed his mind and sat down again at the open pane

to bathe in the cold air and gaze at the exquisite lines of the cross,

silent, but full of meaning for him, and the mounting lurid yellow

star. At seven o’clock there was a noise of people polishing the

floors, and bells ringing in some servants’ department, and Levin felt

that he was beginning to get frozen. He closed the pane, washed,

dressed, and went out into the street.

Chapter 15

The streets were still empty. Levin went to the house of the

Shtcherbatskys. The visitors’ doors were closed and everything was

asleep. He walked back, went into his room again, and asked for coffee.

The day servant, not Yegor this time, brought it to him. Levin would

have entered into conversation with him, but a bell rang for the

servant, and he went out. Levin tried to drink coffee and put some roll

in his mouth, but his mouth was quite at a loss what to do with the

roll. Levin, rejecting the roll, put on his coat and went out again for

a walk. It was nine o’clock when he reached the Shtcherbatskys’ steps

the second time. In the house they were only just up, and the cook came

out to go marketing. He had to get through at least two hours more.

All that night and morning Levin lived perfectly unconsciously, and

felt perfectly lifted out of the conditions of material life. He had

eaten nothing for a whole day, he had not slept for two nights, had

spent several hours undressed in the frozen air, and felt not simply

fresher and stronger than ever, but felt utterly independent of his

body; he moved without muscular effort, and felt as if he could do

anything. He was convinced he could fly upwards or lift the corner of

the house, if need be. He spent the remainder of the time in the

street, incessantly looking at his watch and gazing about him.

And what he saw then, he never saw again after. The children especially

going to school, the bluish doves flying down from the roofs to the

pavement, and the little loaves covered with flour, thrust out by an

unseen hand, touched him. Those loaves, those doves, and those two boys

were not earthly creatures. It all happened at the same time: a boy ran

towards a dove and glanced smiling at Levin; the dove, with a whir of

her wings, darted away, flashing in the sun, amid grains of snow that

quivered in the air, while from a little window there came a smell of

fresh-baked bread, and the loaves were put out. All of this together

was so extraordinarily nice that Levin laughed and cried with delight.

Going a long way round by Gazetny Place and Kislovka, he went back

again to the hotel, and putting his watch before him, he sat down to

wait for twelve o’clock. In the next room they were talking about some

sort of machines, and swindling, and coughing their morning coughs.

They did not realize that the hand was near twelve. The hand reached

it. Levin went out onto the steps. The sledge-drivers clearly knew all

about it. They crowded round Levin with happy faces, quarreling among

themselves, and offering their services. Trying not to offend the other

sledge drivers, and promising to drive with them too, Levin took one

and told him to drive to the Shtcherbatskys’. The sledge-driver was

splendid in a white shirt-collar sticking out over his overcoat and

into his strong, full-blooded red neck. The sledge was high and

comfortable, and altogether such a one as Levin never drove in after,

and the horse was a good one, and tried to gallop but didn’t seem to

move. The driver knew the Shtcherbatskys’ house, and drew up at the

entrance with a curve of his arm and a “Wo!” especially indicative of

respect for his fare. The Shtcherbatskys’ hall-porter certainly knew

all about it. This was evident from the smile in his eyes and the way

he said:

“Well, it’s a long while since you’ve been to see us, Konstantin

Dmitrievitch!”

Not only he knew all about it, but he was unmistakably delighted and

making efforts to conceal his joy. Looking into his kindly old eyes,

Levin realized even something new in his happiness.

“Are they up?”

“Pray walk in! Leave it here,” said he, smiling, as Levin would have

come back to take his hat. That meant something.

“To whom shall I announce your honor?” asked the footman.

The footman, though a young man, and one of the new school of footmen,

a dandy, was a very kind-hearted, good fellow, and he too knew all

about it.

“The princess ... the prince ... the young princess....” said Levin.

The first person he saw was Mademoiselle Linon. She walked across the

room, and her ringlets and her face were beaming. He had only just

spoken to her, when suddenly he heard the rustle of a skirt at the

door, and Mademoiselle Linon vanished from Levin’s eyes, and a joyful

terror came over him at the nearness of his happiness. Mademoiselle

Linon was in great haste, and leaving him, went out at the other door.

Directly she had gone out, swift, swift light steps sounded on the

parquet, and his bliss, his life, himself—what was best in himself,

what he had so long sought and longed for—was quickly, so quickly

approaching him. She did not walk, but seemed, by some unseen force, to

float to him. He saw nothing but her clear, truthful eyes, frightened

by the same bliss of love that flooded his heart. Those eyes were

shining nearer and nearer, blinding him with their light of love. She

stopped still close to him, touching him. Her hands rose and dropped

onto his shoulders.

She had done all she could—she had run up to him and given herself up

entirely, shy and happy. He put his arms round her and pressed his lips

to her mouth that sought his kiss.

She too had not slept all night, and had been expecting him all the

morning.

Her mother and father had consented without demur, and were happy in

her happiness. She had been waiting for him. She wanted to be the first

to tell him her happiness and his. She had got ready to see him alone,

and had been delighted at the idea, and had been shy and ashamed, and

did not know herself what she was doing. She had heard his steps and

voice, and had waited at the door for Mademoiselle Linon to go.

Mademoiselle Linon had gone away. Without thinking, without asking

herself how and what, she had gone up to him, and did as she was doing.

“Let us go to mamma!” she said, taking him by the hand. For a long

while he could say nothing, not so much because he was afraid of

desecrating the loftiness of his emotion by a word, as that every time

he tried to say something, instead of words he felt that tears of

happiness were welling up. He took her hand and kissed it.

“Can it be true?” he said at last in a choked voice. “I can’t believe

you love me, dear!”

She smiled at that “dear,” and at the timidity with which he glanced at

her.

“Yes!” she said significantly, deliberately. “I am so happy!”

Not letting go his hands, she went into the drawing-room. The princess,

seeing them, breathed quickly, and immediately began to cry and then

immediately began to laugh, and with a vigorous step Levin had not

expected, ran up to him, and hugging his head, kissed him, wetting his

cheeks with her tears.

“So it is all settled! I am glad. Love her. I am glad.... Kitty!”

“You’ve not been long settling things,” said the old prince, trying to

seem unmoved; but Levin noticed that his eyes were wet when he turned

to him.

“I’ve long, always wished for this!” said the prince, taking Levin by

the arm and drawing him towards himself. “Even when this little

feather-head fancied....”

“Papa!” shrieked Kitty, and shut his mouth with her hands.

“Well, I won’t!” he said. “I’m very, very ... plea... Oh, what a fool I

am....”

He embraced Kitty, kissed her face, her hand, her face again, and made

the sign of the cross over her.

And there came over Levin a new feeling of love for this man, till then

so little known to him, when he saw how slowly and tenderly Kitty

kissed his muscular hand.

Chapter 16

The princess sat in her armchair, silent and smiling; the prince sat

down beside her. Kitty stood by her father’s chair, still holding his

hand. All were silent.

The princess was the first to put everything into words, and to

translate all thoughts and feelings into practical questions. And all

equally felt this strange and painful for the first minute.

“When is it to be? We must have the benediction and announcement. And

when’s the wedding to be? What do you think, Alexander?”

“Here he is,” said the old prince, pointing to Levin—“he’s the

principal person in the matter.”

“When?” said Levin blushing. “Tomorrow. If you ask me, I should say,

the benediction today and the wedding tomorrow.”

“Come, _mon cher_, that’s nonsense!”

“Well, in a week.”

“He’s quite mad.”

“No, why so?”

“Well, upon my word!” said the mother, smiling, delighted at this

haste. “How about the trousseau?”

“Will there really be a trousseau and all that?” Levin thought with

horror. “But can the trousseau and the benediction and all that—can it

spoil my happiness? Nothing can spoil it!” He glanced at Kitty, and

noticed that she was not in the least, not in the very least, disturbed

by the idea of the trousseau. “Then it must be all right,” he thought.

“Oh, I know nothing about it; I only said what I should like,” he said

apologetically.

“We’ll talk it over, then. The benediction and announcement can take

place now. That’s very well.”

The princess went up to her husband, kissed him, and would have gone

away, but he kept her, embraced her, and, tenderly as a young lover,

kissed her several times, smiling. The old people were obviously

muddled for a moment, and did not quite know whether it was they who

were in love again or their daughter. When the prince and the princess

had gone, Levin went up to his betrothed and took her hand. He was

self-possessed now and could speak, and he had a great deal he wanted

to tell her. But he said not at all what he had to say.

“How I knew it would be so! I never hoped for it; and yet in my heart I

was always sure,” he said. “I believe that it was ordained.”

“And I!” she said. “Even when....” She stopped and went on again,

looking at him resolutely with her truthful eyes, “Even when I thrust

from me my happiness. I always loved you alone, but I was carried away.

I ought to tell you.... Can you forgive that?”

“Perhaps it was for the best. You will have to forgive me so much. I

ought to tell you....”

This was one of the things he had meant to speak about. He had resolved

from the first to tell her two things—that he was not chaste as she

was, and that he was not a believer. It was agonizing, but he

considered he ought to tell her both these facts.

“No, not now, later!” he said.

“Very well, later, but you must certainly tell me. I’m not afraid of

anything. I want to know everything. Now it is settled.”

He added: “Settled that you’ll take me whatever I may be—you won’t give

me up? Yes?”

“Yes, yes.”

Their conversation was interrupted by Mademoiselle Linon, who with an

affected but tender smile came to congratulate her favorite pupil.

Before she had gone, the servants came in with their congratulations.

Then relations arrived, and there began that state of blissful

absurdity from which Levin did not emerge till the day after his

wedding. Levin was in a continual state of awkwardness and discomfort,

but the intensity of his happiness went on all the while increasing. He

felt continually that a great deal was being expected of him—what, he

did not know; and he did everything he was told, and it all gave him

happiness. He had thought his engagement would have nothing about it

like others, that the ordinary conditions of engaged couples would

spoil his special happiness; but it ended in his doing exactly as other

people did, and his happiness being only increased thereby and becoming

more and more special, more and more unlike anything that had ever

happened.

“Now we shall have sweetmeats to eat,” said Mademoiselle Linon—and

Levin drove off to buy sweetmeats.

“Well, I’m very glad,” said Sviazhsky. “I advise you to get the

bouquets from Fomin’s.”

“Oh, are they wanted?” And he drove to Fomin’s.

His brother offered to lend him money, as he would have so many

expenses, presents to give....

“Oh, are presents wanted?” And he galloped to Foulde’s.

And at the confectioner’s, and at Fomin’s, and at Foulde’s he saw that

he was expected; that they were pleased to see him, and prided

themselves on his happiness, just as everyone whom he had to do with

during those days. What was extraordinary was that everyone not only

liked him, but even people previously unsympathetic, cold, and callous,

were enthusiastic over him, gave way to him in everything, treated his

feeling with tenderness and delicacy, and shared his conviction that he

was the happiest man in the world because his betrothed was beyond

perfection. Kitty too felt the same thing. When Countess Nordston

ventured to hint that she had hoped for something better, Kitty was so

angry and proved so conclusively that nothing in the world could be

better than Levin, that Countess Nordston had to admit it, and in

Kitty’s presence never met Levin without a smile of ecstatic

admiration.

The confession he had promised was the one painful incident of this

time. He consulted the old prince, and with his sanction gave Kitty his

diary, in which there was written the confession that tortured him. He

had written this diary at the time with a view to his future wife. Two

things caused him anguish: his lack of purity and his lack of faith.

His confession of unbelief passed unnoticed. She was religious, had

never doubted the truths of religion, but his external unbelief did not

affect her in the least. Through love she knew all his soul, and in his

soul she saw what she wanted, and that such a state of soul should be

called unbelieving was to her a matter of no account. The other

confession set her weeping bitterly.

Levin, not without an inner struggle, handed her his diary. He knew

that between him and her there could not be, and should not be,

secrets, and so he had decided that so it must be. But he had not

realized what an effect it would have on her, he had not put himself in

her place. It was only when the same evening he came to their house

before the theater, went into her room and saw her tear-stained,

pitiful, sweet face, miserable with suffering he had caused and nothing

could undo, he felt the abyss that separated his shameful past from her

dovelike purity, and was appalled at what he had done.

“Take them, take these dreadful books!” she said, pushing away the

notebooks lying before her on the table. “Why did you give them me? No,

it was better anyway,” she added, touched by his despairing face. “But

it’s awful, awful!”

His head sank, and he was silent. He could say nothing.

“You can’t forgive me,” he whispered.

“Yes, I forgive you; but it’s terrible!”

But his happiness was so immense that this confession did not shatter

it, it only added another shade to it. She forgave him; but from that

time more than ever he considered himself unworthy of her, morally

bowed down lower than ever before her, and prized more highly than ever

his undeserved happiness.

Chapter 17

Unconsciously going over in his memory the conversations that had taken

place during and after dinner, Alexey Alexandrovitch returned to his

solitary room. Darya Alexandrovna’s words about forgiveness had aroused

in him nothing but annoyance. The applicability or non-applicability of

the Christian precept to his own case was too difficult a question to

be discussed lightly, and this question had long ago been answered by

Alexey Alexandrovitch in the negative. Of all that had been said, what

stuck most in his memory was the phrase of stupid, good-natured

Turovtsin—“_Acted like a man, he did! Called him out and shot him!_”

Everyone had apparently shared this feeling, though from politeness

they had not expressed it.

“But the matter is settled, it’s useless thinking about it,” Alexey

Alexandrovitch told himself. And thinking of nothing but the journey

before him, and the revision work he had to do, he went into his room

and asked the porter who escorted him where his man was. The porter

said that the man had only just gone out. Alexey Alexandrovitch ordered

tea to be sent him, sat down to the table, and taking the guidebook,

began considering the route of his journey.

“Two telegrams,” said his manservant, coming into the room. “I beg your

pardon, your excellency; I’d only just that minute gone out.”

Alexey Alexandrovitch took the telegrams and opened them. The first

telegram was the announcement of Stremov’s appointment to the very post

Karenin had coveted. Alexey Alexandrovitch flung the telegram down, and

flushing a little, got up and began to pace up and down the room.

“_Quos vult perdere dementat_,” he said, meaning by _quos_ the persons

responsible for this appointment. He was not so much annoyed that he

had not received the post, that he had been conspicuously passed over;

but it was incomprehensible, amazing to him that they did not see that

the wordy phrase-monger Stremov was the last man fit for it. How could

they fail to see how they were ruining themselves, lowering their

_prestige_ by this appointment?

“Something else in the same line,” he said to himself bitterly, opening

the second telegram. The telegram was from his wife. Her name, written

in blue pencil, “Anna,” was the first thing that caught his eye. “I am

dying; I beg, I implore you to come. I shall die easier with your

forgiveness,” he read. He smiled contemptuously, and flung down the

telegram. That this was a trick and a fraud, of that, he thought for

the first minute, there could be no doubt.

“There is no deceit she would stick at. She was near her confinement.

Perhaps it is the confinement. But what can be their aim? To legitimize

the child, to compromise me, and prevent a divorce,” he thought. “But

something was said in it: I am dying....” He read the telegram again,

and suddenly the plain meaning of what was said in it struck him.

“And if it is true?” he said to himself. “If it is true that in the

moment of agony and nearness to death she is genuinely penitent, and I,

taking it for a trick, refuse to go? That would not only be cruel, and

everyone would blame me, but it would be stupid on my part.”

“Piotr, call a coach; I am going to Petersburg,” he said to his

servant.

Alexey Alexandrovitch decided that he would go to Petersburg and see

his wife. If her illness was a trick, he would say nothing and go away

again. If she was really in danger, and wished to see him before her

death, he would forgive her if he found her alive, and pay her the last

duties if he came too late.

All the way he thought no more of what he ought to do.

With a sense of weariness and uncleanness from the night spent in the

train, in the early fog of Petersburg Alexey Alexandrovitch drove

through the deserted Nevsky and stared straight before him, not

thinking of what was awaiting him. He could not think about it, because

in picturing what would happen, he could not drive away the reflection

that her death would at once remove all the difficulty of his position.

Bakers, closed shops, night-cabmen, porters sweeping the pavements

flashed past his eyes, and he watched it all, trying to smother the

thought of what was awaiting him, and what he dared not hope for, and

yet was hoping for. He drove up to the steps. A sledge and a carriage

with the coachman asleep stood at the entrance. As he went into the

entry, Alexey Alexandrovitch, as it were, got out his resolution from

the remotest corner of his brain, and mastered it thoroughly. Its

meaning ran: “If it’s a trick, then calm contempt and departure. If

truth, do what is proper.”

The porter opened the door before Alexey Alexandrovitch rang. The

porter, Kapitonitch, looked queer in an old coat, without a tie, and in

slippers.

“How is your mistress?”

“A successful confinement yesterday.”

Alexey Alexandrovitch stopped short and turned white. He felt

distinctly now how intensely he had longed for her death.

“And how is she?”

Korney in his morning apron ran downstairs.

“Very ill,” he answered. “There was a consultation yesterday, and the

doctor’s here now.”

“Take my things,” said Alexey Alexandrovitch, and feeling some relief

at the news that there was still hope of her death, he went into the

hall.

On the hatstand there was a military overcoat. Alexey Alexandrovitch

noticed it and asked:

“Who is here?”

“The doctor, the midwife, and Count Vronsky.”

Alexey Alexandrovitch went into the inner rooms.

In the drawing-room there was no one; at the sound of his steps there

came out of her boudoir the midwife in a cap with lilac ribbons.

She went up to Alexey Alexandrovitch, and with the familiarity given by

the approach of death took him by the arm and drew him towards the

bedroom.

“Thank God you’ve come! She keeps on about you and nothing but you,”

she said.

“Make haste with the ice!” the doctor’s peremptory voice said from the

bedroom.

Alexey Alexandrovitch went into her boudoir.

At the table, sitting sideways in a low chair, was Vronsky, his face

hidden in his hands, weeping. He jumped up at the doctor’s voice, took

his hands from his face, and saw Alexey Alexandrovitch. Seeing the

husband, he was so overwhelmed that he sat down again, drawing his head

down to his shoulders, as if he wanted to disappear; but he made an

effort over himself, got up and said:

“She is dying. The doctors say there is no hope. I am entirely in your

power, only let me be here ... though I am at your disposal. I....”

Alexey Alexandrovitch, seeing Vronsky’s tears, felt a rush of that

nervous emotion always produced in him by the sight of other people’s

suffering, and turning away his face, he moved hurriedly to the door,

without hearing the rest of his words. From the bedroom came the sound

of Anna’s voice saying something. Her voice was lively, eager, with

exceedingly distinct intonations. Alexey Alexandrovitch went into the

bedroom, and went up to the bed. She was lying turned with her face

towards him. Her cheeks were flushed crimson, her eyes glittered, her

little white hands thrust out from the sleeves of her dressing gown

were playing with the quilt, twisting it about. It seemed as though she

were not only well and blooming, but in the happiest frame of mind. She

was talking rapidly, musically, and with exceptionally correct

articulation and expressive intonation.

“For Alexey—I am speaking of Alexey Alexandrovitch (what a strange and

awful thing that both are Alexey, isn’t it?)—Alexey would not refuse

me. I should forget, he would forgive.... But why doesn’t he come? He’s

so good he doesn’t know himself how good he is. Ah, my God, what agony!

Give me some water, quick! Oh, that will be bad for her, my little

girl! Oh, very well then, give her to a nurse. Yes, I agree, it’s

better in fact. He’ll be coming; it will hurt him to see her. Give her

to the nurse.”

“Anna Arkadyevna, he has come. Here he is!” said the midwife, trying to

attract her attention to Alexey Alexandrovitch.

“Oh, what nonsense!” Anna went on, not seeing her husband. “No, give

her to me; give me my little one! He has not come yet. You say he won’t

forgive me, because you don’t know him. No one knows him. I’m the only

one, and it was hard for me even. His eyes I ought to know—Seryozha has

just the same eyes—and I can’t bear to see them because of it. Has

Seryozha had his dinner? I know everyone will forget him. He would not

forget. Seryozha must be moved into the corner room, and Mariette must

be asked to sleep with him.”

All of a sudden she shrank back, was silent; and in terror, as though

expecting a blow, as though to defend herself, she raised her hands to

her face. She had seen her husband.

“No, no!” she began. “I am not afraid of him; I am afraid of death.

Alexey, come here. I am in a hurry, because I’ve no time, I’ve not long

left to live; the fever will begin directly and I shall understand

nothing more. Now I understand, I understand it all, I see it all!”

Alexey Alexandrovitch’s wrinkled face wore an expression of agony; he

took her by the hand and tried to say something, but he could not utter

it; his lower lip quivered, but he still went on struggling with his

emotion, and only now and then glanced at her. And each time he glanced

at her, he saw her eyes gazing at him with such passionate and

triumphant tenderness as he had never seen in them.

“Wait a minute, you don’t know ... stay a little, stay!...” She

stopped, as though collecting her ideas. “Yes,” she began; “yes, yes,

yes. This is what I wanted to say. Don’t be surprised at me. I’m still

the same.... But there is another woman in me, I’m afraid of her: she

loved that man, and I tried to hate you, and could not forget about her

that used to be. I’m not that woman. Now I’m my real self, all myself.

I’m dying now, I know I shall die, ask him. Even now I feel—see here,

the weights on my feet, on my hands, on my fingers. My fingers—see how

huge they are! But this will soon all be over.... Only one thing I

want: forgive me, forgive me quite. I’m terrible, but my nurse used to

tell me; the holy martyr—what was her name? She was worse. And I’ll go

to Rome; there’s a wilderness, and there I shall be no trouble to

anyone, only I’ll take Seryozha and the little one.... No, you can’t

forgive me! I know, it can’t be forgiven! No, no, go away, you’re too

good!” She held his hand in one burning hand, while she pushed him away

with the other.

The nervous agitation of Alexey Alexandrovitch kept increasing, and had

by now reached such a point that he ceased to struggle with it. He

suddenly felt that what he had regarded as nervous agitation was on the

contrary a blissful spiritual condition that gave him all at once a new

happiness he had never known. He did not think that the Christian law

that he had been all his life trying to follow, enjoined on him to

forgive and love his enemies; but a glad feeling of love and

forgiveness for his enemies filled his heart. He knelt down, and laying

his head in the curve of her arm, which burned him as with fire through

the sleeve, he sobbed like a little child. She put her arm around his

head, moved towards him, and with defiant pride lifted up her eyes.

“That is he. I knew him! Now, forgive me, everyone, forgive me!...

They’ve come again; why don’t they go away?... Oh, take these cloaks

off me!”

The doctor unloosed her hands, carefully laying her on the pillow, and

covered her up to the shoulders. She lay back submissively, and looked

before her with beaming eyes.

“Remember one thing, that I needed nothing but forgiveness, and I want

nothing more.... Why doesn’t _he_ come?” she said, turning to the door

towards Vronsky. “Do come, do come! Give him your hand.”

Vronsky came to the side of the bed, and seeing Anna, again hid his

face in his hands.

“Uncover your face—look at him! He’s a saint,” she said. “Oh! uncover

your face, do uncover it!” she said angrily. “Alexey Alexandrovitch, do

uncover his face! I want to see him.”

Alexey Alexandrovitch took Vronsky’s hands and drew them away from his

face, which was awful with the expression of agony and shame upon it.

“Give him your hand. Forgive him.”

Alexey Alexandrovitch gave him his hand, not attempting to restrain the

tears that streamed from his eyes.

“Thank God, thank God!” she said, “now everything is ready. Only to

stretch my legs a little. There, that’s capital. How badly these

flowers are done—not a bit like a violet,” she said, pointing to the

hangings. “My God, my God! when will it end? Give me some morphine.

Doctor, give me some morphine! Oh, my God, my God!”

And she tossed about on the bed.

The doctors said that it was puerperal fever, and that it was

ninety-nine chances in a hundred it would end in death. The whole day

long there was fever, delirium, and unconsciousness. At midnight the

patient lay without consciousness, and almost without pulse.

The end was expected every minute.

Vronsky had gone home, but in the morning he came to inquire, and

Alexey Alexandrovitch meeting him in the hall, said: “Better stay, she

might ask for you,” and himself led him to his wife’s boudoir. Towards

morning, there was a return again of excitement, rapid thought and

talk, and again it ended in unconsciousness. On the third day it was

the same thing, and the doctors said there was hope. That day Alexey

Alexandrovitch went into the boudoir where Vronsky was sitting, and

closing the door sat down opposite him.

“Alexey Alexandrovitch,” said Vronsky, feeling that a statement of the

position was coming, “I can’t speak, I can’t understand. Spare me!

However hard it is for you, believe me, it is more terrible for me.”

He would have risen; but Alexey Alexandrovitch took him by the hand and

said:

“I beg you to hear me out; it is necessary. I must explain my feelings,

the feelings that have guided me and will guide me, so that you may not

be in error regarding me. You know I had resolved on a divorce, and had

even begun to take proceedings. I won’t conceal from you that in

beginning this I was in uncertainty, I was in misery; I will confess

that I was pursued by a desire to revenge myself on you and on her.

When I got the telegram, I came here with the same feelings; I will say

more, I longed for her death. But....” He paused, pondering whether to

disclose or not to disclose his feeling to him. “But I saw her and

forgave her. And the happiness of forgiveness has revealed to me my

duty. I forgive completely. I would offer the other cheek, I would give

my cloak if my coat be taken. I pray to God only not to take from me

the bliss of forgiveness!”

Tears stood in his eyes, and the luminous, serene look in them

impressed Vronsky.

“This is my position: you can trample me in the mud, make me the

laughing-stock of the world, I will not abandon her, and I will never

utter a word of reproach to you,” Alexey Alexandrovitch went on. “My

duty is clearly marked for me; I ought to be with her, and I will be.

If she wishes to see you, I will let you know, but now I suppose it

would be better for you to go away.”

He got up, and sobs cut short his words. Vronsky too was getting up,

and in a stooping, not yet erect posture, looked up at him from under

his brows. He did not understand Alexey Alexandrovitch’s feeling, but

he felt that it was something higher and even unattainable for him with

his view of life.

Chapter 18

After the conversation with Alexey Alexandrovitch, Vronsky went out

onto the steps of the Karenins’ house and stood still, with difficulty

remembering where he was, and where he ought to walk or drive. He felt

disgraced, humiliated, guilty, and deprived of all possibility of

washing away his humiliation. He felt thrust out of the beaten track

along which he had so proudly and lightly walked till then. All the

habits and rules of his life that had seemed so firm, had turned out

suddenly false and inapplicable. The betrayed husband, who had figured

till that time as a pitiful creature, an incidental and somewhat

ludicrous obstacle to his happiness, had suddenly been summoned by her

herself, elevated to an awe-inspiring pinnacle, and on the pinnacle

that husband had shown himself, not malignant, not false, not

ludicrous, but kind and straightforward and large. Vronsky could not

but feel this, and the parts were suddenly reversed. Vronsky felt his

elevation and his own abasement, his truth and his own falsehood. He

felt that the husband was magnanimous even in his sorrow, while he had

been base and petty in his deceit. But this sense of his own

humiliation before the man he had unjustly despised made up only a

small part of his misery. He felt unutterably wretched now, for his

passion for Anna, which had seemed to him of late to be growing cooler,

now that he knew he had lost her forever, was stronger than ever it had

been. He had seen all of her in her illness, had come to know her very

soul, and it seemed to him that he had never loved her till then. And

now when he had learned to know her, to love her as she should be

loved, he had been humiliated before her, and had lost her forever,

leaving with her nothing of himself but a shameful memory. Most

terrible of all had been his ludicrous, shameful position when Alexey

Alexandrovitch had pulled his hands away from his humiliated face. He

stood on the steps of the Karenins’ house like one distraught, and did

not know what to do.

“A sledge, sir?” asked the porter.

“Yes, a sledge.”

On getting home, after three sleepless nights, Vronsky, without

undressing, lay down flat on the sofa, clasping his hands and laying

his head on them. His head was heavy. Images, memories, and ideas of

the strangest description followed one another with extraordinary

rapidity and vividness. First it was the medicine he had poured out for

the patient and spilt over the spoon, then the midwife’s white hands,

then the queer posture of Alexey Alexandrovitch on the floor beside the

bed.

“To sleep! To forget!” he said to himself with the serene confidence of

a healthy man that if he is tired and sleepy, he will go to sleep at

once. And the same instant his head did begin to feel drowsy and he

began to drop off into forgetfulness. The waves of the sea of

unconsciousness had begun to meet over his head, when all at once—it

was as though a violent shock of electricity had passed over him. He

started so that he leaped up on the springs of the sofa, and leaning on

his arms got in a panic onto his knees. His eyes were wide open as

though he had never been asleep. The heaviness in his head and the

weariness in his limbs that he had felt a minute before had suddenly

gone.

“You may trample me in the mud,” he heard Alexey Alexandrovitch’s words

and saw him standing before him, and saw Anna’s face with its burning

flush and glittering eyes, gazing with love and tenderness not at him

but at Alexey Alexandrovitch; he saw his own, as he fancied, foolish

and ludicrous figure when Alexey Alexandrovitch took his hands away

from his face. He stretched out his legs again and flung himself on the

sofa in the same position and shut his eyes.

“To sleep! To forget!” he repeated to himself. But with his eyes shut

he saw more distinctly than ever Anna’s face as it had been on the

memorable evening before the races.

“That is not and will not be, and she wants to wipe it out of her

memory. But I cannot live without it. How can we be reconciled? how can

we be reconciled?” he said aloud, and unconsciously began to repeat

these words. This repetition checked the rising up of fresh images and

memories, which he felt were thronging in his brain. But repeating

words did not check his imagination for long. Again in extraordinarily

rapid succession his best moments rose before his mind, and then his

recent humiliation. “Take away his hands,” Anna’s voice says. He takes

away his hands and feels the shamestruck and idiotic expression of his

face.

He still lay down, trying to sleep, though he felt there was not the

smallest hope of it, and kept repeating stray words from some chain of

thought, trying by this to check the rising flood of fresh images. He

listened, and heard in a strange, mad whisper words repeated: “I did

not appreciate it, did not make enough of it. I did not appreciate it,

did not make enough of it.”

“What’s this? Am I going out of my mind?” he said to himself. “Perhaps.

What makes men go out of their minds; what makes men shoot themselves?”

he answered himself, and opening his eyes, he saw with wonder an

embroidered cushion beside him, worked by Varya, his brother’s wife. He

touched the tassel of the cushion, and tried to think of Varya, of when

he had seen her last. But to think of anything extraneous was an

agonizing effort. “No, I must sleep!” He moved the cushion up, and

pressed his head into it, but he had to make an effort to keep his eyes

shut. He jumped up and sat down. “That’s all over for me,” he said to

himself. “I must think what to do. What is left?” His mind rapidly ran

through his life apart from his love of Anna.

“Ambition? Serpuhovskoy? Society? The court?” He could not come to a

pause anywhere. All of it had had meaning before, but now there was no

reality in it. He got up from the sofa, took off his coat, undid his

belt, and uncovering his hairy chest to breathe more freely, walked up

and down the room. “This is how people go mad,” he repeated, “and how

they shoot themselves ... to escape humiliation,” he added slowly.

He went to the door and closed it, then with fixed eyes and clenched

teeth he went up to the table, took a revolver, looked round him,

turned it to a loaded barrel, and sank into thought. For two minutes,

his head bent forward with an expression of an intense effort of

thought, he stood with the revolver in his hand, motionless, thinking.

“Of course,” he said to himself, as though a logical, continuous, and

clear chain of reasoning had brought him to an indubitable conclusion.

In reality this “of course,” that seemed convincing to him, was simply

the result of exactly the same circle of memories and images through

which he had passed ten times already during the last hour—memories of

happiness lost forever. There was the same conception of the

senselessness of everything to come in life, the same consciousness of

humiliation. Even the sequence of these images and emotions was the

same.

“Of course,” he repeated, when for the third time his thought passed

again round the same spellbound circle of memories and images, and

pulling the revolver to the left side of his chest, and clutching it

vigorously with his whole hand, as it were, squeezing it in his fist,

he pulled the trigger. He did not hear the sound of the shot, but a

violent blow on his chest sent him reeling. He tried to clutch at the

edge of the table, dropped the revolver, staggered, and sat down on the

ground, looking about him in astonishment. He did not recognize his

room, looking up from the ground, at the bent legs of the table, at the

wastepaper basket, and the tiger-skin rug. The hurried, creaking steps

of his servant coming through the drawing-room brought him to his

senses. He made an effort at thought, and was aware that he was on the

floor; and seeing blood on the tiger-skin rug and on his arm, he knew

he had shot himself.

“Idiotic! Missed!” he said, fumbling after the revolver. The revolver

was close beside him—he sought further off. Still feeling for it, he

stretched out to the other side, and not being strong enough to keep

his balance, fell over, streaming with blood.

The elegant, whiskered manservant, who used to be continually

complaining to his acquaintances of the delicacy of his nerves, was so

panic-stricken on seeing his master lying on the floor, that he left

him losing blood while he ran for assistance. An hour later Varya, his

brother’s wife, had arrived, and with the assistance of three doctors,

whom she had sent for in all directions, and who all appeared at the

same moment, she got the wounded man to bed, and remained to nurse him.

Chapter 19

The mistake made by Alexey Alexandrovitch in that, when preparing for

seeing his wife, he had overlooked the possibility that her repentance

might be sincere, and he might forgive her, and she might not die—this

mistake was two months after his return from Moscow brought home to him

in all its significance. But the mistake made by him had arisen not

simply from his having overlooked that contingency, but also from the

fact that until that day of his interview with his dying wife, he had

not known his own heart. At his sick wife’s bedside he had for the

first time in his life given way to that feeling of sympathetic

suffering always roused in him by the sufferings of others, and

hitherto looked on by him with shame as a harmful weakness. And pity

for her, and remorse for having desired her death, and most of all, the

joy of forgiveness, made him at once conscious, not simply of the

relief of his own sufferings, but of a spiritual peace he had never

experienced before. He suddenly felt that the very thing that was the

source of his sufferings had become the source of his spiritual joy;

that what had seemed insoluble while he was judging, blaming, and

hating, had become clear and simple when he forgave and loved.

He forgave his wife and pitied her for her sufferings and her remorse.

He forgave Vronsky, and pitied him, especially after reports reached

him of his despairing action. He felt more for his son than before. And

he blamed himself now for having taken too little interest in him. But

for the little newborn baby he felt a quite peculiar sentiment, not of

pity, only, but of tenderness. At first, from a feeling of compassion

alone, he had been interested in the delicate little creature, who was

not his child, and who was cast on one side during her mother’s

illness, and would certainly have died if he had not troubled about

her, and he did not himself observe how fond he became of her. He would

go into the nursery several times a day, and sit there for a long

while, so that the nurses, who were at first afraid of him, got quite

used to his presence. Sometimes for half an hour at a stretch he would

sit silently gazing at the saffron-red, downy, wrinkled face of the

sleeping baby, watching the movements of the frowning brows, and the

fat little hands, with clenched fingers, that rubbed the little eyes

and nose. At such moments particularly, Alexey Alexandrovitch had a

sense of perfect peace and inward harmony, and saw nothing

extraordinary in his position, nothing that ought to be changed.

But as time went on, he saw more and more distinctly that however

natural the position now seemed to him, he would not long be allowed to

remain in it. He felt that besides the blessed spiritual force

controlling his soul, there was another, a brutal force, as powerful,

or more powerful, which controlled his life, and that this force would

not allow him that humble peace he longed for. He felt that everyone

was looking at him with inquiring wonder, that he was not understood,

and that something was expected of him. Above all, he felt the

instability and unnaturalness of his relations with his wife.

When the softening effect of the near approach of death had passed

away, Alexey Alexandrovitch began to notice that Anna was afraid of

him, ill at ease with him, and could not look him straight in the face.

She seemed to be wanting, and not daring, to tell him something; and as

though foreseeing their present relations could not continue, she

seemed to be expecting something from him.

Towards the end of February it happened that Anna’s baby daughter, who

had been named Anna too, fell ill. Alexey Alexandrovitch was in the

nursery in the morning, and leaving orders for the doctor to be sent

for, he went to his office. On finishing his work, he returned home at

four. Going into the hall he saw a handsome groom, in a braided livery

and a bear fur cape, holding a white fur cloak.

“Who is here?” asked Alexey Alexandrovitch.

“Princess Elizaveta Federovna Tverskaya,” the groom answered, and it

seemed to Alexey Alexandrovitch that he grinned.

During all this difficult time Alexey Alexandrovitch had noticed that

his worldly acquaintances, especially women, took a peculiar interest

in him and his wife. All these acquaintances he observed with

difficulty concealing their mirth at something; the same mirth that he

had perceived in the lawyer’s eyes, and just now in the eyes of this

groom. Everyone seemed, somehow, hugely delighted, as though they had

just been at a wedding. When they met him, with ill-disguised enjoyment

they inquired after his wife’s health. The presence of Princess

Tverskaya was unpleasant to Alexey Alexandrovitch from the memories

associated with her, and also because he disliked her, and he went

straight to the nursery. In the day nursery Seryozha, leaning on the

table with his legs on a chair, was drawing and chatting away merrily.

The English governess, who had during Anna’s illness replaced the

French one, was sitting near the boy knitting a shawl. She hurriedly

got up, curtseyed, and pulled Seryozha.

Alexey Alexandrovitch stroked his son’s hair, answered the governess’s

inquiries about his wife, and asked what the doctor had said of the

baby.

“The doctor said it was nothing serious, and he ordered a bath, sir.”

“But she is still in pain,” said Alexey Alexandrovitch, listening to

the baby’s screaming in the next room.

“I think it’s the wet-nurse, sir,” the Englishwoman said firmly.

“What makes you think so?” he asked, stopping short.

“It’s just as it was at Countess Paul’s, sir. They gave the baby

medicine, and it turned out that the baby was simply hungry: the nurse

had no milk, sir.”

Alexey Alexandrovitch pondered, and after standing still a few seconds

he went in at the other door. The baby was lying with its head thrown

back, stiffening itself in the nurse’s arms, and would not take the

plump breast offered it; and it never ceased screaming in spite of the

double hushing of the wet-nurse and the other nurse, who was bending

over her.

“Still no better?” said Alexey Alexandrovitch.

“She’s very restless,” answered the nurse in a whisper.

“Miss Edwarde says that perhaps the wet-nurse has no milk,” he said.

“I think so too, Alexey Alexandrovitch.”

“Then why didn’t you say so?”

“Who’s one to say it to? Anna Arkadyevna still ill....” said the nurse

discontentedly.

The nurse was an old servant of the family. And in her simple words

there seemed to Alexey Alexandrovitch an allusion to his position.

The baby screamed louder than ever, struggling and sobbing. The nurse,

with a gesture of despair, went to it, took it from the wet-nurse’s

arms, and began walking up and down, rocking it.

“You must ask the doctor to examine the wet-nurse,” said Alexey

Alexandrovitch. The smartly dressed and healthy-looking nurse,

frightened at the idea of losing her place, muttered something to

herself, and covering her bosom, smiled contemptuously at the idea of

doubts being cast on her abundance of milk. In that smile, too, Alexey

Alexandrovitch saw a sneer at his position.

“Luckless child!” said the nurse, hushing the baby, and still walking

up and down with it.

Alexey Alexandrovitch sat down, and with a despondent and suffering

face watched the nurse walking to and fro.

When the child at last was still, and had been put in a deep bed, and

the nurse, after smoothing the little pillow, had left her, Alexey

Alexandrovitch got up, and walking awkwardly on tiptoe, approached the

baby. For a minute he was still, and with the same despondent face

gazed at the baby; but all at once a smile, that moved his hair and the

skin of his forehead, came out on his face, and he went as softly out

of the room.

In the dining-room he rang the bell, and told the servant who came in

to send again for the doctor. He felt vexed with his wife for not being

anxious about this exquisite baby, and in this vexed humor he had no

wish to go to her; he had no wish, either, to see Princess Betsy. But

his wife might wonder why he did not go to her as usual; and so,

overcoming his disinclination, he went towards the bedroom. As he

walked over the soft rug towards the door, he could not help

overhearing a conversation he did not want to hear.

“If he hadn’t been going away, I could have understood your answer and

his too. But your husband ought to be above that,” Betsy was saying.

“It’s not for my husband; for myself I don’t wish it. Don’t say that!”

answered Anna’s excited voice.

“Yes, but you must care to say good-bye to a man who has shot himself

on your account....”

“That’s just why I don’t want to.”

With a dismayed and guilty expression, Alexey Alexandrovitch stopped

and would have gone back unobserved. But reflecting that this would be

undignified, he turned back again, and clearing his throat, he went up

to the bedroom. The voices were silent, and he went in.

Anna, in a gray dressing gown, with a crop of short clustering black

curls on her round head, was sitting on a settee. The eagerness died

out of her face, as it always did, at the sight of her husband; she

dropped her head and looked round uneasily at Betsy. Betsy, dressed in

the height of the latest fashion, in a hat that towered somewhere over

her head like a shade on a lamp, in a blue dress with violet crossway

stripes slanting one way on the bodice and the other way on the skirt,

was sitting beside Anna, her tall flat figure held erect. Bowing her

head, she greeted Alexey Alexandrovitch with an ironical smile.

“Ah!” she said, as though surprised. “I’m very glad you’re at home. You

never put in an appearance anywhere, and I haven’t seen you ever since

Anna has been ill. I have heard all about it—your anxiety. Yes, you’re

a wonderful husband!” she said, with a meaning and affable air, as

though she were bestowing an order of magnanimity on him for his

conduct to his wife.

Alexey Alexandrovitch bowed frigidly, and kissing his wife’s hand,

asked how she was.

“Better, I think,” she said, avoiding his eyes.

“But you’ve rather a feverish-looking color,” he said, laying stress on

the word “feverish.”

“We’ve been talking too much,” said Betsy. “I feel it’s selfishness on

my part, and I am going away.”

She got up, but Anna, suddenly flushing, quickly caught at her hand.

“No, wait a minute, please. I must tell you ... no, you.” she turned to

Alexey Alexandrovitch, and her neck and brow were suffused with

crimson. “I won’t and can’t keep anything secret from you,” she said.

Alexey Alexandrovitch cracked his fingers and bowed his head.

“Betsy’s been telling me that Count Vronsky wants to come here to say

good-bye before his departure for Tashkend.” She did not look at her

husband, and was evidently in haste to have everything out, however

hard it might be for her. “I told her I could not receive him.”

“You said, my dear, that it would depend on Alexey Alexandrovitch,”

Betsy corrected her.

“Oh, no, I can’t receive him; and what object would there....” She

stopped suddenly, and glanced inquiringly at her husband (he did not

look at her). “In short, I don’t wish it....”

Alexey Alexandrovitch advanced and would have taken her hand.

Her first impulse was to jerk back her hand from the damp hand with big

swollen veins that sought hers, but with an obvious effort to control

herself she pressed his hand.

“I am very grateful to you for your confidence, but....” he said,

feeling with confusion and annoyance that what he could decide easily

and clearly by himself, he could not discuss before Princess Tverskaya,

who to him stood for the incarnation of that brute force which would

inevitably control him in the life he led in the eyes of the world, and

hinder him from giving way to his feeling of love and forgiveness. He

stopped short, looking at Princess Tverskaya.

“Well, good-bye, my darling,” said Betsy, getting up. She kissed Anna,

and went out. Alexey Alexandrovitch escorted her out.

“Alexey Alexandrovitch! I know you are a truly magnanimous man,” said

Betsy, stopping in the little drawing-room, and with special warmth

shaking hands with him once more. “I am an outsider, but I so love her

and respect you that I venture to advise. Receive him. Alexey Vronsky

is the soul of honor, and he is going away to Tashkend.”

“Thank you, princess, for your sympathy and advice. But the question of

whether my wife can or cannot see anyone she must decide herself.”

He said this from habit, lifting his brows with dignity, and reflected

immediately that whatever his words might be, there could be no dignity

in his position. And he saw this by the suppressed, malicious, and

ironical smile with which Betsy glanced at him after this phrase.

Chapter 20

Alexey Alexandrovitch took leave of Betsy in the drawing-room, and went

to his wife. She was lying down, but hearing his steps she sat up

hastily in her former attitude, and looked in a scared way at him. He

saw she had been crying.

“I am very grateful for your confidence in me.” He repeated gently in

Russian the phrase he had said in Betsy’s presence in French, and sat

down beside her. When he spoke to her in Russian, using the Russian

“thou” of intimacy and affection, it was insufferably irritating to

Anna. “And I am very grateful for your decision. I, too, imagine that

since he is going away, there is no sort of necessity for Count Vronsky

to come here. However, if....”

“But I’ve said so already, so why repeat it?” Anna suddenly interrupted

him with an irritation she could not succeed in repressing. “No sort of

necessity,” she thought, “for a man to come and say good-bye to the

woman he loves, for whom he was ready to ruin himself, and has ruined

himself, and who cannot live without him. No sort of necessity!” she

compressed her lips, and dropped her burning eyes to his hands with

their swollen veins. They were rubbing each other.

“Let us never speak of it,” she added more calmly.

“I have left this question to you to decide, and I am very glad to

see....” Alexey Alexandrovitch was beginning.

“That my wish coincides with your own,” she finished quickly,

exasperated at his talking so slowly while she knew beforehand all he

would say.

“Yes,” he assented; “and Princess Tverskaya’s interference in the most

difficult private affairs is utterly uncalled for. She especially....”

“I don’t believe a word of what’s said about her,” said Anna quickly.

“I know she really cares for me.”

Alexey Alexandrovitch sighed and said nothing. She played nervously

with the tassel of her dressing-gown, glancing at him with that

torturing sensation of physical repulsion for which she blamed herself,

though she could not control it. Her only desire now was to be rid of

his oppressive presence.

“I have just sent for the doctor,” said Alexey Alexandrovitch.

“I am very well; what do I want the doctor for?”

“No, the little one cries, and they say the nurse hasn’t enough milk.”

“Why didn’t you let me nurse her, when I begged to? Anyway” (Alexey

Alexandrovitch knew what was meant by that “anyway”), “she’s a baby,

and they’re killing her.” She rang the bell and ordered the baby to be

brought her. “I begged to nurse her, I wasn’t allowed to, and now I’m

blamed for it.”

“I don’t blame....”

“Yes, you do blame me! My God! why didn’t I die!” And she broke into

sobs. “Forgive me, I’m nervous, I’m unjust,” she said, controlling

herself, “but do go away....”

“No, it can’t go on like this,” Alexey Alexandrovitch said to himself

decidedly as he left his wife’s room.

Never had the impossibility of his position in the world’s eyes, and

his wife’s hatred of him, and altogether the might of that mysterious

brutal force that guided his life against his spiritual inclinations,

and exacted conformity with its decrees and change in his attitude to

his wife, been presented to him with such distinctness as that day. He

saw clearly that all the world and his wife expected of him something,

but what exactly, he could not make out. He felt that this was rousing

in his soul a feeling of anger destructive of his peace of mind and of

all the good of his achievement. He believed that for Anna herself it

would be better to break off all relations with Vronsky; but if they

all thought this out of the question, he was even ready to allow these

relations to be renewed, so long as the children were not disgraced,

and he was not deprived of them nor forced to change his position. Bad

as this might be, it was anyway better than a rupture, which would put

her in a hopeless and shameful position, and deprive him of everything

he cared for. But he felt helpless; he knew beforehand that everyone

was against him, and that he would not be allowed to do what seemed to

him now so natural and right, but would be forced to do what was wrong,

though it seemed the proper thing to them.

Chapter 21

Before Betsy had time to walk out of the drawing-room, she was met in

the doorway by Stepan Arkadyevitch, who had just come from Yeliseev’s,

where a consignment of fresh oysters had been received.

“Ah! princess! what a delightful meeting!” he began. “I’ve been to see

you.”

“A meeting for one minute, for I’m going,” said Betsy, smiling and

putting on her glove.

“Don’t put on your glove yet, princess; let me kiss your hand. There’s

nothing I’m so thankful to the revival of the old fashions for as the

kissing the hand.” He kissed Betsy’s hand. “When shall we see each

other?”

“You don’t deserve it,” answered Betsy, smiling.

“Oh, yes, I deserve a great deal, for I’ve become a most serious

person. I don’t only manage my own affairs, but other people’s too,” he

said, with a significant expression.

“Oh, I’m so glad!” answered Betsy, at once understanding that he was

speaking of Anna. And going back into the drawing-room, they stood in a

corner. “He’s killing her,” said Betsy in a whisper full of meaning.

“It’s impossible, impossible....”

“I’m so glad you think so,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, shaking his head

with a serious and sympathetically distressed expression, “that’s what

I’ve come to Petersburg for.”