Anna Karenina (tr. Constance Garnett)
by Leo Tolstoy
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman
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Alexey Alexandrovitch knit his brows at Betsy's name.

"Oh, I'm not going to separate the inseparables," he said in his
usual bantering tone. "I'm going with Mihail Vassilievitch. I'm
ordered exercise by the doctors too. I'll walk, and fancy myself
at the springs again."

"There's no hurry," said Anna. "Would you like tea?"

She rang.

"Bring in tea, and tell Seryozha that Alexey Alexandrovitch is
here. Well, tell me, how have you been? Mihail Vassilievitch,
you've not been to see me before. Look how lovely it is out on
the terrace," she said, turning first to one and then to the
other.

She spoke very simply and naturally, but too much and too fast.
She was the more aware of this from noticing in the inquisitive
look Mihail Vassilievitch turned on her that he was, as it were,
keeping watch on her.

Mihail Vassilievitch promptly went out on the terrace.

She sat down beside her husband.

"You don't look quite well," she said.

"Yes," he said; "the doctor's been with me to-day and wasted an
hour of my time. I feel that some one of our friends must have
sent him: my health's so precious, it seems."

"No; what did he say?"

She questioned him about his health and what he had been doing,
and tried to persuade him to take a rest and come out to her.

All this she said brightly, rapidly, and with a peculiar
brilliance in her eyes. But Alexey Alexandrovitch did not now
attach any special significance to this tone of hers. He heard
only her words and gave them only the direct sense they bore. And
he answered simply, though jestingly. There was nothing
remarkable in all this conversation, but never after could Anna
recall this brief scene without an agonizing pang of shame.

Seryozha came in preceded by his governess. If Alexey
Alexandrovitch had allowed himself to observe he would have
noticed the timid and bewildered eyes with which Seryozha glanced
first at his father and then at his mother. But he would not see
anything, and he did not see it.

"Ah, the young man! He's grown. Really, he's getting quite a man.
How are you, young man?"

And he gave his hand to the scared child. Seryozha had been shy
of his father before, and now, ever since Alexey Alexandrovitch
had taken to calling him young man, and since that insoluble
question had occurred to him whether Vronsky were a friend or a
foe, he avoided his father. He looked round towards his mother as
though seeking shelter. It was only with his mother that he was
at ease. Meanwhile, Alexey Alexandrovitch was holding his son by
the shoulder while he was speaking to the governess, and Seryozha
was so miserably uncomfortable that Anna saw he was on the point
of tears.

Anna, who had flushed a little the instant her son came in,
noticing that Seryozha was uncomfortable, got up hurriedly, took
Alexey Alexandrovitch's hand from her son's shoulder, and kissing
the boy, led him out onto the terrace, and quickly came back.

"It's time to start, though," said she, glancing at her watch.
"How is it Betsy doesn't come?

"Yes," said Alexey Alexandrovitch, and getting up, he folded his
hands and cracked his fingers. "I've come to bring you some
money, too, for nightingales, we know, can't live on fairy
tales," he said. "You want it, I expect?"

"No, I don't ...yes, I do," she said, not looking at him, and
crimsoning to the roots of her hair. "But you'll come back here
after the races, I suppose?"

"Oh, yes!" answered Alexey Alexandrovitch "And here's the glory
of Peterhof, Princess Tverskaya," he added, looking out of the
window at the elegant English carriage with the tiny seats placed
extremely high. "What elegance! Charming! Well, let us be
starting too, then."

Princess Tverskaya did not get out of her carriage, but her
groom, in high boots, a cape, and block hat, darted out at the
entrance.

"I'm going; good-bye!" said Anna, and kissing her son, she went
up to Alexey Alexandrovitch and held out her hand to him. "It was
ever so nice of you to come."

Alexey Alexandrovitch kissed her hand.

"Well, au revoir, then! You'll come back for some tea; that's
delightful!" she said, and went out, gay and radiant. But as soon
as she no longer saw him, she was aware of the spot on her hand
that his lips had touched, and she shuddered with repulsion.

Chapter 28

When Alexey Alexandrovitch reached the race-course, Anna was
already sitting in the pavilion beside Betsy, in that pavilion
where all the highest society had gathered. She caught sight of
her husband in the distance. Two men, her husband and her lover,
were the two centers of her existence, and unaided by her
external senses she was aware of their nearness. She was aware of
her husband approaching a long way off, and she could not help
following him in the surging crowd in the midst of which he was
moving. She watched his progress towards the pavilion, saw him
now responding condescendingly to an ingratiating bow, now
exchanging friendly, nonchalant greetings with his equals, now
assiduously trying to catch the eye of some great one of this
world, and taking off his big round hat that squeezed the tips of
his ears. All these ways of his she knew, and all were hateful to
her. "Nothing but ambition, nothing but the desire to get on,
that's all there is in his soul," she thought; "as for these
lofty ideals, love of culture, religion, they are only so many
tools for getting on."

From his glances towards the ladies' pavilion (he was staring
straight at her, but did not distinguish his wife in the sea of
muslin, ribbons, feathers, parasols and flowers) she saw that he
was looking for her, but she purposely avoided noticing him.

"Alexey Alexandrovitch!" Princess Betsy called to him; "I'm sure
you don't see your wife: here she is."

He smiled his chilly smile.

"There's so much splendor here that one's eyes are dazzled," he
said, and he went into the pavilion. He smiled to his wife as a
man should smile on meeting his wife after only just parting from
her, and greeted the princess and other acquaintances, giving to
each what was due-- that is to say, jesting with the ladies and
dealing out friendly greetings among the men. Below, near the
pavilion, was standing an adjutantgeneral of whom Alexey
Alexandrovitch had a high opinion, noted for his intelligence and
culture. Alexey Alexandrovitch entered into conversation with
him.

There was an interval between the races, and so nothing hindered
conversation. The adjutant-general expressed his disapproval of
races. Alexey Alexandrovitch replied defending them. Anna heard
his high, measured tones, not losing one word, and every word
struck her as false, and stabbed her ears with pain.

When the three-mile steeplechase was beginning, she bent forward
and gazed with fixed eyes at Vronsky as he went up to his horse
and mounted, and at the same time she heard that loathsome,
never-ceasing voice of her husband. She was in an agony of terror
for Vronsky, but a still greater agony was the never-ceasing, as
it seemed to her, stream of her husband's shrill voice with its
familiar intonations.

"I'm a wicked woman, a lost woman," she thought; "but I don't
like lying, I can't endure falsehood, while as for him (her
husband) it's the breath of his life--falsehood. He knows all
about it, he sees it all; what does he care if he can talk so
calmly? If he were to kill me, if he were to kill Vronsky, I
might respect him. No, all he wants is falsehood and propriety,"
Anna said to herself, not considering exactly what it was she
wanted of her husband, and how she would have liked to see him
behave. She did not understand either that Alexey
Alexandrovitch's peculiar loquacity that day, so exasperating to
her, was merely the expression of his inward distress and
uneasiness. As a child that has been hurt skips about, putting
all his muscles into movement to drown the pain, in the same way
Alexey Alexandrovitch needed mental exercise to drown the
thoughts of his wife that in her presence and in Vronsky's, and
with the continual iteration of his name, would force themselves
on his attention. And it was as natural for him to talk well and
cleverly, as it is natural for a child to skip about. He was
saying:

"Danger in the races of officers, of cavalry men, is an essential
element in the race. If England can point to the most brilliant
feats of cavalry in military history, it is simply owing to the
fact that she has historically developed this force both in
beasts and in men. Sport has, in my opinion, a great value, and
as is always the case, we see nothing but what is most
superficial."

"It's not superficial," said Princess Tverskaya. "One of the
officers, they say, has broken two ribs."

Alexey Alexandrovitch smiled his smile, which uncovered his
teeth, but revealed nothing more.

"We'll admit, princess, that that's not superficial," he said,
"but internal. But that's not the point," and he turned again to
the general with whom he was talking seriously; "we mustn't
forget that those who are taking part in the race are military
men, who have chosen that career, and one must allow that every
calling has its disagreeable side. It forms an integral part of
the duties of an officer. Low sports, such as prizefighting or
Spanish bull-fights, are a sign of barbarity. But specialized
trials of skill are a sign of development."

"No, I shan't come another time; it's too upsetting," said
Princess

Betsy. "Isn't it, Anna?"

"It is upsetting, but one can't tear oneself away," said another
lady. "If I'd been a Roman woman I should never have missed a
single circus."

Anna said nothing, and keeping her opera-glass up, gazed always
at the same spot.

At that moment a tall general walked through the pavilion,.
Breaking off what he was saying, Alexey Alexandrovitch got up
hurriedly, though with dignity, and bowed low to the general.

"You're not racing?" the officer asked, chaffing him.

"My race is a harder one," Alexey Alexandrovitch responded
deferentially.

And though the answer meant nothing, the general looked as though
he had heard a witty remark from a witty man, and fully relished
la pointe de la sauce.

"There are two aspects," Alexey Alexandrovitch resumed: "those
who take part and those who look on; and love for such spectacles
is an unmistakable proof of a low degree of development in the
spectator, I admit, but . . ."

"Princess, bets!" sounded Stepan Arkadyevitch's voice from
below. addressing Betsy. "Who's your favorite?"

"Anna and I are for Kuzovlev," replied Betsy.

"I'm for Vronsky. A pair of gloves?"

"Done!"

"But it is a pretty sight, isn't it?"

Alexey Alexandrovitch paused while there was talking about him,
but he began again directly.

"I admit that manly sports do not . . ." he was continuing.

But at that moment the racers started, and all conversation
ceased. Alexey Alexandrovitch too was silent, and every one stood
up and turned towards the stream. Alexey Alexandrovitch took no
interest in the race, and so he did not watch the racers, but
fell listlessly to scanning the spectators with his weary eyes.
His eyes rested upon Anna.

Her face was white and set. She was obviously seeing nothing and
no one but one man. Her hand had convulsively clutched her fan,
and she held her breath. He looked at her and hastily turned
away, scrutinizing other faces.

"But here's this lady too, and others very much moved as well;
it's very natural," Alexey Alexandrovitch told himself. He tried
not to look at her, but unconsciously his eyes were drawn to her.
He examined that face again, trying not to read what was so
plainly written on it, and against his own will, with horror read
on it what he did not want to know.

The first fall--Kuzovlev's, at the stream--agitated every one,
but Alexey Alexandrovitch saw distinctly on Anna's pale,
triumphant face that the man she was watching had not fallen.
When, after Mahotin and Vronsky had cleared the worst barrier,
the next officer had been thrown straight on his head at it and
fatally injured, and a shudder of horror passed over the whole
public, Alexey Alexandrovitch saw that Anna did not even notice
it, and had some difficulty in realizing what they were talking
of about her. But more and more often, and with greater
persistence, he watched her. Anna, wholly engrossed as she was
with the race, became aware of her husband's cold eyes fixed
upon.her from one side.

She glanced round for an instant, looked inquiringly at him, and
with a slight frown turned away again.

"Ah, I don't care!" she seemed to say to him, and she did not
once glance at him again.

The race was an unlucky one, and of the seventeen officers who
rode in it more than half were thrown and hurt. Towards the end
of the race every one was in a state of agitation, which was
intensified by the fact that the Tsar was displeased.

Chapter 29

Every one was loudly expressing disapprobation, every one was
repeating a phrase some one had uttered--"The lions and
gladiators will be the next thing," and every one was feeling
horrified; so that when Vronsky fell to the ground, and Anna
moaned aloud, there was nothing very out of the way in it. But
afterwards a change came over Anna's face which really was beyond
decorum. She utterly lost her head. She began fluttering like a
caged bird, at one moment would have got up and moved away, at
the next turned to Betsy.

"Let us go, let us go!" she said.

But Betsy did not hear her. She was bending down, talking to a
general who had come up to her.

Alexey Alexandrovitch went up to Anna and courteously offered her
his arm.

"Let us go, if you like," he said in French, but Anna was
listening to the general and did not notice her husband.

"He's broken his leg too, so they say," the general was saying.
"This is beyond everything."

Without answering her husband, Anna lifted her opera-glass and
gazed towards the place where Vronsky had fallen; but it was so
far off,

and there was such a crowd of people about it, that she could
make out nothing. She laid down the opera-glass, and would have
moved away, but at that moment an officer galloped up and made
some announcement to the Tsar. Anna craned forward, listening.

"Stiva! Stiva!" she cried to her brother.

But her brother did not hear her. Again she would have moved
away.

"Once more I offer you my arm if you want to be going," said
Alexey Alexandrovitch, reaching towards her hand.

She drew back from him with aversion, and without looking in his
face answered:

"No, no, let me be, I'll stay."

She saw now that from the place of Vronsky's accident an officer
was running across the course towards the pavilion. Betsy waved
her handkerchief to him. The officer brought the news that the
rider was not killed, but the horse had broken its back.

On hearing this Anna sat down hurriedly, and hid her face in her
fan. Alexey Alexandrovitch saw that she was weeping, and could
not control her tears, nor even the sobs that were shaking her
bosom. Alexey Alexandrovitch stood so as to screen her, giving
her time to recover herself.

"For the third time I offer you my arm," he said to her after a
little time, turning to her. Anna gazed at him and did not know
what to say. Princess Betsy came to her rescue.

"No, Alexey Alexandrovitch; I brought Anna and I promised to take
her home," put in Betsy.

"Excuse me, princess," he said, smiling courteously but looking
her very firmly in the face, "but I see that Anna's not very
well, and I wish her to come home with me."

Anna looked about her in a frightened way, got up submissively,
and laid her hand on her husband's arm.

"I'll send to him and find out, and let you know," Betsy
whispered to her.

As they left the pavilion, Alexey Alexandrovitch, as always,
talked to those he met, and Anna had, as always, to talk and
answer; but she was utterly beside herself, and moved hanging on
her husband's arm as though in a dream.

"Is he killed or not? Is it truer Will he come or not? Shall I
see him to- day?" she was thinking.

She took her seat in her husband's carriage in silence, and in
silence drove out of the crowd of carriages. In spite of all he
had seen, Alexey Alexandrovitch still did not allow himself to
consider his wife's real condition. He merely saw the outward
symptoms. He saw that she was behaving unbecomingly, and
considered it his duty to tell her so. But it was very difficult
for him not to say more, to tell her nothing but that. He opened
his mouth to tell her she had behaved unbecomingly, but he could
not help saying something utterly different.

"What an inclination we all have, though, for these cruel
spectacles," he said. "I observe . . ."

"Eh? I don't understand," said Anna contemptuously.

He was offended, and at once began to say what he had meant to
say.

"I am obliged to tell you," he began.

"So now we are to have it out," she thought, and she felt
frightened.

"I am obliged to tell you that your behavior has been unbecoming
to- day," he said to her in French.

"In what way has my behavior been unbecoming?" she said aloud,
turning her head swiftly and looking him straight in the face,
not with the bright expression that seemed covering something,
but with a look of determination, under which she concealed with
difficulty the dismay she was feeling.

"Mind," he said, pointing to the open window opposite the
coachman.

He got up and pulled up the window.

"What did you consider unbecoming?" she repeated.

"The despair you were unable to conceal at the accident to one of
the riders."

He waited for her to answer, but she was silent, looking straight
before her.

"I have already begged you so to conduct yourself in society that
even malicious tongues can find nothing to say against you. There
was a time when I spoke of your inward attitude, but I am not
speaking of that now. Now I speak only of your external attitude.
You have behaved improperly, and I would wish it not to occur
again."

She did not hear half of what he was saying; she felt
panic-stricken before him, and was thinking whether it was true
that Vronsky was not killed. Was it of him they were speaking
when they said the rider was unhurt, but the horse had broken its
back? She merely smiled with a pretense of irony when he
finished, and made no reply, because she had not heard what he
said. Alexey Alexandrovitch had begun to speak boldly, but as he
realized plainly what he was speaking of, the dismay she was
feeling infected him too. He saw the smile, and a strange
misapprehension came over him.

"She is smiling at my suspicions. Yes, she will tell me directly
what she told me before; that there is no foundation for my
suspicions, that it's absurd."

At that moment, when the revelation of everything was hanging
over him, there was nothing he expected so much as that she would
answer mockingly as before that his suspicions were absurd and
utterly groundless. So terrible to him was that he knew that now
he was ready to believe anything. But the expression of her face,
scared and gloomy, did not now promise even deception.

"Possibly I was mistaken," said he. "If so, I beg your pardon."

"No, you were not mistaken," she said deliberately, looking
desperately into his cold face. "You were not mistaken. I was,
and I could not help being in despair. I hear you, but I am
thinking of him. I love him, I am his mistress; I can't bear you;
I'm afraid of you, and I hate you.... You can do what you like to
me."

And dropping back into the corner of the carriage, she broke into
sobs, hiding her face in her hands. Alexey Alexandrovitch did not
stir, and kept looking straight before him. But his whole face
suddenly bore the solemn rigidity of the dead, and his expression
did not change during the whole time of the drive home On
reaching the house he turned his head to her, still with the same
expression.

"Very well! But I expect a strict observance of the external
forms of propriety till such time"--his voice shook--"as I may
take measures to secure my honor and communicate them to you."

He got out first and helped her to get out. Before the servants
he pressed her hand, took his seat in the carriage, and drove
back to Petersburg. Immediately afterwards a footman came from
Princess Betsy and brought Anna a note.

"I sent to Alexey to find out how he is, and he writes me he is
quite well and unhurt, but in despair."

"So he will be here," she thought. "What a good thing I told him
all!"

She glanced at her watch. She had still three hours to wait, and
the memories of their last meeting set her blood in flame.

"My God, how light it is! It's dreadful, but I do love to see his
face, and I do love this fantastic light.... My husband! Oh! yes
... Well, thank God! everything's over with him."

Chapter 30

In the little German watering-place to which the Shtcherbatskys
had betaken themselves, as in all places indeed where people are
gathered together, the usual process, as it were, of the
crystallization of society went on, assigning to each member of
that society a definite and unalterable place. Just as the
particle of water in frost, definitely and unalterably, takes the
special form of the crystal of snow, so each new person that
arrived at the springs was at once placed in his special place.

First Shtcherbatsky, sammt Gemahlin und Tochter, by the
apartments they took, and from their name and from the friends
they made, were immediately crystallized into a definite place
marked out for them.

There was visiting the watering-place that year a real German
Furstin, in consequence of which the crystallizing process went
on more vigorously than ever. Princess Shtcherbatskaya wished,
above everything, to present her daughter to this German
princess, and the day after their arrival she duly performed this
nte. Kitty made a low and graceful curtsey in the very simple,
that is to say, very elegant frock that had been ordered her from
Paris. The German princess said, "I hope the roses will soon come
back to this pretty little face," and for the Shtcherbatskys
certain definite lines of existence were at once laid down from
which there was no departing. The Shtcherbatskys made the
acquaintance too of the family of an English Lady Somebody, and
of a German countess and her son, wounded in the last war, and of
a learned Swede, and of M. Canut and his sister. But yet
inevitably the Shtcherbatskys were thrown most into the society
of a Moscow lady, Marya Yevgenyevna Rtishtcheva and her daughter,
whom Kitty disliked, because she had fallen ill, like herself,
over a love affair, and a Moscow colonel, whom Kitty had known
from childhood, and always seen in uniform and epaulets, and who
now, with his little eyes and his open neck and flowered cravat,
was uncommonly ridiculous and tedious, because there was no
getting rid of him. When all this was so firmly established,
Kitty began to be very much bored, especially as the prince went
away to Carlsbad and she was left alone with her mother. She took
no interest in the people she knew, feeling that nothing fresh
would come of them. Her chief mental interest in the
watering-place consisted in watching and making theories about
the people she did not know. It was characteristic of Kitty that
she always imagined everything in people in the most favorable
light possible, especially so in those she did not know. And now
as she made surmises as to who people were, what were their
relations to one another, and what they were like, Kitty endowed
them with the most marvelous and noble characters, and found
confirmation of her idea in her observations.

Of these people the one that attracted her most was a Russian
girl who had come to the watering-place with an invalid Russian
lady, Madame Stahl, as every one called her. Madame Stahl
belonged to the highest society, but she was so ill that she
could not walk, and only on exceptionally fine days made her
appearance at the springs in an invalid carriage. But it was not
so much from ill-health as from pride--so Princess
Shtcherbatskaya interpreted it--that Madame Stahl had not made
the acquaintance of any one among the Russians there. The Russian
girl looked after Madame Stahl, and besides that, she was, as
Kitty observed, on friendly terms with all the invalids who were
seriously ill, and there were many of them at the springs, and
looked after them in the most natural way. This Russian girl was
not, as Kitty gathered, related to Madame Stahl, nor was she a
paid attendant. Madame Stahl called her Varenka, and other people
called her "Mademoiselle Varenka." Apart from the interest Kitty
took in this girl's relations with Madame Stahl and with other
unknown persons, Kitty, as often happened, felt an inexplicable
attraction to Mademoiselle Varenka, and was aware when their eyes
met that she too liked her.

Of Mademoiselle Varenka one would not say that she had passed her
first youth, but she was, as it were, a creature without youth;
she might have been taken for nineteen or for thirty. If her
features were criticized separately, she was handsome rather than
plain, in spite of the sickly hue of her face. She would have
been a good figure, too, if it had not been for her extreme
thinness and the size of her head, which was too large for her
medium height. But she was not likely to be attractive to men.
She was like a fine flower, already past its bloom and without
fragrance, though the petals were still unwithered. Moreover, she
would have been unattractive to men also from the lack of just
what Kitty had too much of--of the suppressed fire of vitality,
and the consciousness of her own attractiveness.

She always seemed absorbed in work about which there could be no
doubt, and so it seemed she could not take interest in anything
outside it. It was just this contrast with her own position that
was for Kitty the great attraction of Mademoiselle Varenka. Kitty
felt that in her, in her manner of life, she would find an
example of what she was now so painfully seeking: interest in
life, a dignity in life--apart from the worldly relations of
girls with men, which so revolted Kitty, and appeared to her now
as a shameful hawking about of goods in search of a purchaser.
The more attentively Kitty watched her unknown friend, the more
convinced she was this girl was the perfect creature she fancied
her, and the more eagerly she wished to make her acquaintance.

The two girls used to meet several times a day, and every time
they met, Kitty's eyes said: "Who are you? What are you? Are you
really the exquisite creature I imagine you to be? But for
goodness' sake don't suppose," her eyes added, "that I would
force my acquaintance on you, I simply admire you and like you."
"I like you too, and you're very, very sweet. And I should like
you better still, if I had time," answered the eyes of the
unknown girl. Kitty saw indeed, that she was always busy. Either
she was taking the children of a Russian family home from the
springs, or fetching a shawl for a sick lady, and wrapping her up
in it, or trying to interest an irritable invalid, or selecting
and buying cakes for tea for some one.

Soon after the arrival of the Shtcherbatskys there appeared in
the morning crowd at the springs two persons who attracted
universal and unfavorable attention. These were a tall man with a
stooping figure, and huge hands, in an old coat too short for
him, with black, simple, and yet terrible eyes, and a pockmarked,
kind-looking woman, very badly and tastelessly dressed.
Recognizing these persons as Russians, Kitty had already in her
imagination begun constructing a delightful and touching romance
about them. But the princess, having ascertained from the
visitors' list that this was Nikolay Levin and Marya Nikolaevna,
explained to Kitty what a bad man this Levin was, and all her
fancies about these two people vanished. Not so much from what
her mother told her, as from the fact that it was Konstantin's
brother, this pair suddenly seemed to Kitty intensely unpleasant.
This Levin, with his continual twitching of his head, aroused in
her now an irrepressible feeling of disgust.

It seemed to her that his big, terrible eyes, which persistently
pursued her, expressed a feeling of hatred and contempt, and she
tried to avoid meeting him.

Chapter 31

It was a wet day; it had been raining all the morning, and the
invalids, with their parasols, had flocked into the arcades.

Kitty was walking there with her mother and the Moscow colonel,
smart and jaunty in his European coat, bought ready-made at
Frankfort. They were walking on one side of the arcade, trying to
avoid Levin, who was walking on the other side. Varenka, in her
dark dress, in a black hat with a turndown brim, was walking up
and down the whole length of the arcade with a blind Frenchwoman,
and, every time she met Kitty, they exchanged friendly glances.

"Mamma, couldn't I speak to her?" said Kitty, watching her
unknown friend, and noticing that she was going up to the spring,
and that they might come there together.

"Oh, if you want to so much, I'll find out about her first and
make her acquaintance myself," answered her mother. "What do you
see in her out of the way? A companion, she must be. If you like,
I'll make acquaintance with Madame Stahl; I used to know her
belle-seur," added the princess, lifting her head haughtily.

Kitty knew that the princess was offended that Madame Stahl had
seemed to avoid making her acquaintance. Kitty did not insist.

"How wonderfully sweet she is!" she said, gazing at Varenka just
as she handed a glass to the Frenchwoman. "Look how natural and
sweet it all is."

"It's so funny to see your engouements," said the princess. "No,
we'd better go back," she added, noticing Levin coming towards
them with his companion and a German doctor, to whom he was
talking very noisily and angrily.

They turned to go back, when suddenly they heard, not noisy talk,
but shouting. Levin, stopping short, was shouting at the doctor,
and the doctor, too, was excited. A crowd gathered about them.
The princess and Kitty beat a hasty retreat, while the colonel
joined the crowd to find out what was the matter.

A few minutes later the colonel overtook them.

"What was it?" inquired the princess.

"Scandalous and disgraceful!" answered the colonel. "The one
thing to be dreaded is meeting Russians abroad. That tall
gentleman was abusing the doctor, flinging all sorts of insults
at him because he wasn't treating him quite as he liked, and he
began waving his stick at him. It's simply a scandal!"

"Oh, how unpleasant!" said the princess. "Well, and how did it
end?"

"Luckily at that point that ...the one in the mushroom hat. .
. intervened. A Russian lady, I think she is," said the colonel.

"Mademoiselle Varenka?" asked Kitty.

"Yes, yes. She came to the rescue before any one; she took the
man by the arm and led him away."

"There, mamma," said Kitty; "you wonder that I'm enthusiastic
about her."

The next day, as she watched her unknown friend, Kitty noticed
that Mademoiselle Varenka was already on the same terms with
Levin and his companion as with her other proteges. She went up
to them, entered into conversation with them, and served as
interpreter for the woman, who could not speak any foreign
language.

Kitty began to entreat her mother still more urgently to let her
make friends with Varenka. And, disagreeable as it was to the
princess to seem to take the first step in wishing to make the
acquaintance of Madame Stahl,ùwho thought fit to give herself
airs, she made inquiries about Varenka, and, having ascertained
particulars about her tending to prove that there could be no
harm though little good in the acquaintance, she herself
approached Varenka and made acquaintance with her.

Choosing a time when her daughter had gone to the spring, while
Varenka had stopped outside the baker's, the princess went up to
her.

"Allow me to make your acquaintance," she said, with her
dignified smile. "My daughter has lost her heart to you," she
said. "Possibly you do not know me. I am . . ."

"That feeling is more than reciprocal, princess," Varenka
answered hurriedly.

"What a good deed you did yesterday to our poor compatriot!" said
the princess.

Varenka flushed a little. "I don't remember. I don't think I did
anything," she said.

"Why, you saved that Levin from disagreeable consequences."

"Yes, sa compagne called me, and I tried to pacify him, he's very
ill and was dissatisfied with the doctor. I'm used to looking
after such invalids."'

"Yes, I've heard you live at Mentone with your aunt I
think Madame Stahl: I used to know her belle-seur."

"No, she's not my aunt. I call her mamma, but I am not related to
her; I was brought up by her," answered Varenka, flushing a
little again.

This was so simply said, and so sweet was the truthful and candid
expression of her face, that the princess saw why Kitty had taken
such a fancy to Varenka.

"Well, and what's this Levin going to do?" asked the princess.

"He's gomg away," answered Varenka.

At that instant Kitty came up from the spring beaming with
delight that her mother had become acquainted with her unknown
friend.

"Well, see, Kitty, your intense desire to make friends with
Mademoiselle . . ."

"Varenka," Varenka put in smiling, "that's what every one calls
me."

Kitty blushed with pleasure, and slowly, without speaking,
pressed her new friend's hand, which did not respond to her
pressure, but lay mot~onless m her hand. The hand did not respond
to her pressure, but the face of Mademoiselle Varenka glowed with
a soft, glad, though rather mournful smile, that showed large but
handsome teeth.

"I have long wished for this too," she said.

"But you are so busy."

"Oh, no, I'm not at all busy," answered Varenka, but at that
moment she had to leave her new friends because two little
Russian girls, children of an invalid, ran up to her.

"Varenka, mamma's calling!" they cried. And Varenka went after
them.

Chapter 32

The particulars which the princess had learned in regard to
Varenka's past and her relations with Madame Stahl were as
follows:

Madame Stahl, of whom some people said that she had worried her
husband out of his life, while others said it was he who had made
her wretched by his immoral behavior, had always been a woman of
weak health and enthusiastic temperament. When, after her
separation from her husband, she gave birth to her only child,
the child had died almost immediately, and the family of Madame
Stahl, knowing her sensibility, and fearing the news would kill
her, had substituted another child, a baby born the same night
and in the same house in Petersburg, the daughter of the chief
cook of the Imperial Household. This was Varenka. Madame Stahl
learned later on that Varenka was not her own child, but she went
on bringing her up, especially as very soon afterwards Varenka
had not a relation of her own living. Madame Stahl had now been
living more than ten years continuously abroad, in the south,
never leaving her couch. And some people said that Madame Stahl
had made her social position as a philanthropic, highly religious
woman; other people said she really was at heart the highly
ethical being, living for nothing but the good of her
fellow-creatures, which she represented herself to be. No one
knew what her faith was--Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox. But
one fact was indubitable--she was in amicable relations with the
highest dignitaries of all the churches and sects.

Varenka lived with her all the while abroad, and every one who
knew Madame Stahl knew and liked Mademoiselle Varenka, as every
one called her.

Having learned all these facts, the princess found nothing to
object to in her daughter's intimacy with Varenka, more
especially as V.arenka's breeding and education were of the
best--she spoke French and English extremely well--and what was
of the most weight, brought a message from Madame Stahl
expressing her regret that she was prevented by her ill-health
from making the acquaintance of the princess.

After getting to know Varenka, Kitty became more and more
fascinated by her friend, and every day she discovered new
virtues in her.

The princess, hearing that Varenka had a good voice, asked her to
come and sing to them in the evening.

"Kitty plays, and we have a piano, not a good one, it's true, but
you will give us so much pleasure?" said the princess with her
affected smile, which Kitty disliked particularly just then,
because she noticed that Varenka had no inclination to sing.
Varenka came, however, in the evening and brought a roll of music
with her. The princess had invited Marya Yevgenyevna and her
daughter and the colonel.

Varenka seemed quite unaffected by there being persons present
she did not know, and she went directly to the piano. She could
not accompany herself, but she could sing music at sight very
well. Kitty, who played well, accompanied her.

"You have an extraordinary talent," the princess said to her
after Varenka had sung the first song extremely well.

Marya Yevgenyevna and her daughter expressed their thanks and
admiration.

"Look," said the colonel, looking out of the window, "what an
audience has collected to listen to you." There actually was
quite a considerable crowd under the windows.

"I am very glad it gives you pleasure," Varenka answered simply.

Kitty looked with pride at her friend. She was enchanted by her
talent, and her voice and her face, but most of all by her
manner, by the way Varenka obviously thought nothing of her
singing and was quite unmoved by their praises. She seemed only
to be asking: "Am I to sing again, or is that enough?"

"If it had been I," thought Kitty, "how proud I should have been,
How delighted I should have been to see that crowd under the
windows) But she's utterly unmoved by it. Her only motive is to
avoid refusing and to please mamma. What is there in her? What is
it gives her the power to look down on everything, to be calm
independently of everything? How I should like to know it and to
learn it of her!" thought Kitty, gazing into her serene face. The
princess asked Varenka to sing again, and Varenka sang another
song, also smoothly, distinctly, and well, standing erect at the
piano and beating time on it with her thin, dark-skinned hand.

The next song in the book was an Italian one. Kitty played the
opening bars, and looked round at Varenka.

"Let's skip that," said Varenka, flushing a little. Kitty let her
eyes rest on Varenka's face, with a look of dismay and inquiry.

"Very well, the next one," she said hurriedly, turning over the
pages, and at once feeling that there was something connected
with the song.

"No," answered Varenka with a smile, laying her hand on the
music, "no, let's have that one." And she sang it just as
quietly, as coolly, and as well as the others.

When she had finished, they all thanked her again, and went off
to tea. Kitty and Varenka went out into the little garden that
adjoined the house.

"Am I right, that you have some reminiscences connected with that
songs" said Kitty. "Don't tell me," she added hastily, "only say
if I'm right."

"No, why not? I'll tell you simply," said Varenka, and, without
waiting for a reply, she went on: "Yes, it brings up memories,
once painful ones. I cared for some one once, and I used to sing
him that song."

Kitty with big, wide-open eyes gazed silently, sympathetically at
Varenka.

"I cared for him, and he cared for me; but his mother did not
wish it, and he married another girl. He's living now not far
from us, and I see him sometimes. You didn't think I had a
love-story too," she said, and there was a faint gleam in her
handsome face of that fire which Kitty felt must once have glowed
all over her.

"I didn't think so? Why, if I were a man, I could never care for
any one else after knowing you. Only I can't understand how he
could, to please his mother, forget you and make you unhappy; he
had no heart."

"Oh, no, he's a very good man, and I'm not unhappy; quite the
contrary, I'm very happy. Well, so we shan't be singing any more
now," she added, turning towards the house.

"How good you are! how good you are!" cried Kitty, and stopping
her, she kissed her. "If I could only be even a little like you!"

"Why should you be like any one? You're nice as you are," said
Varenka, smiling her gentle, weary smile.

"No, I'm not nice at all. Come, tell me ...Stop a minute,
let's sit down," said Kitty, making her sit down again beside
her. "Tell me, isn't it humiliating to think that a man has
disdained your love, that he hasn't cared for it? . . ."

"But he didn't disdain it; I believe he cared for me, but he was
a dutiful son . . ."

"Yes, but if it hadn't been on account of his mother, if it had
been his own doing? . . ." said Kitty, feeling she was giving
away her secret, and that her face, burning with the flush of
shame, had betrayed her already.

"In that case he would have done wrong, and I should not have
regretted him," answered Varenka, evidently realizing that they
were now talking not of her, but of Kitty.

"But the humiliation," said Kitty, "the humiliation one can never
forget, can never forget," she said, remembering her look at the
last ball during the pause in the music.

"Where is the humiliation? Why, you did nothing wrong?"

"Worse than wrong--shameful."

Varenka shook her head and laid her hand on Kitty's hand.

"Why, what is there shameful?" she said. "You didn't tell a man,
who didn't care for you, that you loved him, did you?"

"Of course not, I never said a word, but he knew it. No, no,
there are looks, there are ways; I can't forget it, if I live a
hundred years."

"Why so? I don't understand. The whole point is whether you love
him now or not," said Varenka, who called everything by its name.

"I hate him; I can't forgive myself."

"Why, what for?"

"The shame, the humiliation!"

"Oh! if every one were as sensitive as you are!" said Varenka.
"There isn't a girl who hasn't been through the same. And it's
all so unimportant."

"Why, what is important?" said Kitty, looking into her face with
inquisitive wonder.

"Oh, there's so much that's important," said Varenka, smiling.

"Why, what?"

"Oh, so much that's more important," answered Varenka, not
knowing what to say. But at that instant they heard the
princess's voice from the window. "Kitty, it's cold! Either get a
shawl, or come indoors."

"It really is time to go in!" said Varenka, getting up. "I have
to go on to Madame Berthe's; she asked me to."

Kitty held her by the hand, and with passionate curiosity and
entreaty her eyes asked her: "What is it, what is this of such
importance that gives you such tranquillity? You know, tell me!"
But Varenka did not even know what Kitty's eyes were asking her.
She merely thought that she had to go to see Madame Berthe too
that evening, and to make haste home in time for maman's tea at
twelve o'clock. She went indoors, collected her music, and saying
good-bye to every one, was about to go.

"Allow me to see you home," said the colonel.

"Yes, how can you go alone at night like this?" chimed in the
princess. "Anyway, I'll send Parasha."

Kitty saw that Varenka could hardly restrain a smile at the idea
that she needed an escort.

"No, I always go about alone and nothing ever happens to me," she
said, taking her hat. And kissing Kitty once more, without saying
what was important, she stepped out courageously with the music
under her arm and vanished into the twilight of the summer night,
bearing away with her her secret of what was important and what
gave her the calm and dignity so much to be envied.

Chapter 33

Kitty made the acquaintance of Madame Stahl too, and this
acquaintance, together with her friendship with Varenka, did not
merely exercise a great influence on her, it also comforted her
in her mental distress. She found this comfort through a
completely new world being opened to her by means of this
acquaintance, a world having nothing in common with her past, an
exalted, noble world, from the height of which she could
contemplate her past calmly. It was revealed to her that besides
the instinctive life to which Kitty had given herself up hitherto
there was a spiritual life. This life was disclosed in religion,
but a religion having nothing in common with that one which Kitty
had known from childhood, and which found expression in litanies
and all-night services at the Widow's Home, where one might meet
one's friends, and in learning by heart Slavonic texts with the
priest. This was a lofty, mysterious religion connected with a
whole series of noble thoughts and feelings, which one could do
more than merely believe because one was told to, which one could
love.

Kitty found all this out not from words. Madame Stahl talked to
Kitty as to a charming child that one looks on with pleasure as
on the memory of one's youth, and only once she said in passing
that in all human sorrows nothing gives comfort but love and
faith, and that in the sight of Chnst's compassion for us no
sorrow is trifling--and immediately talked of other things. But
in every gesture of Madame Stahl, in every word, in every
heavenly--as Kitty called it--look, and above all in the whole
story of her life, which she heard from Varenka, Kitty recognized
that something "that was important," of which, till then, she had
known nothing.

Yet, elevated as Madame Stahl's character was, touching as was
her story, and exalted and moving as was her speech, Kitty could
not help detecting in her some traits which perplexed her. She
noticed that when questioning her about her family, Madame Stahl
had smiled contemptuously, which was not in accord with Christian
meekness. She noticed, too, that when she had found a Catholic
priest with her, Madame Stahl had studiously kept her face in the
shadow of the lamp-shade and had smiled in a peculiar way.
Trivial as these two observations were, they perplexed her, and
she had her doubts as to Madame Stahl. But on the other hand
Varenka, alone in the world, without friends or relations, with a
melancholy disappointment in the past, desiring nothing,
regretting nothing, was just that perfection of which Kitty dared
hardly dream. InVarenka she realized that one has but to forget
oneself and love others, and one will be calm, happy, and noble.
And that was what Kitty longed to be. Seeing now clearly what was
the most important, Kitty was not satisfied with being
enthusiastic over it; she at once gave herself up with her whole
soul to the new life that was opening to her. From Varenka's
accounts of the doings of Madame Stahl and other people whom she
mentioned, Kitty had already constructed the plan of her own
future life. She would, like Madame Stahl's niece, Aline, of whom
Varenka had talked to her a great deal, seek out those who were
in trouble, wherever she might be living, help them as far as she
could, give them the Gospel, read the Gospel to the sick, the
criminals, to the dying. The idea of reading the Gospel to
criminals, as Aline did, particularly fascinated Kitty. But all
these were secret dreams, of which Kitty did not talk either to
her mother or to Varenka.

While awaiting the time for carrying out her plans on a large
scale, however, Kitty, even then at the springs, where there were
so many people ill and unhappy, readily found a chance for
practicing her new principles in imitation of Varenka.

At first the princess noticed nothing but that Kitty was much
under the influence of her engouement, as she called it, for
Madame Stahl, and still more for Varenka. She saw that Kitty did
not merely imitate Varenka in her conduct, but unconsciously
imitated her in her manner of walking, of talking, of blinking
her eyes. But later on the princess noticed that, apart from this
adoration, some kind of serious spiritual change was taking place
in her daughter.

The princess saw that in the evenings Kitty read a French
testament that Madame Stahl had given her--a thing she had never
done before; that she avoided society acquaintances and
associated with the sick people who were under Varenka's
protection, and especially one poor family, that of a sick
painter, Petrov. Kitty was unmistakably proud of playing the part
of a sister of mercy in that family. All this was well enough,
and the princess had nothing to say against it, especially as
Petrov's wife was a perfectly nice sort of woman, and that the
German princess, noticing Kitty's devotion, praised her, calling
her an angel of consolation. All this would have been very well,
if there had been no exaggeration. But the princess saw that her
daughter was rushing into extremes, and so indeed she told her.

"Il ne faut jamais rien outrer," she said to her.

Her daughter made her no reply, only in her heart she thought
that one could not talk about exaggeration where Christianity was
concerned. What exaggeration could there be in the practice of a
doctrine wherein one was bidden to turn the other cheek when one
was smitten, and give one's cloak if one's coat were taken? But
the princess disliked this exaggeration, and disliked even more
the fact that she felt her daughter did not care to show her all
her heart. Kitty did in fact conceal her new views and feelings
from her mother. She concealed them not because she did not
respect or did not love her mother, but simply because she was
her mother. She would have revealed them to any one sooner than
to her mother.

"How is it Anna Pavlovna's not been to see us for so long?" the
princess said one day of Madame Petrova. "I've asked her, but she
seems put out about something."

"No, I've not noticed it, maman," said Kitty, flushing hotly.

"Is it long since you went to see them?"

"We're meaning to make an expedition to the mountains to-morrow,"
answered Kitty,

"Well, you can go," answered the princess, gazing at her
daughter's embarrassed face and trying to guess the cause of her
embarrassment.

That day Varenka came to dinner and told them that Anna Pavlovna
had changed her mind and given up the expedition for the morrow.
And the princess noticed again that Kitty reddened.

"Kitty, haven't you had some misunderstanding with the Petrovs?"
said the princess, when they were left alone. "Why has she given
up sending the children and coming to see us?"

Kitty answered that nothing had happened between them, and that
she could not tell why Anna Pavlovna seemed displeased with her.
Kitty answered perfectly truly. She did not know the reason Anna
Pavlovna had changed to her, but she guessed it. She guessed at
something which she could not tell her mother, which she did not
put into words to herself. It was one of those things which one
knows but which one can never speak of even to oneself so
terrible and shameful would it be to be mistaken.

Again and again she went over in her memory all her relations
with the family. She remembered the simple delight expressed on
the round, good- humored face of Anna Pavlovna at their meetings;
she remembered their secret confabulations about the invalid,
their plots to draw him away from the work which was forbidden
him, and to get him outof-doors; the devotion of the youngest
boy, who used to call her "my Kitty," and would not go to bed
without her. How nice it all wasl Then she recalled the thin,
terribly thin figure of Petrov, with his long neck, in his brown
coat, his scant, curly hair, his questioning blue eyes that were
so terrible to Kitty at first, and his painful attempts to seem
hearty and lively in her presence. She recalled the efforts she
had made at first to overcome the repugnance she felt for him, as
for all consumptive people, and the pains it had cost her to
think of things to say to him. She recalled the timid, softened
look with which he gazed at her, and the strange feeling of
compassion and awkwardness, and later of a sense of her own
goodness, which she had felt at it. How nice it all was! But all
that was at first. Now, a few days ago, everything was suddenly
spoiled. Anna Pavlovna had met Kitty with affected cordiality,
and had kept continual watch on her and on her husband.

Could that touching pleasure he showed when she came near be the
cause of Anna Pavlovna's coolness?

"Yes," she mused, "there was something unnatural about Anna
Pavlovna, and utterly unlike her good nature, when she said
angrily the day before yesterday: 'There, he will keep waiting
for you; he wouldn't drink his coffee without you, though he's
grown so dreadfully weak.' "

"Yes, perhaps, too, she didn't like it when I gave him the rug.
It was all so simple, but he took it so awkwardly, and was so
long thanking me, that I felt awkward too. And then that portrait
of me he did so well. And most of all that look of confusion and
tenderness! Yes, yes, that's it!" Kitty repeated to herself with
horror. "No, it can't be, it oughtn't to be! He's so much to be
pitied!" she said to herself directly after.

This doubt poisoned the charm of her new life.

Chapter 34

Before the end of the course of drinking the waters, Prince
Shtcherbatsky, who had gone on from Carlsbad to Baden and
Kissingen to Russian friends--to get a breath of Russian air, as
he said--came back to his wife and daughter.

The views of the prince and of the princess on life abroad were
completely opposed. The princess thought everything delightful,
and in spite of her established position in Russian society, she
tried abroad to be like a European fashionable lady, which she
was not--for the simple reason that she was a typical Russian
gentlewoman; and so she was affected, which did not altogether
suit her. The prince, on the contrary, thought everything foreign
detestable, got sick of European life, kept to his Russian
habits, and purposely tried to show himself abroad less European
than he was in reality.

The prince returned thinner, with the skin hanging in loose bags
on his cheeks, but in the most cheerful frame of mind. His
good-humor was even greater when he saw Kitty completely
recovered. The news of Kitty's friendship with Madame Stahl and
Varenka, and the reports the princess gave him of some kind of
change she had noticed in Kitty, troubled the prince and aroused
his habitual feeling of jealousy of everything that drew his
daughter away from him, and a dread that his daughter might have
got out of the reach of his influence into regions inaccessible
to him. But these unpleasant matters were all drowned in the sea
of kindliness and good-humor which was always within him, and
more so than ever since his course of Carlsbad waters.

The day after his arrival the prince, in his long overcoat, with
his Russian wrinkles and baggy cheeks propped up by a starched
collar, set off with his daughter to the spring in the greatest
good-humor.

It was a lovely morning: the bright, cheerful houses with their
little gardens, the sight of the red-faced, red-armed,
beer-drinking German waitresses, working away merrily, did the
heart good. But the nearer they got to the springs the oftener
they met sick people; and their appearance seemed more pitiable
than ever among the every-day conditions of prosperous German
life. Kitty was no longer struck by this contrast. The bright
sun, the brilliant green of the foliage, the strains of the music
were for her the natural setting of all these familiar faces,
with their changes to greater emaciation or to convalescence, for
which she watched. But to the prince the brightness and gaiety of
the June morning, and the sound of the orchestra playing a gay
waltz then in fashion, and above all, the appearance of the
healthy attendants, seemed something unseemly and monstrous, in
conjunction with these slowly moving, dying figures gathered
together from all parts of Europe. In spite of his feeling of
pride and, as it were, of the return of youth, with his favorite
daughter on his arm, he felt awkward, and almost ashamed of his
vigorous step and his sturdy, stout limbs. He felt almost like a
man not dressed in a crowd.

"Present me to your new friends," he said to his daughter,
squeezing her hand with his elbow. "I like even your horrid Soden
for making you so well again. Only it's melancholy, very
melancholy here. Who's that?"

Kitty mentioned the names of all the people they met, with some
of whom she was acquainted and some not. At the entrance of the
garden they met the blind lady, Madame Berthe, with her guide,
and the prince was delighted to see the old Frenchwoman's face
light up when she heard Kitty's voice. She at once began talking
to him with French exaggerated politeness, applauding him for
having such a delightful daughter, extolling Kitty to the skies
before her face, and calling her a treasure, a pearl, and a
consoling angel.

"Well, she's the second angel, then," said the prince, smiling.
"She calls Mademoiselle Varenka angel number one."

"Oh! Mademoiselle Varenka, she's a real angel, allez," Madame
Berthe assented.

In the arcade they met Varenka herself. She was walking rapidly
towards them carrying an elegant red bag.

"Here is papa come," Kitty said to her.

Varenka made--simply and naturally as she did everything--a
movement between a bow and curtsey, and immediately began talking
to the prince, without shyness, naturally, as she talked to every
one.

"Of course I know you; I know you very well," the prince said to
her with a smile, in which Kitty detected with joy that her
father liked her friend. "Where are you off to in such haste?"

"Maman's here," she said, turning to Kitty. "She has not slept
all night, and the doctor advised her to go out. I'm taking her
her work."

"So that's angel number one?" said the prince when Varenka had
gone on.

Kitty saw that her father had meant to make fun of Varenka, but
that he could not do it because he liked her.

"Come, so we shall see all your friends," he went on, "even
Madame Stahl, if she deigns to recognize me."

"Why, did you know her, papa?" Kitty asked apprehensively,
catching the gleam of irony that kindled in the prince's eyes at
the mention of Madame Stahl.

"I used to know her husband, and her too a little, before she'd
joined the Pietists."

"What is a Pietist, papa?" asked Kitty, dismayed to find that
what she prized so highly in Madame Stahl had a name.

"I don't quite know myself. I only know that she thanks God for
everything, for every misfortune, and thanks God too that her
husband died. And that's rather droll, as they didn't get on
together."

"Who's that? What a piteous face!" he asked, noticing a sick man
of medium height sitting on a bench, wearing a brown overcoat and
white trousers that fell in strange folds about his long,
fleshless legs. This man lifted his straw hat, showed his scanty
curly hair and high forehead, painfully reddened by the pressure
of the hat.

"That's Petrov, an artist," answered Kitty, blushing. "And that's
his wife," she added, indicating Anna Pavlovna, who, as though on
purpose, at the very instant they approached walked away after a
child that had run off along a path.

"Poor fellow! and what a nice face he has!" said the prince. "Why
don't you go up to him? He wanted to speak to you."

"Well, let us go, then," said Kitty, turning round resolutely.
"How are you feeling to-day?" she asked Petrov.

Petrov got up, leaning on his stick, and looked shyly at the
prince.

"This is my daughter," said the prince. "Let me introduce
myself."

The painter bowed and smiled, showing his strangely dazzling
white teeth.

"We expected you yesterday, princess," he said to Kitty. He
staggered as he said this, and then repeated the motion, trying
to make it seem as if it had been intentional.

"I meant to come, but Varenka said that Anna Pavlovna sent word
you were not going."

"Not going!" said Petrov, blushing, and immediately beginning to
cough, and his eyes sought his wife. "Anita! Anita!" he said
loudly, and the swollen veins stood out like cords on his thin
white neck.

Anna Pavlovna came up.

"So you sent word to the princess that we weren't going!" he
whispered to her angrily, losing his voice.

"Good-morning, princess," said Anna Pavlovna, with an assumed
smile utterly unlike her former manner. "Very glad to make your
acquaintance," she said to the prince."You've long been expected,
prince."

"What did you send word to the princess that we weren't going
for?" the artist whispered hoarsely once more, still more
angrily, obviously exasperated that his voice failed him so that
he could not give his words the expression he would have liked
to.

"Oh, mercy on us! I thought we weren't going," his wife answered
crossly.

"What, when . . ." He coughed and waved his hand. The prince took
off his hat and moved away with his daughter.

"Ah! ah!" he sighed deeply. "Oh, poor things!"

"Yes, papa," answered Kitty. "And you must know they've three
children, no servant, and scarcely any means. He gets something
from the Academy," she went on briskly, trying to drown the
distress that the queer change in Anna Pavlovna's manner to her
had aroused in her.

"Oh, here's Madame Stahl," said Kitty, indicating an invalid
carriage, where, propped on pillows, something in gray and blue
was Iying under a sunshade. This was Madame Stahl. Behind her
stood the gloomy healthy- looking German workman who pushed the
carriage. Close by was standing a flaxen-headed Swedish count,
whom Kitty knew by name. Several invalids were lingering near the
low carriage, staring at the lady as though she were some
curiosity.

The prince went up to her, and Kitty detected that disconcerting
gleam of irony in his eyes. He went up to Madame Stahl, and
addressed her with extreme courtesy and affability in that
excellent French that so few speak nowadays.

"I don't know if you remember me, but I must recall myself to
thank you for your kindness to my daughter," he said, taking off
his hat and not putting it on again.

"Prince Alexander Shtcherbatsky," said Madame Stahl, lifting upon
him her heavenly eyes, in which Kitty discerned a look of
annoyance. "Delighted! I have taken a great fancy to your
daughter."

"You are still in weak health?"

"Yes; I'm used to it," said Madame Stahl, and she introduced the
prince to the Swedish count.

"You are scarcely changed at all," the prince said to her. "It's
ten or eleven years since I had the honor of seeing you."

"Yes; God sends the cross and sends the strength to bear it.
Often one wonders what is the goal of this life? ...The other
sidel" she said angrily to Varenka, who had rearranged the rug
over her feet not to her satisfaction.

"To do good, probably," said the prince with a twinkle in his
eye.

"That is not for us to judge," said Madame Stahl, perceiving the
shade of expression on the prince's face. "So you will send me
that book, dear count? I'm very grateful to you," she said to the
young Swede.

"Ahl" cried the prince, catching sight of the Moscow colonel
standing near, and with a bow to Madame Stahl he walked away with
his daughter and the Moscow colonel, who joined them.

"That's our aristocracy, prince!" the Moscow colonel said with
ironical intention. He cherished a grudge against Madame Stahl
for not making his acquaintance.

"She's just the same," replied the prince.

"Did you know her before her illness, prince--that's to say
before she took to her bed?"

"Yes. She took to her bed before my eyes," said the prince.

"They say it's ten years since she has stood on her feet."

"She doesn't stand up because her legs are too short. She's a
very bad figure.',

"Papa, it's not possible!" cried Kitty.

"That's what wicked tongues say, my darling. And your Varenka
catches it too," he added. "Oh, these invalid ladies!"

"Oh, no, papal" Kitty objected warmly. "Varenka worships her. And
then she does so much goodl Ask any onel Every one knows her and
Aline Stahl."

"Perhaps so," said the prince, squeezing her hand with his elbow;
"but it's better when one does good so that you may ask every one
and no one knows."

Kitty did not answer, not because she had nothing to say, but
because she did not care to reveal her secret thoughts even to
her father. But, strange to say, although she had so made up her
mind not to be iniluenced by her father's views, not to let him
into her inmost sanctuary, she felt that the heavenly image of
Madame Stahl, which she had carried for a whole month in her
heart, had vanished, never to return, just as the fantastic
figure made up of some clothes thrown down at random vanishes
when one sees that it is only some garment Iying there. All that

was left was a woman with short legs, who lay down because she
had a bad figure, and worried patient Varenka for not arranging
her rug to her liking. And by no effort of the imagination could
Kitty bring back the former Madame Stahl.

Chapter 35

The prince communicated his good-humor to his own family and his
friends, and even to the German landlord in whose rooms the
Shtcherbatskys were staying.

On coming back with Kitty from the springs, the prince, who had
asked the colonel, and Marya Yevgenyevna, and Varenka all to come
and have coffee with them, gave orders for a table and chairs to
be taken into the garden under the chestnut-tree, and lunch to be
laid there. The landlord and the servants, too, grew brisker
under the influence of his good spirits. They knew his
open-handedness; and half an hour later the invalid doctor from
Hamburg, who lived on the top floor, looked enviously out of the
window at the merry party of healthy Russians assembled under the
chestnut-tree. In the trembling circles of shadow cast by the
leaves, at a table, covered with a white cloth, and set with
coffeepot, bread-and-butter, cheese, and cold game, sat the
princess in a high cap with lilac ribbons, distributing cups and
bread-and-butter. At the other end sat the prince, eating
heartily, and talking loudly and merrily. The prince had spread
out near him his purchases, carved boxes, and knick-knacks,
paper-knives of all sorts, of which he bought a heap at every
watering-place, and bestowed them upon every one, including
Lieschen, the servant girl, and the landlord, with whom he jested
in his comically bad German, assuring him that it was not the
water had cured Kitty, but his splendid cookery, especially his
plum-soup. The princess laughed at her husband for his Russian
ways, but she was more lively and good-humored than she had been
all the while she had been at the waters. The colonel smiled, as
he always did, at the prince's jokes, but as far as regards
Europe, of which he believed himself to be making a careful
study, he took the princess's side. The simple-hearted Marya
Yevgenyevna simply roared with laughter at everything absurd the
prince said, and his jokes made Varenka helpless with feeble but
infectious laughter, which was something Kitty had never seen
before.

Kitty was glad of all this, but she could not be light-hearted.
She could not solve the problem her father had unconsciously set
her by his goodhumored view of her friends, and of the life that
had so attracted her. To this doubt there was joined the change
in her relations with the Petrovs, which had been so
conspicuously and unpleasantly marked that morning. Every one was
good-humored, but Kitty could not feel goodhumored, and this
increased her distress. She felt a feeling such as she had known
in childhood, when she had been shut in her room as a punishment,
and had heard her sisters' merry laughter outside.

"Well, but what did you buy this mass of things for?" said the
princess, smiling, and handing her husband a cup of coffee.

"One goes for a walk, one looks in a shop, and they ask you to
buy. 'Erlaucht, Durchlaucht?' Directly they say 'Durchlaucht,'I
can't hold out. I lose ten thalers."

"It's simply from boredom," said the princess.

"Of course it is. Such boredom, my dear, that one doesn't know
what to do with oneself."

"How can you be bored, prince? There's so much that's interesting
now in Germany," said Marya Yevgenyevna.

"But I know everything that's interesting: the plum-soup I know,
and the pea-sausages I know. I know everything."

"No, you may say what you like, prince, there's the interest of
their institutions," said the colonel.

"But what is there interesting about it? They're all as pleased
as brass halfpence. They've conquered everybody, and why am I to
be pleased at that? I haven't conquered any one; and I'm obliged
to take off my own boots, yes, and put them away too; in the
morning, get up and dress at once, and go to the dining-room to
drink bad tea! How different it is at home! You get up in no
haste, you get cross, grumble a little, and come round again.
You've time to think things over, and no hurry."

"But time's money, you forget that," said the colonel.

"Time, indeed, that depends! Why, there's time one would give a
month of for sixpence, and time you wouldn't give half an hour of
for any money. Isn't that so, Katinka? What is it? why are you so
depressed?"

"I'm not depressed."

"Where are you off to? Stay a little longer," he said to Varenka.

"I must be going home," said Varenka, getting up, and again she
went off into a giggle. When she had recovered, she said
good-bye, and went into the house to get her hat.

Kitty followed her. Even Varenka struck her as different. She was
not worse, but different from what she had fancied her before.

"Oh, dear! it's a long while since I've laughed so much!" said
Varenka, gathering up her parasol and her bag. "How nice he is,
your father!"

Kitty did not speak.

"When shall I see you again?" asked Varenka.

"Mamma meant to go and see the Petrovs. Won't you be there?" said
Kitty, to try Varenka.

"Yes," answered Varenka. "They're getting ready to go away, so I
promised to help them pack."

"Well, I'll come too, then."

"No, why should you?"

"Why not? why not? why not?" said Kitty, opening her eyes wide,
and clutching at Varenka's parasol, so as not to let her go. "No,
wait a minute; why not?"

"Oh, nothing; your father has come, and besides, they will feel
awkward at your helping."

"No, tell me why you don't want me to be often at the Petrovs'.
You don't want me to--why not?"

"I didn't say that," said Varenka quietly.

"No, please tell me!"

"Tell you everything?" asked Varenka.

"Everything, everything!" Kitty assented.

"Well, there's really nothing of any consequence; only that
Mihail Alexeyevitch" (that was the artist's name) "had meant to
leave earlier, and now he doesn't want to go away," said Varenka,
smiling.

"Well, well!" Kitty urged impatiently, looking darkly at Varenka.

"Well, and for some reason Anna Pavlovna told him that he didn't
want to go because you are here. Of course, that was nonsense;
but there was a dispute over it--over you. You know how irritable
these sick people are."

Kitty, scowling more than ever, kept silent, and Varenka went on
speaking alone, trying to soften or soothe her, and seeing a
storm coming--she did not know whether of tears or of words.

"So you'd better not go.... You understand; you won't be
offended? . . ."

"And it serves me rightl And it serves me right!" Kitty cried
quickly, snatching the parasol out of Varenka's hand, and looking
past her friend's face.

Varenka felt inclined to smile, looking at her childish fury, but
she was afraid of wounding her.

"How does it serve you right? I don't understand," she said.

"It serves me right, because it was all sham; because it was all
done on purpose, and not from the heart. What business had I to
interfere with outsiders? And so it's come about that I'm a cause
of quarrel, and that I've done what nobody asked me to do.
Because it was all a sham! a sham! a sham! . . ."

"A sham! with what object!" said Varenka gently.

"Oh, it's so idiotic! so hateful! There was no need whatever for
me.... Nothing but sham!" she said, opening and shutting the
parasol.

"But with what object?"

"To seem better to people, to myself, to God; to deceive every
one. No! now I won't descend to that. I'll be bad; but anyway not
a liar, a cheat."

"But who is a cheat?" said Varenka reproachfully. "You speak as
as if..."

But Kitty was in one of her gusts of fury, and she would not let
her finish.

"I don't talk about you, not about you at all. You're perfection.
Yes, yes, I know you're all perfection; but what am I to do if
I'm bad? This would never have been if I weren't bad. So let me
be what I am. I won't be a sham. What have I to do with Anna
Pavlovna? Let them go their way, and me go mine. I can't be
different.... And yet it's not that, it's not that."

"What is not that?" asked Varenka in bewilderment.

"Everything. I can't act except from the heart, and you act from
principle. I liked you simply, but you most likely only wanted to
save me, to improve me."

"You are unjust," said Varenka.

"But I'm not speaking of other people, I'm speaking of myself."

"Kitty," they heard her mother's voice, "come here, show papa
your necklace."

Kitty, with a haughty air, without making peace with her friend,
took the necklace in a little box from the table and went to her
mother.

"What's the matter? Why are you so red?" her mother and father
said to her with one voice.

"Nothing," she answered. "I'll be back directly," and she ran
back.

"She's still here," she thought. "What am I to say to her? Oh,
dear! what have I done, what have I said? Why was I rude to her?
What am I to do? What am I to say to her?" thought Kitty, and she
stopped in the doorway.

Varenka in her hat and with the parasol in her hands was sitting
at the table examining the spring which Kitty had broken. She
lifted her head.

"Varenka, forgive me, do forgive me," whispered Kitty, going up
to her. "I don't remember what I said. I . . ."

"I really didn't mean to hurt you," said Varenka, smiling.

Peace was made. But with her father's coming all the world in
which she had been living was transformed for Kitty. She did not
give up everything she had learned, but she became aware that she
had deceived herself in supposing she could be what she wanted to
be. Her eyes were, it seemed, opened; she felt all the difficulty
of maintaining herself without hypocrisy and self-conceit on the
pinnacle to which she had wished to mount. Moreover, she became
aware of all the dreariness of the world of sorrow, of sick and
dying people, in which she had been living. The efforts she~had
made to like it seemed to her intolerable, and she felt a longing
to get back quickly into the fresh air, to Russia, to Ergushovo,
where, as she knew from letters, her sister Dolly had already
gone with her children.

But her affection for Varenka did not wane. As she said good-bye,
Kitty begged her to come to them in Russia.

"I'll come when you get married," said Varenka.

"I shall never marry."

"Well, then, I shall never come."

"Well, then, I shall be married simply for that. Mind now,
remember your promise," said Kitty.

The doctor's prediction was fulfilled. Kitty returned home to
Russia cured. She was not so gay and thoughtless as before, but
she was serene. Her Moscow troubles had become a memory to her.

PART THREE

Chapter 1

Sergey Ivanovitch Koznishev wanted a rest from mental work, and
instead of going abroad as he usually did, he came towards the
end of May to stay in the country with his brother. In his
judgment the best sort of life was a country life. He had come
now to enjoy such a life at his brother's. Konstantin Levin was
very glad to have him, especially as he did not expect his
brother Nikolay that summer. But in spite of his affection and
respect for Sergey Ivanovitch, Konstantin Levin was uncomfortable
with his brother in the country. It made him uncomfortable, and
it positively annoyed him to see his brother's attitude to the
country. To Konstantin Levin the country was the background of
life, that is of pleasures, endeavors, labor. To Sergey
Ivanovitch the country meant on one hand rest from work, on the
other a valuable antidote to the corrupt influences of town,
which he took with satisfaction and a sense of its utility. To
Konstantin Levin the country was good first because it afforded a
field for labor, of the usefulness of which there could be no
doubt. To Sergey Ivanovitch the country was particularly good,
because there it was possible and fitting to do nothing.
Moreover, Sergey Ivanovitch's attitude to the peasants rather
piqued Konstantin. Sergey Ivanovitch used to say that he knew and
liked the peasantry, and he often talked to the peasants, which
he knew how to do without affectation or condescension, and from
every such conversation he would deduce general conclusions in
favor of the peasantry and in confirmation of his knowing them.
Konstantin Levin did not like such an attitude to the peasants.
To Konstantin the peasant was simply the chief partner in their
common labor, and in spite of all the respect and the love,
almost like that of kinship, he had for the peasant--sucked in
probably, as he said himself, with the milk of his peasant nurse-
-still as a fellow-worker with him, while sometimes enthusiastic
over the vigor, gentleness, and justice of these men, he was very
often, when their common labors called for other qualities,
exasperated with the peasant for his carelessness, lack of
method, drunkenness, and lying. If he had been asked whether he
liked or didn't like the peasants, Konstantin Levin would have
been absolutely at a loss what to reply. He liked and did not
like the peasants, just as he liked and did not like men in
general. Of course, being a good-hearted man, he liked men rather
than he disliked them, and so too with the peasants. But like or
dislike "the people" as something apart he could not, not only
because he lived with "the people," and all his interests were
bound up with theirs, but also because he regarded himself as a
part of "the people," did not see any special qualities or
failings distinguishing himself and "the people," and could not
contrast himself with them. Moreover, although he had lived so
long in the closest relations with the peasants, as farmer and
arbitrator, and what was more, as adviser (the peasants trusted
him, and for thirty miles round they would come to ask his
advice), he had no definite views of "the people," and would have
been as much at a loss to answer the question whether he knew
"the people" as the question whether he liked them. For him to
say he knew the peasantry would have been the same as to say he
knew men. He was continually watching and getting to know people
of all sorts, and among them peasants, whom he regarded as good
and interesting people, and he was continually observing new
points in them, altering his former views of them and forming new
ones. With Sergey Ivanovitch it was quite the contrary. Just as
he liked and praised a country life in comparison with the life
he did not like, so too he liked the peasantry in
contradistinction to the class of men he did not like, and so too
he knew the peasantry as something distinct from and opposed to
men generally. In his methodical brain there were distinctly
formulated certain aspects of peasant life, deduced partly from
that life itself, but chiefly from contrast with other modes of
life. He never changed his opinion of the peasantry and his
sympathetic attitude towards them.

In the discussions that arose between the brothers on their views
of the peasantry, Sergey Ivanovitch always got the better of his
brother, precisely because Sergey Ivanovitch had definite ideas
about the peasant--his character, his qualities, and his tastes.
Konstantin Levin had no definite and unalterable idea on the
subject, and so in their arguments Konstantin was readily
convicted of contradicting himself.

In Sergey Ivanovitch's eyes his younger brother was a capital
fellow, with his heart in the right place (as he expressed it in
French), but with a mind which, though fairly quick, was too much
influenced by the impressions of the moment, and consequently
filled with contradictions. With all the condescension of an
elder brother he sometimes explained to him the true import of
things, but he derived little satisfaction from arguing with him
because he got the better of him too easily.

Konstantin Levin regarded his brother as a man of immense
intellect and culture, as generous in the highest sense of the
word, and possessed of a special faculty for working for the
public good. But in the depths of his heart, the older he became,
and the more intimately he knew his brother, the more and more
frequently the thought struck him that this faculty of working
for the public good, of which he felt himself utterly devoid, was
possibly not so much a quality as a lack of something--not a lack
of good, honest, noble desires and tastes, but a lack of vital
force, of what is called heart, of that impulse which drives a
man to choose some one out of the innumerable paths of life, and
to care only for that one. The better he knew his brother, the
more he noticed that Sergey Ivanovitch and many other people who
worked for the public welfare were not led by an impulse of the
heart to care for the public good, but reasoned from intellectual
considerations that it was a right thing to take interest in
public-affairs, and consequently took interest in them. Levin was
confirmed in this generalization by observing that his brother
did not take questions affecting the public welfare or the
question of the immortality of the soul a bit more to heart than
he did chess problems, or the ingenious construction of a new
machine.

Besides this, Konstantin Levin was not at his ease with his
brother, because in summer in the country Levin was continually
busy with work on the land, and the long summer day was not long
enough for him to get through all he had to do, while Sergey
Ivanovitch was taking a holiday. But though he was taking a
holiday now, that is to say, he was doing no writing, he was so
used to intellectual activity that he liked to put into concise
and eloquent shape the ideas that occurred to him, and liked to
have some one to listen to him. His most usual and natural
1istener was his brother. And so in spite of the friendliness and
directness of their relations, Konstantin felt an awkwardness in
leaving him alone. Sergey Ivanovitch liked to stretch himself on
the grass in the sun, and to lie so, basking and chatting lazily.

"You wouldn't believe," he would say to his brother, "what a
pleasure this rural laziness is to me. Not an idea in one's
brain, as empty as a drum!"

But Konstantin Levin found it dull sitting and listening to him,
especially when he knew that while he was away they would be
carting dung onto the fields not ploughed ready for it, and
heaping it all up anyhow; and would not screw the shares in the
ploughs, but would let them come off and then say that the new
ploughs were a silly invention, and there was nothing like the
old Andreevna plough, and so on.

"Come, you've done enough trudging about in the heat," Sergey
Ivanovitch would say to him.

"No, I must just run round to the counting-house for a minute,"
Levin would answer, and he would run off to the fields,

Chapter 2

Early in June it happened that Agafea Mihalovna, the old nurse
and housekeeper, in carrying to the cellar a jar of mushrooms she
had just pickled, slipped, fell, and sprained her wrist. The
district doctor, a talkative young medical student, who had just
finished his studies, came to see her. He examined the wrist,
said it was not broken, was delighted at a chance of talking to
the celebrated Sergey Ivanovitch Koznishev, and to show his
advanced views of things told him all the scandal of the
district, complaining of the poor state into which the district
council had fallen. Sergey Ivanovitch listened attentively, asked
him questions, and, roused by a new listener, he talked fluently,
uttered a few keen and weighty observations, respectfully
appreciated by the young doctor, and was soon in that eager frame
of mind his brother knew so well, which always, with him,
followed a brilliant and eager conversation. After the departure
of the doctor, he wanted to go with a fishingrod to the river.
Sergey Ivanovitch was fond of angling, and was, it seemed, proud
of being able to care for such a stupid occupation.

Konstantin Levin, whose presence was needed in the plough-land
and meadows, had come to take his brother in the trap.

It was that time of the year, the turning-point of summer, when
the crops of the present year are a certainty, when one begins to
think of the sowing for next year, and the mowing is at hand;
when the rye is all in ear, though its ears are still light, not
yet full, and it waves in gray-green billows in the wind; when
the green oats, with tufts of yellow grass scattered here and
there among it, droop irregularly over the late-sown fields; when
the early buckwheat is already out and hiding the ground; when
the fallow-lands, trodden hard as stone by the cattle, are
halfploughed over, with paths left untouched by the plough; when
from the dry dung-heaps carted onto the fields there comes at
sunset a smell of manure mixed with meadow-sweet, and on the
low-lying lands the riverside meadows are a thick sea of grass
waiting for the mowing, with blackened heaps of the stalks of
sorrel among it.

It was the time when there comes a brief pause in the toil of the
fields before the beginning of the labors of harvest--every year
recurring, every year straining every nerve of the peasants. The
crop was a splendid one, and bright, hot summer days had set in
with short, dewy nights.

The brothers had to drive through the woods to reach the meadows.
Sergey Ivanovitch was all the while admiring the beauty of the
woods, which were a tangled mass of leaves, pointing out to his
brother now an old lime-tree on the point of flowering, dark on
the shady side, and brightly spotted with yellow stipples, now
the young shoots of this year's saplings brilliant with emerald.
Konstantin Levin did not like talking and hearing about the
beauty of nature. Words for him, took away the beauty of what he
saw. He assented to what his brother said, but he could not help
beginning to think of other things. When they came out of the
woods, all his attention was engrossed by the view of the
fallow-land on the upland, in parts yellow with grass, in parts
trampled and checkered with furrows, in parts dotted with ridges
of dung, and in parts even ploughed. A string of carts was moving
across it. Levin counted the carts, and was pleased that all that
were wanted had been brought, and at the sight of the meadows his
thoughts passed to the mowing. He always felt something special
moving him to the quick at the hay-making. On reaching the meadow
Levin stopped the horse.

The morning dew was still lying on the thick undergrowth of the
grass, and that he might not get his feet wet, Sergey Ivanovitch
asked his brother to drive him in the trap up to the willow-tree
from which the carp was caught. Sorry as Konstantin Levin was to
crush down his mowing- grass, he drove him into the meadow. The
high grass softly turned about the wheels and the horse's legs,
leaving its seeds clinging to the wet axles and spokes of the
wheels. His brother seated himself under a bush, arranging his
tackle, while Levin led the horse away, fastened him up, and
walked into the vast gray-green sea of grass unstirred by the
wind. The silky grass with its ripe seeds came almost to his
waist in the dampest spots.

Crossing the meadow, Konstantin Levin came out onto the road, and
met an old man with a swollen eye, carrying a skep on his
shoulder.

"What? taken a stray swarm, Fomitch?" he asked.

"No, indeed, Konstantin Dmitritch! All we can do to keep our own!
This is the second swarm that has flown away.... Luckily the lads
caught them. They were ploughing your field. They unyoked the
horses and galloped after them."

"Well, what do you say, Fomitch--start mowing or wait a bit?"

"Eh, well. Our way's to wait till St. Peter's Day. But you always
mow sooner. Well, to be sure, please God, the hay's good.
There'll be plenty for the beasts."

"What do you think about the weather?"

"That's in God's hands. Maybe it will be fine."

Levin went up to his brother.

Sergey Ivanovitch had caught nothing, but he was not bored, and
seemed in the most cheerful frame of mind. Levin saw that,
stimulated by his conversation with the doctor, he wanted to
talk. Levin, on the other hand, would have liked to get home as
soon as possible to give orders about getting together the mowers
for next day, and to set at rest his doubts about the mowing,
which greatly absorbed him.

"Well, let's be going," he said.

"Why be in such a hurry? Let's stay a little. But how wet you
are! Even though one catches nothing, it's nice. That's the best
thing about every part. of sport, that one has to do with nature.
How exquisite this steely water is!" said Sergey Ivanovitch.
"These riverside banks always remind me of the riddle--do you
know it? 'The grass says to the water; we quiver and we quiver.'
"

"I don't know the riddle," answered Levin wearily.

Chapter 3

"Do you know I've been thinking about you," said Sergey
Ivanovitch. "It's beyond everything what's being done in the
district, according to what this doctor tells me. He's a very
intelligent fellow. And as I've told you before, I tell you
again: it's not right for you not to go to the meetings, and
altogether to keep out of the district business. If decent people
won't go into it, of course it's bound to go all wrong. We pay
the money, and it all goes in salaries, and there are no schools,
nor district nurses, nor midwives, nor drug-stores--nothing."

"Well, I did try, you know," Levin said slowly and unwillingly.
"I can't! and so there's no help for it."

"But why can't you? I must own I can't make it out. Indifference,
incapacity--I won't admit; surely it's not simply laziness?"

"None of those things. I've tried, and I see I can do nothing,"
said Levin.

He had hardly grasped what his brother was saying. Looking
towards the plough-land across the river, he made out something
black, but he could not distinguish whether it was a horse or the
bailiff on horseback.

"Why is it you can do nothing? You made an attempt and didn't
succeed, as you think, and you give in. How can you have so
little self-respect?"

"Self-respect!" said Levin, stung to the quick by his brother's
words; "I don't understand. If they'd told me at college that
other people understood the integral calculus, and I didn't, then
pride would have come in. But in this case one wants first to be
convinced that one has certain qualifications for this sort of
business, and especially that all this business is of great
importance."

"What! do you mean to say it's not of importance?" said Sergey
vanovitch, stung to the quick too at his brother's considering
anything of no importance that interested him, and still more at
his obviously paying little attention to what he was saying.

"I don't think it important; it does not take hold of me, I can't
help it," answered Levin, making out that what he saw was the
bailiff, and that the bailiff seemed to be letting the peasants
go offthe ploughed land. They were turning the plough over. "Can
they have finished ploughing?" he wondered.

"Come, really though," said the elder brother, with a frown on
his handsome, clever face, "there's a limit to everything. It's
very well to be original and genuine, and to dislike everything
conventional--I know all about that; but really, what you're
saying either has no meaning, or it has a very wrong meaning. How
can you think it a matter of no importance whether the peasant,
whom you love as you assert . . ."

"I never did assert it," thought Konstantin Levin.

"...dies without help? The ignorant peasant-women starve the
children, and the people stagnate in darkness, and are helpless
in the hands of every village clerk, while you have at your
disposal a means of helping them, and don't help them because to
your mind it's of no importance."

And Sergey Ivanovitch put before him the alternative: either you
are so undeveloped that you can't see all that you can do, or you
won't sacrifice your ease, your vanity, or whatever it is, to do
it.

Konstantin Levin felt that there was no course open to him but to
submit, or to confess to a lack of zeal for the public good. And
this mortified him and hurt his feelings.

"It's both," he said resolutely: "I don't see that it was
possible..."

"What! was it impossible, if the money were properly laid out, to
provide medical aid?"

"Impossible, as it seems to me.... For the three thousand square
miles of our district, what with our thaws, and the storms, and
the work in the fields, I don't see how it is possible to provide
medical aid all over. And besides, I don't believe in medicine."

"Oh, well, that's unfair.... I can quote to you thousands of
instances.... But the schools, anyway."

"Why have schools?"

"What do you mean? Can there be two opinions of the advantage of
education? If it's a good thing for you, it's a good thing for
every one."

Konstantin Levin felt himself morally pinned.against a wall, and
so he got hot, and unconsciously blurted out the chief cause of
his indifference to public business.

"Perhaps it may all be very good; but why should I worry myself
about establishing dispensaries which I shall never make use of,
and schools to which I shall never send my children, to which
even the peasants don't want to send their children, and to which
I've no very firm faith that they ought to send them?" said he.

Sergey Ivanovitch was for a minute surprised at this unexpected
view of the subject; but he promptly made a new plan of attack.
He was silent for a little, drew out a hook, threw it in again,
and turned to his brother smiling.

"Come, now.... In the first place, the dispensary is needed. We
ourselves sent for the district doctor for Agafea Mihalovna."

"Oh, well, but I fancy her wrist will never be straight again."

"That remains to be proved.... Next, the peasant who can read and
write is as a workman of more use and value to you."

"No, you can ask any one you like," Konstantin Levin answered
with decision, "the man that can read and write is much inferior
as a workman And mending the highroads is an impossibility; and
as soon as they put up bridges they're stolen."

"Still, that's not the point," said Sergey Ivanovitch, frowning.
He disliked contradiction, and still more, arguments that were
continually

skipping from one thing to another, introducing new and
disconnected points, so that there was no knowing to which to
reply. "Do you admit that education is a benefit for the people?"

"Yes, I admit it," said Levin without thinking, and he was
conscious immediately that he had said what he did not think. He
felt that if he admitted that, it would be proved that he had
been talking meaningless rubbish. How it would be proved he could
not tell, but he knew that this would inevitably be logically
proved to him, and he awaited the proofs.

The argument turned out to be far simpler than he had expected.

"If you admit that it is a benefit," said Sergey Ivanovitch,
"then, as an honest man, you cannot help caring about it and
sympathizing with the movement, and so wishing to work for it."

"But I still do not admit this movement to be just," said
Konstantin Levin, reddening a little.

"What! But you said just now . . ."

"That's to say, I don't admit it's being either good or
possible."

"That you can't tell without making the trial."

"Well, supposing that's so," said Levin, though he did not
suppose so at all, "supposing that is so, still I don't see, all
the same, what I'm to worry myself about it for."

"How so?"

"No; since we are talking, explain it to me from the
philosophical point of view," said Levin.

"I can't see where philosophy comes in," said Sergey Ivanovitch,
in a tone, Levin fancied, as though he did not admit his
brother's right to talk about philosophy. And that irritated
Levin.

"I'll tell you, then," he said with heat, "I imagine the
mainspring of all our actions is, after all, self-interest. Now
in the local institutions I, as a nobleman, see nothing that
could conduce to my prosperity, and the roads are not better and
could not be better; my horses carry me well enough over bad
ones. Doctors and dispensaries are no use to me. An arbitrator of
disputes is no use to me. I never appeal to him, and never shall
appeal to him. The schools are no good to me, but positively
harmful, as I told you. For me the district institutions simply
mean the liability to pay fourpence halfpenny for every three
acres, to drive into the town, sleep with bugs, and listen to all
sorts of idiocy and loathsomeness, and self-interest offers me no
inducement."

"Excuse me," Sergey Ivanovitch interposed with a smile,
"self-interest did not induce us to work for the emancipation of
the serfs, but we did work for it."

"No!" Konstantin Levin broke in with still greater heat; "the
emancipation of the serfs was a different matter. There
self-interest did come in. One longed to throw off that yoke that
crushed us, all decent people among us. But to be a
town-councilor and discuss how many dustmen are needed, and how
chimneys shall be constructed in the town in which I don't live--
to serve on a jury and try a peasant who's stolen a flitch of
bacon, and listen for six hours at a stretch to all sorts of
jabber from the counsel for the defense and the prosecution, and
the president crossexamining my old half-witted Alioshka, 'Do you
admit, prisoner in the dock, the fact of the removal of the
bacon?' 'Eh?'"

Konstantin Levin had warmed to his subject, and began mimicking
the president and the half-witted Alioshka: it seemed to him that
it was all to the point.

But Sergey Ivanovitch shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, what do you mean to say, then?"

"I simply mean to say that those rights that touch me ...my
interest, I shall always defend to the best of my ability; that
when they made raids on us students, and the police read our
letters, I was ready to defend those rights to the utmost, to
defend my rights to education and freedom. I can understand
compulsory military service, which affects my children, my
brothers, and myself, I am ready to deliberate on what concerns
me; but deliberating on how to spend forty thousand roubles of
district council money, or judging the half-witted Alioshka--I
don't understand, and I can't do it."

Konstantin Levin spoke as though the floodgates of his speech had
burst open. Sergey Ivanovitch smiled.

"But to-morrow it'll be your turn to be tried; would it have
suited your tastes better to be tried in the old criminal
tribunal?"

"I'm not going to be tried. I shan't murder anybody, and I've no
need of it. Well, I tell you what," he went on, flying off again
to a subject quite beside the point, "our district
self-government and all the rest of it--it's just like the
birch-branches we stick in the ground on Trinity Day, for
instance, to look like a copse which has grown up of itself in
Europe, and I can't gush over these birch-branches and believe in
them."

Sergey Ivanovitch merely shrugged his shoulders, as though to
express his wonder how the birch-branches had come into their
argument at that point, though he did really understand at once
what his brother meant.

"Excuse me, but you know one really can't argue in that way," he
observed.

But Konstantin Levin wanted to justify himself for the failing,
of which he was conscious, of lack of zeal for the public
welfare, and he went on.

"I imagine," he said, "that no sort of activity is likely to be
lasting if it is not founded on self-interest, that's a universal
principle, a philosophical principle," he said, repeating the
word "philosophica!" with determination, as though wishing to
show that he had as much right as any one else to talk of
philosophy.

Sergey Ivanovitch smiled. "He too has a philosophy of his own at
the service of his natural tendencies," he thought.

"Come, you'd better let philosophy alone," he said. "The chief

problem of the philosophy of all ages consists just in finding
the indispensable connection which exists between individual and
social interests. But that's not to the point; what is to the
point is a correction I must make in your comparison. The birches
are not simply stuck in, but some are sown and some are planted,
and one must deal carefully with them. It's only those peoples
that have an intuitive sense of what's of importance and
significance in their institutions, and know how to value them,
that have a future before them--it's only those peoples that one
can truly call historical."

And Sergey Ivanovitch carried the subject into the regions of
philosophical history where Konstantin Levin could not follow
him, and showed him all the incorrectness of his view.

"As for your dislike of it, excuse my saying so, that's simply
our Russian sloth and old serf-owner's ways, and I'm convinced
that in you it's a temporary error and will pass."

Konstantin was silent. He felt himself vanquished on all sides,
but he felt at the same time that what he wanted to say was
unintelligible to his brother. Only he could not make up his mind
whether it was unintelligible because he was not capable of
expressing his meaning clearly, or because his brother would not
or could not understand him. But he did not pursue the
speculation, and without replying, he fell to musing on a quite
different and personal matter.

Sergey Ivanovitch wound up the last line, untied the horse, and
they drove off.

Chapter 4

The personal matter that absorbed Levin during his conversation
with his brother was this. Once in a previous year he had gone to
look at the mowing, and being made very angry by the bailiff he
had recourse to his favorite means for regaining his temper,--he
took a scythe from a peasant and began mowing.

He liked the work so much that he had several times tried his
hand at mowing since. He had cut the whole of the meadow in front
of his house, and this year ever since the early spring he had
cherished a plan for mowing for whole days together with the
peasants. Ever since his brother's arrival, he had been in doubt
whether to mow or not. He was loth to leave his brother alone all
day long, and he was afraid his brother would laugh at him about
it. But as he drove into the meadow, and recalled the sensations
of mowing, he came near deciding that he would go mowing. After
the irritating discussion with his brother, he pondered over this
intention again.

"I must have physical exercise, or my temper'll certainly be
ruined," he thought, and he determined he would go mowing,
however awkward he might feel about it with his brother or the
peasants.

Towards evening Konstantin Levin went to his counting-house, gave
directions as to the work to be done, and sent about the village
to summon the mowers for the morrow, to cut the hay in Kalinov
meadow, the largest and best of his grass lands.

"And send my scythe, please, to Tit, for him to set it, and bring
it round to-morrow. I shall maybe do some mowing myself too," he
said trying not to be embarrassed.

The bailiff smiled and said: "Yes, sir."

At tea the same evening Levin said to his brother:

"I fancy the fine weather will last. To-morrow I shall start
mowing."

"I'm so fond of that form of field labor," said Sergey
Ivanovitch.

"I'm awfully fond of it. I sometimes mow myself with the
peasants, and to-morrow I want to try mowing the whole day."

Sergey Ivanovitch lifted his head, and looked with interest at
his brother.

"How do you mean? Just like one of the peasants, all day long?"

"Yes, it's very pleasant," said Levin.

"It's splendid as exercise, only you'll hardly be able to stand
it," said Sergey Ivanovitch, without a shade of irony.

"I've tried it. It's hard work at first, but you get into it. I
dare say I shall manage to keep it up...."

"Really! what an idea! But tell me, how do the peasants look at
it? I suppose they laugh in their sleeves at their master's being
such a queer fish?"

"No, I don't think so; but it's so delightful, and at the same
time such hard work, that one has no time to think about it."

"But how will you do about dining with them? To send you a bottle
of Lafitte and roast turkey out there would be a little awkward."

"No, I'll simply come home at the time of their noonday rest."

Next morning Konstantin Levin got up earlier than usual, but he
was detained giving directions on the farm, and when he reached
the mowing-grass the mowers were already at their second row.

From the uplands he could get a view of the shaded cut part of
the meadow below, with its grayish ridges of cut grass, and the
black heaps of coats, taken off by the mowers at the place from
which they had started cutting.

Gradually, as he rode towards the meadow, the peasants came into
sight, some in coats, some in their shirts mowing, one behind
another in a long string, swinging their scythes differently He
counted forty-two of them.

They were mowing slowly over the uneven, low-lying parts of the
meadow, where there had been an old dam. Levin recognized some of
his own men. Here was old Yermil in a very long white smock,
bending forward to swing a scythe; there was a young fellow,
Vaska, who had been a coachman of Levin's, taking every row with
a wide sweep. Here, too, was Tit, Levin's preceptor in the art of
mowing, a thin little peasant. He was in front of all, and cut
his wide row without bending, as though playing with the scythe.

Levin got off his mare, and fastening her up by the roadside went
to meet Tit, who took a second scythe out of a bush and gave it
to him.

"It's ready, sir; it's like a razor, cuts of itself," said Tit,
taking off his cap with a smile and giving him the scythe.

Levin took the scythe, and began trying it. As they finished
their rows, the mowers, hot and good-humored, came out into the
road one after another, and, laughing a little, greeted the
master. They all stared at him, but no one made any remark, till
a tall old man, with a wrinkled, beardless face, wearing a short
sheepskin jacket, came out into the road and accosted him.

"Look'ee now, master, once take hold of the rope there's no
letting it go!" he said, and Levin heard smothered laughter among
the mowers.

"I'll try not to let it go," he said, taking his stand behind
Tit, and waiting for the time to begin.

"Mind'ee," repeated the old man.

Tit made room, and Levin started behind him. The grass was short
close to the road, and Levin, who had not done any mowing for a
long while, and was disconcerted by the eyes fastened upon him,
cut badly for the first moments, though he swung his scythe
vigorously. Behind him he heard voices:

"It's not set right; handle's too high; see how he has to stoop
to it," said one.

"Press more on the heel," said another.

"Never mind, he'll get on all right," the old man resumed.

"He's made a start.... You swing it too wide, you'll tire
yourself out.... The master, sure, does his best for himself! But
see the grass missed out! For such work us fellows would catch
it!"

The grass became softer, and Levin, listening without answering,
followed Tit, trying to do the best he could. They moved a
hundred paces. Tit kept moving on, without stopping, not showing
the slightest weariness, but Levin was already beginning to be
afraid he would not be able to keep it up: he was so tired.

He felt as he swung his scythe that he was at the very end of his
strength, and was making up his mind to ask Tit to stop. But at
that very moment Tit stopped of his own accord, and stooping down
picked up some grass, rubbed his scythe, and began whetting it.
Levin straightened himself, and drawing a deep breath looked
round. Behind him came a peasant, and he too was evidently tired,
for he stopped at once without waiting to mow up to Levin, and
began whetting his scythe. Tit sharpened his scythe and Levin's,
and they went on. The next time it was just the same. Tit moved
on with sweep after sweep of his scythe, not stopping or showing
signs of weariness. Levin followed him, trying not to get left
behind, and he found it harder and harder: the moment came when
he felt he had no strength left, but at that very moment Tit
stopped and whetted the scythes.

So they mowed the first row. And this long row seemed
particularly hard work to Levin; but when the end was reached and
Tit, shouldering his scythe, began with deliberate stride
returning on the tracks left by his heels in the cut grass, and
Levin walked back in the same way over the space he had cut, in
spite of the sweat that ran in streams over his face and fell in
drops down his nose, and drenched his back as though he had been
soaked in water, he felt very happy. What delighted him
particularly was that now he knew he would be able to hold out.

His pleasure was only disturbed by his row not being well cut. "I
will swing less with my arm and more with my whole body," he
thought, comparing Tit's row, which looked as if it had been cut
with a line, with his own unevenly and irregularly lying grass.

The first row, as Levin noticed, Tit had mowed specially quickly,
probably wishing to put his master to the test, and the row
happened to be a long one. The next rows were easier, but still
Levin had to strain every nerve not to drop behind the peasants.

He thought of nothing, wished for nothing, but not to be left
behind the peasants, and to do his work as well as possible. He
heard nothing but the swish of scythes, and saw before him Tit's
upright figure mowing away, the crescent-shaped curve of the cut
grass, the grass and flower heads slowly and rhythmically falling
before the blade of his scythe, and ahead of him the end of the
row, where would come the rest.

Suddenly, in the midst of his toil, without understanding what it
was or whence it came, he felt a pleasant sensation of chill on
his hot, moist shoulders. He glanced at the sky in the interval
for whetting the scythes. A heavy, lowering storm-cloud had blown
up, and big raindrops were falling. Some of the peasants went to
their coats and put them on; others --just like Levin himself--
merely shrugged their shoulders, enjoying the pleasant coolness
of it.

Another row, and yet another row, followed--long rows and short
rows, with good grass and with poor grass. Levin lost all sense
of time, and could not have told whether it was late or early
now. A change began to come over his work, which gave him immense
satisfaction. In the midst of his toil there were moments during
which he forgot what he was doing, and it came all easy to him,
and at those same moments his row was almost as smooth and well
cut as Tit's. But so soon as he recollected what he was doing,
and began trying to do better, he was at once conscious of all
the difficulty of his task, and the row was badly mown.

On finishing yet another row he would have gone back to the top
of the meadow again to begin the next, but Tit stopped, and going
up to the old man said something in a low voice to him. They both
looked at

the sun. "What are they talking about, and why doesn't he go
back?" thought Levin, not guessing that the peasants had been
mowing no less than four hours without stopping, and it was time
for their lunch.

"Lunch, sir," said the old man.

"Is it really time? That's right; lunch, then."

Levin gave his scythe to Tit, and together with the peasants, who
were crossing the long stretch of mown grass, slightly sprinkled
with rain, to get their bread from the heap of coats, he went
towards his house. Only then he suddenly awoke to the fact that
he had been wrong about the weather and the rain was drenching
his hay.

"The hay will be spoiled," he said.

"Not a bit of it, sir; mow in the rain, and you'll rake in fine
weather!" said the old man.

Levin untied his horse and rode home to his coffee. Sergey
Ivanovitch was only just getting up. When he had drunk his
coffee, Levin rode back again to the mowing before Sergey
Ivanovitch had had time to dress and come down to the
dining-room.

Chapter 5

After lunch Levin was not in the same place in the string of
mowers as before, but stood between the old man who had accosted
him jocosely, and now invited him to be his neighbor, and a young
peasant, who had only been married in the autumn, and who was
mowing this summer for the first time.

The old man, holding himself erect, moved in front, with his feet
turned out, taking long, regular strides, and with a precise and
regular action which seemed to cost him no more effort than
swinging one's arms in walking, as though it were in play, he
laid down the high, even row of grass. It was as though it were
not he but the sharp scythe of itself swishing through the juicy
grass.

Behind Levin came the lad Mishka. His pretty, boyish face, with a
twist of fresh grass bound round his hair, was all working with
effort; but whenever any one looked at him he smiled. He would
clearly have died sooner than own it was hard work for him.

Levin kept between them. In the very heat of the day the mowing
did not seem such hard work to him. The perspiration with which
he was drenched cooled him, while the sun, that burned his back,
his head, and his arms, bare to the elbow, gave a vigor and
dogged energy to his labor; and more and more often now came
those moments of unconsciousness, when it was possible not to
think what one was doing. The scythe cut of itself. These were
happy moments. Still more delightful were the moments when they
reached the stream where the rows ended, and the old man rubbed
his scythe with the wet, thick grass, rinsed its blade in

the fre offered Levin a drink.

"What do you say to my home-brew, eh? Good, eh?" said he,
winking.

And truly Levin had never drunk any liquor so good as this warm
water with green bits floating in it, and a taste of rust from
the tin dipper. And immediately after this came the delicious,
slow saunter, with his hand on the scythe, during which he could
wipe away the streaming sweat, take deep breaths of air, and look
about at the long string of mowers and at what was happening
around in the forest and the country.

The longer Levin mowed, the oftener he felt the moments of
unconsciousness in which it seemed not his hands that swung the
scythe, but the scythe mowing of itself, a body full of life and
consciousness of its own, and as though by magic, without
thinking of it, the work turned out regular and well-finished of
itself. These were the most blissful moments.

It was only hard work when he had to break off the motion, which
had become unconscious, and to think; when he had to mow round a
hillock or a tuft of sorrel. The old man did this easily. When a
hillock came he changed his action, and at one time with the
heel, and at another with the tip of his scythe, clipped the
hillock round both sides with short strokes. And while he did
this he kept looking about and watching what came into his view:
at one moment he picked a wild berry and ate it or offered it to
Levin, then he flung away a twig with the blade of the scythe,
then he looked at a quail's nest, from which the bird flew just
under the scythe, or caught a snake that crossed his path, and
lifting it on the scythe as though on a fork showed it to Levin
and threw it away.

For both Levin and the young peasant behind him, such changes of
position were difficult. Both of them, repeating over and over
again the same strained movement, were in a perfect frenzy of
toil, and were incapable of shifting their position and at the
same time watching what was before them.

Levin did not notice how time was passing. If he had been asked
how long he had been working he would have said half an hour--and
it was getting on for dinner-time. As they were walking back over
the cut grass, the old man called Levin's attention to the little
girls and boys who were coming from different directions, hardly
visible through the long grass, and along the road towards the
mowers, carrying sacks of bread dragging at their little hands
and pitchers of the sour rye-beer, with cloths wrapped round
them.

"Look'ee, the little emmets crawling!" he said, pointing to them,
and he shaded his eyes with his hand to look at the sun. They
mowed two more rows; the old man stopped.

"Come, master, dinner-time!" he said briskly. And on reaching the
stream the mowers moved off across the lines of cut grass towards
their

pile of coats, where the children who had brought their dinners
were sitting waiting for them. The peasants gathered into groups-
-those further away under a cart, those nearer under a willow
bush.

Levin sat down by them; he felt disinclined to go away.

All constraint with the master had disappeared long ago. The
peasants got ready for dinner. Some washed, the young lads bathed
in the stream, others made a place comfortable for a rest, untied
their sacks of bread, and uncovered the pitchers of rye-beer. The
old man crumbled up some bread in a cup, stirred it with the
handle of a spoon, poured water on it from the dipper, broke up
some more bread, and having seasoned it with salt, he turned to
the east to say his prayer.

"Come, master, taste my sop," said he, kneeling down before the
cup.

The sop was so good that Levin gave up the idea of going home. He
dined with the old man, and talked to him about his family
affairs, taking the keenest interest in them, and told him about
his own affairs and all the circumstances that could be of
interest to the old man. He felt much nearer to him than to his
brother, and could not help smiling at the affection he felt for
this man. When the old man got up again, said his prayer, and lay
down under a bush, putting some grass under his head for a
pillow, Levin did the same, and in spite of the clinging flies
that were so persistent in the sunshine, and the midges that
tickled his hot face and body, he fell asleep at once and only
waked when the sun had passed to the other side of the bush and
reached him. The old man had been awake a long while, and was
sitting up whetting the scythes of the younger lads.

Levin looked about him and hardly recognized the place,
everything was so changed. The immense stretch of meadow had been
mown and was sparkling with a peculiar fresh brilliance, with its
lines of already sweet-smelling grass in the slanting rays of the
evening sun. And the bushes about the river had been cut down,
and the river itself, not visible before, now gleaming like steel
in its bends, and the moving, ascending peasants, and the sharp
wall of grass of the unmown part of the meadow, and the hawks
hovering over the stripped meadow--all was perfectly new. Raising
himself, Levin began considering how much had been cut and how
much more could still be done that day.

The work done was exceptionally much for forty-two men. They had
cut the whole of the big meadow, which had, in the years of serf
labor, taken thirty scythes two days to mow. Only the corners
remained to do, where the rows were short. But Levin felt a
longing to get as much mowing done that day as possible, and was
vexed with the sun sinking so quickly in the sky. He felt no
weariness; all he wanted was to get his work done more and more
quickly and as much done as possible.

"Could you cut Mashkin Upland too?--what do you think?" he said
to the old man.

"As God wills, the sun's not high. A little vodka for the lads?"

At the afternoon rest, when they were sitting down again, arid
those who smoked had lighted their pipes, the old man told the
men that Mashkin Upland's to be cut--"there'll be some vodka."

"Why not cut it? Come on, Tit! We'll look sharpl We can eat at
night. Come on!" cried voices, and eating up their bread, the
mowers went back to work.

"Come, lads, keep it up!" said Tit, and ran on ahead almost at a
trot.

"Get along, get along!" said the old man, hurrying after him and
easily overtaking him, "I'll mow you down, look out!"

And young and old mowed away, as though they were racing with one
another. But however fast they worked, they did not spoil the
grass, and the rows were laid just as neatly and exactly. The
little piece left uncut in the corner was mown in five minutes.
The last of the mowers were just ending their rows while the
foremost snatched up their coats onto their shoulders, and
crossed the road towards Mashkin Upland.

The sun was already sinking into the trees when they went with
their jingling dippers into the wooded ravine of Mashkin Upland.
The grass was up to their waists in the middle of the hollow,
soft, tender, and feathery, spotted here and there among the
trees with wild heart's-ease.

After a brief consultation--whether to take the rows lengthwise
or diagonally--Prohor Yermilin, also a renowned mower, a huge,
black- haired peasant, went on ahead. He went up to the top,
turned back again and started mowing, and they all proceeded to
form in line behind him, going downhill through the hollow and
uphill right up to the edge of the forest. The sun sank behind
the forest. The dew was falling by now; the mowers were in the
sun only on the hillside, but below, where a mist was rising, and
on the opposite side, they mowed into the fresh, dewy shade. The
work went rapidly. The grass cut with a juicy sound, and was at
once laid in high, fragrant rows. The mowers from all sides,
brought closer together in the short row, kept urging one another
on to the sound of jingling dipper and clanging scythes, and the
hiss of the whetstones sharpening them, and good-humored shouts.

Levin still kept between the young peasant and the old man. The
old man, who had put on his short sheepskin jacket, was just as
good- humored, jocose, and free in his movements. Among the trees
they were continually cutting with their scythes the so-called
"birch mushrooms," swollen fat in the succulent grass. But the
old man bent down every time he came across a mushroom, picked it
up and put it in his bosom. "Another present for my old woman,"
he said as he did so.

Easy as it was to mow the wet, soft grass, it was hard work going
up and down the steep sides of the ravine. But this did not
trouble the old man. Swinging his scythe just as ever, and moving
his feet in their big, plaited shoes with firm, little steps, he
climbed slowly up the steep place, and though his breeches
hanging out below his smock, and his whole frame trembled with
effort, he did not miss one blade of grass or one mushroom on his
way, and kept making jokes with the peasants and Levin. Levin
walked after him and often thought he must fall, as he climbed
with a scythe up a steep cliffwhere it would have been hard work
to clamber without anything. But he climbed up and did what he
had to do. He felt as though some external force were moving him.

Chapter 6

Mashkin Upland was mown, the last row finished, the peasants had
put on their coats and were gaily trudging home. Levin got on his
horse and, parting regretfully from the peasants, rode homewards.
On the hillside he looked back; he could not see them in the mist
that had risen from the valley; he could only hear rough,
good-humored voices, laughter, and the sound of clanking scythes.

Sergey Ivanovitch had long ago finished dinner, and was drinking
iced lemon and water in his own room, looking through the reviews
and papers, which he had only just received by post, when Levin
rushed into the room, talking merrily, with his wet and matted
hair sticking to his forehead, and his back and chest grimed and
moist.

"We mowed the whole meadow! Oh, it is nice, delicious! And how
have you been getting on?" said Levin, completely forgetting the
disagreeable conversation of the previous day.

"Mercy! what do you look like!" said Sergey Ivanovitch, for the
first moment looking round with some dissatisfaction. "And the
door, do shut the door!" he cried. "You must have let in a dozen
at least."

Sergey Ivanovitch could not endure flies, and in his own room he
never opened the window except at night, and carefully kept the
door shut.

"Not one, on my honor. But if I have, I'll catch them. You
wouldn't believe what a pleasure it is! How have you spent the
day?"

"Very well. But have you really been mowing the whole day? I
expect you're as hungry as a wolf. Kouzma has got everything
ready for you."

"No, I don't feel hungry even. I had something to eat there. But
I'll go and wash."

"Yes, go along, go along, and I'll come to you directly," said
Sergey Ivanovitch, shaking his head as he looked at his brother.
"Go along, make haste," he added smiling, and gathering up his
books, he prepared to go too. He, too, felt suddenly good-humored
and disinclined to leave his brother's side. "But what did you do
while it was raining?"

"Rain? Why, there was scarcely a drop. I'll come directly. So you
had a nice day too? That's first-rate." And Levin went off to
change his clothes.

Five minutes later the brothers met in the dining-room. Although
it seemed to Levin that he was not hungry, and he sat down to
dinner simply so as not to hurt Kouzma's feelings, yet when he
began to eat the dinner struck him as extraordinarily good.
Sergey Ivanovitch watched him with a smile.

"Oh, by the way, there's a letter for you," said he. "Kouzma,
bring it down, please. And mind you shut the doors."

The letter was from Oblonsky. Levin read it aloud. Oblonsky wrote
to him from Petersburg: "I have had a letter from Dolly; she's at
Ergushovo, and everything seems going wrong there. Do ride over
and see her, please; help her with advice; you know all about it.
She will be so glad to see you. She's quite alone, poor thing. My
mother-in-law and all of them are still abroad."

"That's capital! I will certainly ride over to her," said Levin.
"Or we'll go together. She's such a splendid woman, isn't she?"

"They're not far from here, then?"

"Twenty-five miles. Or perhaps it is thirty. But a capital road.
Capital, we'll drive over."

"I shall be delighted," said Sergey Ivanovitch, still smiling.
The sight of his younger brother's appearance had immediately put
him in a good humor.

"Well, you have an appetite!" he said, looking at his dark-red,
sunburnt face and neck bent over the plate.

"Splendid! You can't imagine what an effectual remedy it is for
every sort of foolishness. I want to enrich medicine with a new
word: Arbeitskur."

"Well, but you don't need it, I should fancy."

"No, but for all sorts of nervous invalids."

"Yes, it ought to be tried. I had meant to come to the mowing to
look at you, but it was so unbearably hot that I got no further
than the forest. I sat there a little, and went on by the forest
to the village, met your old nurse, and sounded her as to the
peasants' view of you. As far as I can make out, they don't
approve of this. She said: 'It's not a gentleman's work.'
Altogether, I fancy that in the people's ideas there are very
clear and definite notions of certain, as they call it,
'gentlemanly' lines of action. And they don't sanction the
gentry's moving outside bounds clearly laid down in their ideas."

"Maybe so; but anyway it's a pleasure such as I have never known
in my life. And there's no harm in it, you know. Is there?"
answered Levin. "I can't help it if they don't like it. Though I
do believe it's all right. Eh?"

"Altogether," pursued Sergey Ivanovitch, "you're satisfied with
your day?"

"Quite satisfied. We cut the whole meadow. And such a splendid
old man I made friends with there! You can't fancy how delightful
he was!"

"Well, so you're content with your day. And so am I. First, I
solved two chess problems, and one a very pretty one--a pawn
opening. I'll show it you. And then--I thought over our
conversation yesterday."

"Eh! our conversation yesterday?" said Levin, blissfully dropping
his eyelids and drawing deep breaths after finishing his dinner,
and absolutely incapable of recalling what their conversation
yesterday was about.

"I think you are partly right. Our difference of opinion amounts
to this, that you make the mainspring self-interest, while I
suppose that interest in the common weal is bound to exist in
every man of a certain degree of advancement. Possibly you are
right too, that action founded on material interest would be more
desirable. You are altogether, as the French say, too
primesautiere a nature; you must have intense, energetic action,
or nothing."

Levin listened to his brother and did not understand a single
word, and did not want to understand. He was only afraid his
brother might ask him some question which would make it evident
he had not heard.

"So that's what I think it is, my dear boy," said Sergey
Ivanovitch, touching him on the shoulder.

"Yes, of course. But, do you know? I won't stand up for my view,"
answered Levin, with a guilty, childlike smile. "Whatever was it
I was disputing about?" he wondered. "Of course, I'm right, and
he's right, and it's all first-rate. Only I must go round to the
counting-house and see to things." He got up, stretching and
smiling. Sergey Ivanovitch smiled too.

"If you want to go out, let's go together," he said, disinclined
to be parted from his brother, who seemed positively breathing
out freshness and energy. "Come, we'll go to the counting-house,
if you have to go there."

"Oh, heavens!" shouted Levin, so loudly that Sergey Ivanovitch
was quite frightened.

"What, what is the matter?"

"How's Agafea Mihalovna's hand?" said Levin, slapping himself on
the head. "I'd positively forgotten her even."

"It's much better."

"Well, anyway I'll run down to her. Before you've time to get
your hat on, I'll be back."

And he ran down-stairs, clattering with his heels like a
spring-rattle.

Chapter 7

Stephan Arkadyevitch had gone to Petersburg to perform the most
natural and essential official duty--so familiar to every one in
the government service, though incomprehensible to outsiders--
that duty, but for which one could hardly be in government
service, of reminding the ministry of his existence--and having,
for the due performance of this rite, taken all the available
cash from home, was gaily and agreeably spending his days at the
races and in the summer villas. Meanwhile Dolly and the children
had moved into the country, to cut down expenses as much as
possible. She had gone to Ergushovo, the estate that had been her
dowry, and the one where in spring the forest had been sold. It
was nearly forty miles from Levin's Pokrovskoe. The big, old
house at Ergushovo had been pulled down long ago, and the old
prince had had the lodge done up and built on to. Twenty years
before, when Dolly was a child, the lodge had been roomy and
comfortable, though, like all lodges, it stood sideways to the
entrance avenue, and faced the south. But by now this lodge was
old and dilapidated. When Stepan Arkadyevitch had gone down in
the spring to sell the forest, Dolly had begged him to look over
the house and order what repairs might be needed. Stepan
Arkadyevitch, like all unfaithful husbands indeed, was very
solicitous for his wife's comfort, and he had himself looked over
the house, and given instructions about everything that he
considered necessary. What he considered necessary was to cover
all the furniture with cretonne, to put up curtains, to weed the
garden, to make a little bridge on the pond, and to plant Bowers.
But he forgot many other essential matters, the want of which
greatly distressed Darya Alexandrovna later on.

In spite of Stepan Arkadyevitch's efforts to be an attentive
father and husband, he never could keep in his mind that he had a
wife and children. He had bachelor tastes, and it was in
accordance with them that he shaped his life. On his return to
Moscow he informed his wife with pride that everything was ready,
that the house would be a little paradise, and that he advised
her most certainly to go. His wife's staying away in the country
was very agreeable to Stepan Arkadyevitch from every point of
view: it did the children good, it decreased expenses, and it
left him more at liberty. Darya Alexandrovna regarded staying in
the country for the summer as essential for the children,
especially for the little girl, who had not succeeded in
regaining her strength after the scarlatina, and also as a means
of escaping the petty humiliations, the little bills owing to the
wood-merchant, the fishmonger, the shoemaker, which made her
miserable. Besides this, she was pleased to go away to the
country because she was dreaming of getting her sister Kitty to
stay with her there. Kitty was to be back from abroad in the
middle of the summer, and bathing had been prescribed for her.
Kitty wrote that no prospect was so alluring as to spend the
summer with Dolly at Ergushovo, full of childish associations for
both of them.

The first days of her existence in the country were very hard for
Dolly. She used to stay in the country as a child, and the
impression she had retained of it was that the country was a
refuge from all the unpleasantness of the town, that life there,
though not luxurious--Dolly could easily make up her mind to
that--was cheap and comfortable; that there was plenty of
everything, everything was cheap, everything could be got, and
children were happy. But now coming to the country as the head of
a family, she perceived that it was all utterly unlike what she
had fancied.

The day after their arrival there was a heavy fall of rain and in
the night the water came through in the corridor and in the
nursery, so that the beds had to be carried into the
drawing-room. There was no kitchenmaid to be found; of the nine
cows, it appeared from the words of the cowherd- woman that some
were about to calve, others had just calved, others were old, and
others again hard-uddered; there was not butter nor milk enough
even for the children. There were no eggs. They could get no
fowls; old, purplish, stringy cocks were all they had for
roasting and boiling. Impossible to get women to scrub the
floors--all were potato-hoeing. Driving was out of the question,
because one of the horses was restive, and bolted in the shafts.
There was no place where they could bathe; the whole of the
river-bank was trampled by the cattle and open to the road; even
walks were impossible, for the cattle strayed into the garden
through a gap in the hedge, and there was one terrible bull, who
bellowed, and therefore might be expected to gore somebody. There
were no proper cupboards for their clothes; what cupboards there
were either would not close at all, or burst open whenever any
one passed by them. There were no pots and pans; there was no
copper in the washhouse, nor even an ironing-board in the maids'
room.

Finding instead of peace and rest all these, from her point of
view, fearful calamities, Darya Alexandrovna was at first in
despair. She exerted herself to the utmost, felt the hopelessness
of the position, and was every instant suppressing the tears that
started into her eyes. The bailiff, a retired quartermaster, whom
Stepan Arkadyevitch had taken a fancy to and had appointed
bailiff on account of his handsome and respectful appearance as a
hall-porter, showed no sympathy for Darya Alexandrovna's woes. He
said respectfully, "nothing can be done, the peasants are such a
wretched lot," and did nothing to help her.

The position seemed hopeless. But in the Oblonskys' household, as
in all families indeed, there was one inconspicuous but most
valuable and useful person, Marya Philimonovna. She soothed her
mistress, assured her that everything would come round (it was
her expression, and Matvey had borrowed it from her), and without
fuss or hurry proceeded to set to work herself. She had
immediately made friends with the bailiff's wife, and on the very
first day she drank tea with her and the bailiff under the
acacias, and reviewed all the circumstances of the position. Very
soon Marya Philimonovna had established her club, so to say,
under the acacias, and there it was, in this club, consisting of
the bailiff's wife, the village elder, and the counting-house
clerk, that the difficulties of existence were gradually smoothed
away, and in a week's time everything actually had come round.
The roof was mended, a kitchenmaid was found--a crony of the
village elder's--hens were bought, the cows began giving milk,
the garden hedge was stopped up with stakes, the carpenter made a
mangle, hooks were put in the cupboards, and they ceased to burst
open spontaneously, and an ironing-board covered with army cloth
was placed across from the arm of a chair to the chest of
drawers, and there was a smell of flatirons in the maids' room.

"Just see, now, and you were quite in despair," said Marya
Philimonovna, pointing to the ironing-board. They even rigged up
a bathing-shed of straw hurdles. Lily began to bathe, and Darya
Alexandrovna began to realize, if only in part, her expectations,
if not of a peaceful, at least of a comfortable, life in the
country. Peaceful with six children Darya Alexandrovna could not
be. One would fall ill, another might easily become so, a third
would be without something necessary, a fourth would show
symptoms of a bad disposition, and so on. Rare indeed were the
brief periods of peace. But these cares and anxieties were for
Darya Alexandrovna the sole happiness possible. Had it not been
for them, she would have been left alone to brood over her
husband who did not love her. And besides, hard though it was for
the mother to bear the dread of illness, the illnesses
themselves, and the grief of seeing signs of evil propensities in
her children--the children themselves were even now repaying her
in small joys for her sufferings. Those joys were so small that
they passed unnoticed, like gold in sand, and at bad moments she
could see nothing but the pain, nothing but sand; but there were
good moments too when she saw nothing but the joy, nothing but
gold.

Now in the solitude of the country, she began to be more and more
frequently aware of those joys. Often, looking at them, she would
make every possible effort to persuade herself that she was
mistaken, that she as a mother was partial to her children. All
the same, she could not help saying to herself that she had
charming children, all six of them in different ways, but a set
of children such as is not often to be met with, and she was
happy in them, and proud of them.

Chapter 8

Towards the end of May, when everything had been more or less
satisfactorily arranged, she received her husband's answer to her
complaints of the disorganized state of things in the country. He
wrote begging her forgiveness for not having thought of
everything before, and promised to come down at the first chance.
This chance did not present itself, and till the beginning of
June Darya Alexandrovna stayed alone in the country.

On the Sunday in St. Peter's week Darya Alexandrovna drove to
mass for all her children to take the sacrament. Darya
Alexandrovna in her intimate, philosophical talks with her
sister, her mother, and her friends very often astonished them by
the freedom of her views in regard to religion. She had a strange
religion of transmigration of souls all her own, in which she had
firm faith, troubling herself little about the dogmas of the
Church. But in her family she was strict in carrying out all that
was required by the Church--and not merely in order to set an
example, but with all her heart in it. The fact that the children
had not been at the sacrament for nearly a year worried her
extremely, and with the full approval and sympathy of Marya
Philimonovna she decided that this should take place now in the
summer.

For several days before, Darya Alexandrovna was busily
deliberating on how to dress all the children. Frocks were made
or altered and washed, seams and flounces were let out, buttons
were sewn on, and ribbons got ready. One dress, Tanya's, which
the English governess had undertaken, cost Darya Alexandrovna
much loss of temper. The English governess in altering it had
made the seams in the wrong place, had taken up the sleeves too
much, and altogether spoilt the dress. It was so narrow on
Tanya's shoulders that it was quite painful to look at her. But
Marya Philimonovna had the happy thought of putting in gussets,
and adding a little shoulder-cape. The dress was set right, but
there was nearly a quarrel with the English governess. On the
morning, however, all was happily arranged, and towards ten
o'clock--the time at which they had asked the priest to wait for
them for the mass--the children in their new dresses, with
beaming faces stood on the step before the carriage waiting for
their mother.

To the carriage, instead of the restive Raven, they had
harnessed, thanks to the representations of Marya Philimonovna,
the bailiff's horse, Brownie, and Darya Alexandrovna, delayed by
anxiety over her own attire, came out and got in, dressed in a
white muslin gown.

Darya Alexandrovna had done her hair, and dressed with care and
excitement. In the old days she had dressed for her own sake to
look pretty and be admired. Later on, as she got older, dress
became more and more distasteful to her. She saw that she was
losing her good looks. But now she began to feel pleasure and
interest in dress again. Now she did not dress for her own sake,
not for the sake of her own beauty, but simply that as the mother
of those exquisite creatures she might not spoil the general
effect. And looking at herself for the last time in the
looking-glass she was satisfied with herself. She looked nice.
Not nice as she would have wished to look nice in old days at a
ball, but nice for the object which she now had in view.

In the church there was no one but the peasants, the servants and
their women-folk. But Darya Alexandrovna saw, or fancied she saw,
the sensation produced by her children and her. The children were
not only beautiful to look at in their smart little dresses, but
they were charming in the way they behaved. Aliosha, it is true,
did not stand quite correctly; he kept turning round, trying to
look at his little jacket from behind; but all the same he was
wonderfully sweet. Tanya behaved like a grownup person, and
looked after the little ones. And the smallest, Lily, was
bewitching in her naive astonishment at everything, and it was
difficult not to smile when, after taking the sacrament, she said
in English, "Please, some more."

On the way home the children felt that something solemn had
happened, and were very sedate.

Everything went happily at home too; but at lunch Grisha began
whistling, and, what was worse, was disobedient to the English
governess, and was forbidden to have any tart. Darya Alexandrovna
would not have let things go so far on such a day had she been
present; but she had to support the English governess's
authority, and she upheld her decision that Grisha should have no
tart. This rather spoiled the general goodhumor. Grisha cried,
declaring that Nikolinka had whistled too, and he was not
punished, and that he wasn't crying for the tart--he didn't care
--but at being unjustly treated. This was really too tragic, and
Darya Alexandrovna made up her mind to persuade the English
governess to forgive Grisha, and she went to speak to her. But on
the way, as she passed the drawing-room, she beheld a scene,
filling her heart with such pleasure that the tears came into her
eyes, and she forgave the delinquent herself.

The culprit was sitting at the window in the corner of the
drawingroom; beside him was standing Tanya with a plate. On the
pretext of wanting to give some dinner to her dolls, she had
asked the governess's permission to take her share of tart to the
nursery, and had taken it instead to her brother. While still
weeping over the injustice of his punishment, he was eating the
tart, and kept saying through his sobs, "Eat yourself; let's eat
it together ...together."

Tanya had at first been under the influence of her pity for
Grisha, then of a sense of her noble action, and tears were
standing in her eyes too; but she did not refuse, and ate her
share.

On catching sight of their mother they were dismayed, but,
looking into her face, they saw they were not doing wrong. They
burst out laughing, and, with their mouths full of tart, they
began wiping their smiling lips with their hands, and smearing
their radiant faces all over with tears and jam.

"Mercy! Your new white frock; Tanya! Grisha!" said their mother,
trying to save the frock, but with tears in her eyes, smiling a
blissful, rapturous smile.

The new frocks were taken off, and orders were given for the
little girls to have their blouses put on, and the boys their old
jackets, and the wagonette to be harnessed; with Brownie, to the
bailiff's annoyance, again in the shafts, to drive out for
mushroom-picking and bathing. A roar of delighted shrieks arose
in the nursery, and never ceased till they had set off for the
bathing-place.

They gathered a whole basketful of mushrooms; even Lily found a
birch mushroom. It had always happened before that Miss Hoole
found them and pointed them out to her; but this time she found a
big one quite of herself, and there was a general scream of
delight, "Lily has found a mushroom!"

Then they reached the river, put the horses under the
birch-trees, and went to the bathing-place. The coachman,
Terenty, fastened the horses, who kept whisking away the flies,
to a tree, and, treading down the grass, lay down in the shade of
a birch and smoked his shag, while the never- ceasing shrieks of
delight of the children floated across to him from the
bathing-place.

Though it was hard work to look after all the children and
restrain their wild pranks, though it was difficult too to keep
in one's head and not mix up all the stockings, little breeches,
and shoes for the different legs, and to undo and to do up again
all the tapes and buttons, Darya Alexandrovna, who had always
liked bathing herself, and believed it to be very good for the
children, enjoyed nothing so much as bathing with all the
children. To go over all those fat little legs, pulling on their
stockings, to take in her arms and dip those little naked bodies,
and to hear their screams of delight and alarm, to see the
breathless faces with wide-open, scared, and happy eyes of all
her splashing cherubs, was a great pleasure to her.

When half the children had been dressed, some peasant women in
holiday dress, out picking herbs, came up to the bathing-shed and
stopped shyly. Marya Philimonovna called one of them and handed
her a sheet and a shirt that had dropped into the water for her
to dry them, and Darya Alexandrovna began to talk to the women.
At first they laughed behind their hands and did not understand
her questions, but soon they grew bolder and began to talk,
winning Darya Alexandrovna's heart at once by the genuine
admiration of the children that they showed.

"My, what a beautyl as white as sugar," said one, admiring
Tanitchka, and shaking her head; "but thin . . ."

"Yes, she has been ill."

"And so they've been bathing you too," said another to the baby.

"No; he's only three months old," answered Darya Alexandrovna
with pride.

"You don't say so!"

"And have you any children?"

"I've had four; I've two living--a boy and a girl. I weaned her
last carnival."

"How old is she?"

"Why, two years old."

"Why did you nurse her so long?"

"It's our custom; for three fasts.

And the conversation became most interesting to Darya
Alexandrovna. What sort of time did she have? What was the matter
with the boy? Where was her husband? Did it often happen?

Darya Alexandrovna felt disinclined to leave the peasant women,
so interesting to her was their conversation, so completely
identical were all their interests. What pleased her most of all
was that she saw clearly what all the women admired more than
anything was her having so many children, and such fine ones. The
peasant women even made Darya Alexandrovna laugh, and offended
the English governess, because she was the cause of the laughter
she did not understand. One of the younger women kept staring at
the Englishwoman, who was dressing after all the rest, and when
she put on her third petticoat she could not refrain from the
remark, "My, she keeps putting on and putting on, and she'll
never have done!" she said, and they all went off into roars.

Chapter 9

On the drive home, as Darya Alexandrovna, with all her children
round her, their heads still wet from their bath, and a kerchief
tied over her own head, was getting near the house, the coachman
said, "There's some gentleman coming: the master of Pokrovskoe, I
do believe."

Darya Alexandrovna peeped out in front, and was delighted when
she recognized in the gray hat and gray coat the familiar figure
of Levin walking to meet them. She was glad to see him at any
time, but at this moment she was specially glad he should see her
in all her glory. No one was better able to appreciate her
grandeur than Levin.

Seeing her, he found himself face to face with one of the
pictures of his day-dream of family life.

"You're like a hen with your chickens, Darya Alexandrovna."

"Ah, how glad I am to see you!" she said, holding out her hand to
him.

"Glad to see me, but you didn't let me know. My brother's staying
with me. I got a note from Stiva that you were here."

"From Stiva?" Darya Alexandrovna asked with surprise.

"Yes; he writes that you are here, and that he thinks you might
allow me to be of use to you," said Levin, and as he said it he
became suddenly embarrassed, and, stopping abruptly, he walked on
in silence by the wagonette, snapping off the buds of the
lime-trees and nibbling them. He was embarrassed through a sense
that Darya Alexandrovna would be annoyed by receiving from an
outsider help that should by rights have come from her own
husband. Darya Alexandrovna certainly did not like this little
way of Stepan Arkadyevitch's of foisting his domestic duties on
others. And she was at once aware that Levin was aware of this.
It was just for this fineness of perception, for this delicacy,
that Darya Alexandrovna liked Levin.

"I know, of course," said Levin, "that that simply means that you
would like to see me, and I'm exceedingly glad. Though I can
fancy that, used to town housekeeping as you are, you must feel
in the wilds here, and if there's anything wanted, I'm altogether
at your disposal."

"Oh, no!" said Dolly. "At first things were rather uncomfortable,
but now we've settled everything capitally--thanks to my old
nurse," she said, indicating Marya Philimonovna, who, seeing that
they were speaking of her, smiled brightly and cordially to
Levin. She knew him, and knew that he would be a good match for
her young lady, and was very keen to see the matter settled.

"Won't you get in, sir, we'll make room this side!" she said to
him.

"No, I'll walk. Children, who'd like to race the horses with me?"

The children knew Levin very little, and could not remember when
they had seen him, but they experienced in regard to him none of
that strange feeling of shyness and hostility which children so
often experience towards hypocritical, grown-up people, and for
which they are so often and miserably punished. Hypocrisy in
anything whatever may deceive the cleverest and most penetrating
man, but the least wide-awake of children recognizes it, and is
revolted by it, however ingeniously it may be disguised. Whatever
faults Levin had, there was not a trace of hypocrisy in him, and
so the children showed him the same friendliness that they saw in
their mother's face. On his invitation, the two elder ones at
once jumped out to him and ran with him as simply as they would
have done with their nurse or Miss Hoole or their mother. Lily,
too, began begging to go to him, and her mother handed her to
him; he sat her on his shoulder and ran along with her.

"Don't be afraid, don't be afraid, Darya Alexandrovna!" he said,
smiling good-humoredly to the mother; "there's no chance of my
hurting or dropping her."

And, looking at his strong, agile, assiduously careful and
needlessly wary movements, the mother felt her mind at rest, and
smiled gaily and approvingly as she watched him.

Here, in the country, with children, and with Darya Alexandrovna,
with whom he was in sympathy, Levin was in a mood not infrequent
with him, of childlike light-heartedness that she particularly
liked in him. As he ran with the children, he taught them
gymnastic feats, set Miss Hoole laughing with his queer English
accent, and talked to Darya Alexandrovna of his pursuits in the
country.

After dinner, Darya Alexandrovna, sitting alone with him on the
balcony, began to speak of Kitty.

"You know, Kitty's coming here, and is going to spend the summer
with me."

"Really," he said, flushing, and at once, to change the
conversation, he said: "Then I'll send you two cows, shall I? If
you insist on a bill you shall pay me five roubles a month; but
it's really too bad of you."

"No, thank you. We can manage very well now."

"Oh, well, then, I'll have a look at your cows, and if you'll
allow me, I'll give directions about their food. Everything
depends on their food."

And Levin, to turn the conversation, explained to Darya
Alexandrovna the theory of cow-keeping, based on the principle
that the cow is simply a machine for the transformation of food
into milk, and so on.

He talked of this, and passionately longed to hear more of Kitty,
and, at the same time, was afraid of hearing it. He dreaded the
breaking up of the inward peace he had gained with such effort.

"Yes, but still all this has to be looked after, and who is there
to look after it?" Darya Alexandrovna responded, without
interest.

She had by now got her household matters so satisfactorily
arranged, thanks to Marya Philimonovna, that she was disinclined
to make any change in them; besides, she had no faith in Levin's
knowledge of farming. General principles, as to the cow being a
machine for the production of milk, she looked on with suspicion.
It seemed to her that such principles could only be a hindrance
in farm management. It all seemed to her a far simpler matter:
all that was needed, as Marya Philimonovna had explained, was to
give Brindle and Whitebreast more food and drink, and not to let
the cook carry all the kitchen slops to the laundrymaid's cow.
That was clear. But general propositions as to feeding on meal
and on grass were doubtful and obscure. And, what was most
important, she wanted to talk about Kitty.

Chapter 10

"Kitty writes to me that there's nothing she longs for so much as
quiet and solitude," Dolly said after the silence that had
followed.

"And how is she--better?" Levin asked in agitation.

"Thank God, she's quite well again. I never believed her lungs
were affected."

"Oh, I'm very glad!" said Levin, and Dolly fancied she saw
something touching, helpless, in his face as he said this and
looked silently into her face.

"Let me ask you, Konstantin Dmitrievitch," said Darya
Alexandrovna, smiling her kindly and rather mocking smile, "why
is it you are angry with Kitty?"

"I? I'm not angry with her," said Levin.

"Yes, you are angry. Why was it you did not come to see us nor
them when you were in Moscow?"

"Darya Alexandrovna," he said, blushing up to the roots of his
hair, "I wonder really that with your kind heart you don't feel
this. How it is you feel no pity for me, if nothing else, when
you know..."

"What do I know?"

"You know I made an offer and that I was refused," said Levin,
and all the tenderness he had been feeling for Kitty a minute
before was replaced by a feeling of anger for the slight he had
suffered.

"What makes you suppose I know?"

"Because everybody knows it . . ."

"That's just where you are mistaken: " I did not know it, though
I had guessed it was so."

"Well, now you know it."

"All I knew was that something had happened that made her
dreadfully miserable, and that she begged me never to speak of
it. And if she would not tell me, she would certainly not speak
of it to any one else. But what did pass between you? Tell me."

"I have told you."

"When was it?"

"When I was at their house the last time."

"Do you know that," said Darya Alexandrovna, "I am awfully,
awfully sorry for her. You suffer only from pride...."

"Perhaps so," said Levin, "but ...."

She interrupted him.

"But she, poor girl ...I am awfully, awfully sorry for her.
Now I see it all."

"Well, Darya Alexandrovna, you must excuse me," he said, getting
up. "Good-bye, Darya Alexandrovna, till we meet again."

"No, wait a minute," she said, clutching him by the sleeve. "Wait
a minute, sit down."

"Please, please, don't let us talk of this," he said, sitting
down, and at the same time feeling rise up and stir within his
heart a hope he had believed to be buried.

"If I did not like you," she said, and tears came into her eyes;
"if I did not know you, as I do know you . . ."

The feeling that had seemed dead revived more and more, rose up
and took possession of Levin's heart.

"Yes, I understand it all now," said Darya Alexandrovna. "You
can't understand it; for you men, who are free and make your own
choice, it's always clear whom you love. But a girl's in a
position of suspense, with all a woman's or maiden's modesty, a
girl who sees you men from afar, who takes everything on trust,--
a girl may have, and often has, such a feeling that she cannot
tell what to say."

"Yes, if the heart does not speak . . ."

"No, the heart does speak; but just consider: you men have views
about a girl, you come to the house, you make friends, you
criticize, you wait to see if you have found what you love, and
then, when you are sure you love her, you make an offer...."

"Well, that's not quite it."

"Anyway you make an offer, when your love is ripe or when the
balance has completely turned between the two you are choosing
from. But a girl is not asked. She is expected to make her
choice, and yet she cannot choose, she can only answer 'yes' or
'no.' "

"Yes, to choose between me and Vronsky," thought Levin, and the
dead thing that had come to life within him died again, and only
weighed on his heart and set it aching.

"Darya Alexandrovna," he said, "that's how one chooses a new
dress or some purchase or other, not love. The choice has been
made, and so much the better.... And there can be no repeating
it."

"Ah, pride, pride!" said Darya Alexandrovna, as though despising
him for the baseness of this feeling in comparison with that
other feeling which only women know. "At the time when you made
Kitty an offer she was just in a position in which she could not
answer. She was in doubt. Doubt between you and Vronsky. Him she
was seeing every day, and you she had not seen for a long while.
Supposing she had been older ...I, for instance, in her place
could have felt no doubt. I always disliked him, and so it has
turned out."

Levin recalled Kitty's answer. She had said: "No, that cannot
be...."

"Darya Alexandrovna," he said dryly, "I appreciate your
confidence in me; I believe you are making a mistake. But whether
I am right or wrong, that pride you so despise makes any thought
of Katerina Alexandrovna out of the question for me,--you
understand, utterly out of the question."

"I will only say one thing more: you know that I am speaking of
my sister, whom I love as I love my own children. I don't say she
cared for you, all I meant to say is that her refusal at that
moment proves nothung.

"I don't know!" said Levin, jumping up. "If you only knew how you
are hurting me. It's just as if a child of yours were dead, and
they were to say to you: He would have been like this and like
that, and he might have lived, and how happy you would have been
in him. But he's dead, dead, dead! . . ."

"How absurd you are!" said Darya Alexandrovna, looking with
mournful tenderness at Levin's excitement. "Yes, I see it all
more and more clearly," she went on musingly. "So you won't come
to see us, then, when Kitty's here?"

"No, I shan't come. Of course I won't avoid meeting Katerina
Alexandrovna, but as far as I can, I will try to save her the
annoyance of my presence."

"You are very, very absurd," repeated Darya Alexandrovna, looking
with tenderness into his face. "Very well then, let it be as
though we had not spoken of this. What have you come for, Tanya?"
she said in French to the little girl who had come in.

"Where's my spade, mamma?"

"I speak French, and you must too."

The little girl tried to say it in French, but could not remember
the French for spade; the mother prompted her, and then told her
in French where to look for the spade. And this made a
disagreeable impression on Levin.

Everything in Darya Alexandrovna's house and children struck him
now as by no means so charming as a little while before. "And
what does she talk French with the children for?" he thought;
"how unnatural and false it is! And the children feel it so:
Learning French and unlearning sincerity," he thought to himself,
unaware that Darya Alexandrovna had thought all that over twenty
times already, and yet, even at the cost of some loss of
sincerity, believed it necessary to teach her children French in
that way.

"But why are you going? Do stay a little."

Levin stayed to tea; but his good-humor had vanished, and he felt
ill at ease.

After tea he went out into the hall to order his horses to be put
in, and, when he came back, he found Darya Alexandrovna greatly
disturbed, with a troubled face, and tears in her eyes. While
Levin had been outside, an incident had occurred which had
utterly shattered all the happiness she had been feeling that
day, and her pride in her children. Grisha and Tanya had been
fighting over a ball. Darya Alexandrovna, hearing a scream in the
nursery, ran in and saw a terrible sight. Tanya was pulling
Grisha's hair, while he, with a face hideous with rage, was
beating her with his fists wherever he could get at her.
Something snapped in Darya Alexandrovna's heart when she saw
this. It was as if darkness had swooped down upon her life; she
felt that these children of hers, that she was so proud of, were
not merely most ordinary, but positively bad, ill- bred children,
with coarse, brutal propensities--wicked children.

She could not talk or think of anything else, and she could not
speak to Levin of her misery.

Levin saw she was unhappy and tried to comfort her, saying that
it showed nothing bad, that all children fight; but, even as he
said it, he was thinking in his heart: "No, I won't be artificial
and talk French with my children; but my children won't be like
that. All one has to do is not spoil children, not to distort
their nature, and they'll be delightful. No, my children won't be
like that."

He said good-bye and drove away, and she did not try to keep him.

Chapter 11

In the middle of July the elder of the village on Levin's
sister's estate, about fifteen miles from Pokrovskoe, came to
Levin to report on how things were going there and on the hay.
The chief source of income on his sister's estate was from the
riverside meadows. In former years the hay had been bought by the
peasants for twenty roubles the three acres. When Levin took over
the management of the estate, he thought on examining the
grass-lands that they were worth more, and he fixed the price at
twenty-five roubles the three acres. The peasants would not give
that price, and, as Levin suspected, kept off other purchasers.
Then

Levin had driven over himself, and arranged to have the grass
cut, partly by hired labor, partly at a payment of a certain
proportion of the crop. His own peasants put every hindrance they
could in the way of this new arrangement, but it was carried out,
and the first year the meadows had yielded a profit almost
double. The previous year--which was the third year--the peasants
had maintained the same opposition to the arrangement, and the
hay had been cut on the same system. This year the peasants were
doing all the mowing for a third of the hay crop, and the village
elder had come now to announce that the hay had been cut, and
that, fearing rain~they had invited the counting-house clerk
over, had divided the crop in his presence, and had raked
together eleven stacks as the owner's share. From the vague
answers to his question how much hay had been cut on the
principal meadow, from the hurry of the village elder who had
made the division, not asking leave, from the whole tone of the
peasant, Levin perceived that there was something wrong in the
division of the hay, and made up his mind to drive over himself
to look into the matter.

Arriving for dinner at the village, and leaving his horse at the
cottage of an old friend of his, the husband of his brother's
wet-nurse, Levin went to see the old man in his bee-house,
wanting to find out from him the truth about the hay. Parmenitch,
a talkative, comely old man, gave Levin a very warm welcome,
showed him all he was doing, told him everything about his bees
and the swarms of that year; but gave vague and unwilling answers
to Levin's inquiries about the mowing. This confirmed Levin still
more in his suspicions. He went to the hay-fields and examined
the stacks. The haystacks could not possibly contain fifty
wagon-loads each, and to convict the peasants Levin ordered the
wagons that had carried the hay to be brought up directly, to
lift one stack, and carry it into the barn. There turned out to
be only thirty-two loads in the stack. In spite of the village
elder's assertions about the compressibility of hay, and its
having settled down in the stacks, and his swearing that
everything had been done in the fear of God, Levin stuck to his
point that the hay had been divided without his orders, and that,
therefore, he would not accept that hay as fifty loads to a
stack. After a prolonged dispute the matter was decided by the
peasants taking these eleven stacks, reckoning them as fifty
loads each. The arguments and the division of the haycocks lasted
the whole afternoon. When the last of the hay had been divided,
Levin, intrusting the superintendence of the rest to the
counting-house clerk, sat down on a haycock marked off by a stake
of willow, and looked admiringly at the meadow swarming with
peasants.

In front of him, in the bend of the river beyond the marsh, moved
a bright-colored line of peasant women, and the scattered hay was
being rapidly formed into gray winding rows over the pale green
stubble. After the women came the men with pitchforks, and from
the gray rows there were growing up broad, high, soft haycocks.
To the left, carts were rumbling over the meadow that had been
already cleared, and one after another the haycocks vanished,
flung up in huge forkfuls, and in their place there were rising
heavy cartloads of fragrant hay hanging over the horses'
hind-quarters.

"What weather for haying! What hay it'll be!" said an old man,
squatting down beside Levin. "It's tea, not hay! It's like
scattering grain to the ducks, the way they pick it up!" he
added, pointing to the growing haycocks. "Since dinner-time
they've carried a good half of it."

"The last load, eh?" he shouted to a young peasant, who drove by,
standing in the front of an empty cart, shaking the cord reins.

"The last, dad!" the lad shouted back, pulling in the horse, and,
smiling, he looked round at a bright, rosy-checked peasant girl
who sat in the cart smiling too, and drove on.

"Who's that? Your son?" asked Levin.

"My baby," said the old man with a tender smile.

"What a fine fellow!"

"The lad's all right."

"Married already?"

"Yes, it's two years last St. Philip's day."

"Any children?"

"Children indeed! Why, for over a year he was innocent as a babe
himself, and bashful too," answered the old man. "Well, the hay!
It's as fragrant as tea!" he repeated, wishing to change the
subject.

Levin looked more attentively at Ivan Parmenov and his wife. They
were loading a haycock onto the cart not far from him. Ivan
Parmenov was standing on the cart, taking, laying in place, and
stamping down the huge bundles of hay, which his pretty young
wife deftly handed up to him, at first in armfuls, and then on
the pitchfork. The young wife worked easily, merrily, and
dexterously. The close-packed hay did not once break away off her
fork. First she gathered it together, stuck the fork into it,
then with a rapid, supple movement leaned the whole weight of her
body on it, and at once with a bend of her back under the red
belt she drew herself up, and arching her full bosom under the
white smock, with a smart turn swung the fork in her arms, and
flung the bundle of hay high onto the cart. Ivan, obviously doing
his best to save her every minute of unnecessary labor, made
haste, opening his arms to clutch the bundle and lay it in the
cart. As she raked together what was left of the hay, the young
wife shook off the bits of hay that had fallen on her neck, and
straightening the red kerchief that had dropped forward over her
white brow, not browned like her face by the sun, she crept under
the cart to tie up the load. Ivan directed her how to fasten the
cord to the cross-piece, and at something she said he laughed
aloud. In the expressions of both faces was to be seen vigorous,
young, freshly awakened love.

Chapter 12

The load was tied on. Ivan jumped down and took the quiet, sleek
horse by the bridle. The young wife flung the rake up on the
load, and with a bold step, swinging her arms, she went to join
the women, who were forming a ring for the haymakers' dance. Ivan
drove off to the road and fell into line with the other loaded
carts. The peasant women, with their rakes on their shoulders,
gay with bright flowers, and chattering with ringing, merry
voices, walked behind the hay-cart. One wild untrained female
voice broke into a song, and sang it alone through a verse, and
then the same verse was taken up and repeated by half a hundred
strong healthy voices, of all sorts, coarse and fine, singing in
unison.

The women, all singing, began to come close to Levin, and he felt
as though a storm were swooping down upon him with a thunder of
merriment. The storm swooped down, enveloped him and the haycock
on which he was lying, and the other haycocks, and the
wagon-loads, and the whole meadow and distant fields all seemed
to be shaking and singing to the measures of this wild merry song
with its shouts and whistles and clapping. Levin felt envious of
this health and mirthfulness; he longed to take part in the
expression of this joy of life. But he could do nothing, and had
to lie and look on and listen. When the peasants, with their
singing, had vanished out of sight and hearing, a weary feeling
of despondency at his own isolation, his physical inactivity, his
alienation from this world, came over Levin.

Some of the very peasants who had been most active in wrangling
with him over the hay, some whom he had treated with contumely,
and who had tried to cheat him, those very peasants had greeted
him goodhumoredly, and evidently had not, were incapable of
having any feeling of rancor against him, any regret, any
recollection even of having tried to deceive him. All that was
drowned in a sea of merry common labor. God gave the. day, God
gave the strength. And the day and the strength were consecrated
to labor, and that labor was its own reward. For whom the labor?
What would be its fruits? These were idle considerations--beside
the point.

Often Levin had admired this life, often he had a sense of envy
of the men who led this life; but to-day for the first time,
especially under the influence of what he had seen in the
attitude of Ivan Parmenov to his young wife, the idea presented
itself definitely to his mind that it was in his power to
exchange the dreary, artificial, idle, and individualistic life
he was leading for this laborious, pure, and socially delightful
life.

The old man who had been sitting beside him had long ago gone
home; the people had all separated. Those who lived near had gone
home, while those who came from far were gathered into a group
for supper, and to spend the night in the meadow. Levin,
unobserved by the peasants, still lay on the haycock, and still
looked on and listened and mused. The peasants who remained for
the night in the meadow scarcely slept all the short summer
night. At first there was the sound of merry talk and laughing
all together over the supper, then singing again and laughter.

All the long day of toil had left no trace in them but lightness
of heart. Before the early dawn all was hushed. Nothing was to be
heard but the night sounds of the frogs that never ceased in the
marsh, and the horses snorting in the mist that rose over the
meadow before the morning. Rousing himself, Levin got up from the
haycock, and looking at the stars, he saw that the night was
over.

"Well, what am I going to do? How am I to set about it?" he sane
to himself, trying to express to himself all the thoughts and
feelings he had passed through in that brief night. All the
thoughts and feelings he had passed through fell into three
separate trains of thought. One was the renunciation of his old
life, of his utterly useless education. This renunciation gave
him satisfaction, and was easy and simple. Another series of
thoughts and mental images related to the life he longed to live
now. The simplicity, the purity, the sanity of this life he felt
clearly, and he was convinced he would find in it the content,
the peace, and the dignity, of the lack of which he was so
miserably conscious. But a third series of ideas turned upon the
question how to effect this transition from the old life to the
new. And there nothing took clear shape for him. "Have a wife?
Have work and the necessity of work? Leave Pokrovskoe? Buy land?
Become a member of a peasant community? Marry a peasant girl? How
am I to set about it?" he asked himself again, and could not find
an answer. "I haven't slept all night, though, and I can't think
it out clearly," he said to himself. "I'll work it out later. One
thing's certain, this night has decided my fate. All my old
dreams of home-life were absurd, not the real thing," he told
himself. "It's all ever so much simpler and better...."

"How beautiful!" he thought, looking at the strange, as it were,
mother- of-pearl shell of white fleecy cloudless resting right
over his head in the middle of the sky. "How exquisite it all is
in this exquisite night! And when was there time for that
cloud-shell to form? Just now I looked at the sky, and there was
nothing in it--only two white streaks. Yes, and so imperceptibly
too my views of life changed!"

He went out of the meadow and walked along the highroad towards
the village. A slight wind arose, and the sky looked gray and
sullen. The gloomy moment had come that usually precedes the
dawn, the full triumph of light over darkness.

Shrinking from the cold, Levin walked rapidly, looking at the
ground. "What's that? Some one coming," he thought, catching the
tinkle of bells, and lifting his head. Forty paces from him a
carriage with four horses harnessed abreast was driving towards
him along the grassy high road on which he was walking. The
shaft-horses were tilted against the shafts by the ruts, but the
dexterous driver sitting on the box held the shaft over the ruts,
so that the wheels ran on the smooth part of the road.

This was all Levin noticed, and without wondering who it could
be, he gazed absently at the coach.

In the coach was an old lady dozing in one corner, and at the
window, evidently only just awake, sat a young girl holding in
both hands the ribbons of a white cap. With a face full of light
and thought, full of a subtle, complex inner life, that was
remote from Levin, she was gazing beyond him at the glow of the
sunrise.

At the very instant when this apparition was vanishing, the
truthful eyes glanced at him. She recognized him, and her face
lighted up with wondering delight.

He could not be mistaken. There were no other eyes like those in
the world. There was only one creature in the world that could
concentrate for him all the brightness and meaning of lifer It
was she. It was Kitty. He understood that she was driving to
Ergushovo from the railway station. And everything that had been
stirring Levin during that sleepless night, all the resolutions
he had made, all vanished at once. He recalled with horror his
dreams of marrying a peasant girl. There only, in the carriage
that had crossed over to the other side of the road, and was
rapidly disappearing, there only could he find the solution of
the riddle of his life, which had weighed so agonizingly upon him
of late.

She did not look out again. The sound of the carriage-springs was
no longer audible, the bells could scarcely be heard. The barking
of dogs showed the carriage had reached the village, and all that
was left was the empty fields all round, the village in front,
and he himself isolated and apart from it all, wandering lonely
along the deserted highroad.

He glanced at the sky, expecting to find there the cloud-shell he
had been admiring and taking as the symbol of the ideas and
feelings of that night. There was nothing in the sky in the least
like a shell. There, in the remote heights above, a mysterious
change had been accomplished. There was no trace of shell, and
there was stretched over fully half the sky an even cover of tiny
and ever tinier cloudless. The sky had grown blue and bright, and
with the same softness, but with the same remoteness, it met his
questioning gaze.

"No," he said to himself, "however good that life of simplicity
and toil may be, I cannot go back to it. I love HER."

Chapter 13

None but those who were most intimate with Alexey Alexandrovitch
knew that, while on the surface the coldest and most reasonable
of men, he had one weakness quite opposed to the general trend of
his character. Alexey Alexandrovitch could not hear or see a
child or woman crying without being moved. The sight of tears
threw him into a state of nervous agitation, and he utterly lost
all power of reflection. The chief secretary of his department
and his private secretary were aware of this, and used to warn
women who came with petitions on no account to give way to tears,
if they did not want to ruin their chances. "He will get angry,
and will not listen to you," they used to say. And as a fact, in
such cases the emotional disturbance set up in Alexey
Alexandrovitch by the sight of tears found expression in hasty
anger. "I can do nothing. Kindly leave the room!" he would
commonly cry in such cases.

When returning from the races Anna had informed him of her
relations with Vronsky, and immediately afterwards had burst into
tears, hiding her face in her hands, Alexey Alexandrovitch, for
all the fury aroused in him against her, was aware at the same
time of a rush of that emotional disturbance always produced in
him by tears. Conscious of it, and conscious that any expression
of his feelings at that minute would be out of keeping with the
position, he tried to suppress every manifestation of life in
himself, and so neither stirred nor looked at her. This was what
had caused that strange expression of deathlike rigidity in his
face which had so impressed Anna.

When they reached the house he helped her to get out of the
carriage, and making an effort to master himself, took leave of
her with his usual urbanity, and uttered that phrase that bound
him to nothing; he said that to-morrow he would let her know his
decision.

His wife's words, confirming his worst suspicions, had sent a
cruel pang to the heart of Alexey Alexandrovitch. That pang was
intensified by the strange feeling of physical pity for her set
up by her tears. But when he was all alone in the carriage Alexey
Alexandrovitch, to his surprise and delight, felt complete relief
both from this pity and from the doubts and agonies of jealousy.

He experienced the sensations of a man who has had a tooth out
after suffering long from toothache. After a fearful agony and a
sense of something huge, bigger than the head itself, being torn
out of his jaw, the sufferer, hardly able to believe in his own
good luck, feels all at once that what has so long poisoned his
existence and enchained his attention, exists no longer, and that
he can live and think again, and take interest in other things
besides his tooth. This feeling Alexey Alexandrovitch was
experiencing. The agony had been strange and terrible, but now it
was over; he felt that he could live again and think of something
other than his wife.

"No honor, no heart, no religion; a corrupt woman. I always knew
it and always saw it, though I tried to deceive myself to spare
her," he said to himself. And it actually seemed to him that he
always had seen it: he recalled incidents of their past life, in
which he had never seen anything wrong before--now these
incidents proved clearly that she had always been a corrupt
woman. "I made a mistake in linking my life to hers; but there
was nothing wrong in my mistake, and so I cannot be unhappy. It's
not I that am to blame," he told himself, "but she. But I have
nothing to do with her. She does not exist for me.

Everything relating to her and her son, towards whom his
sentiments were as much changed as towards her, ceased to
interest him. The only thing that interested him now was the
question of in what way he could best, with most propriety and
comfort for himself, and thus with most justice, extricate
himself from the mud with which she had spattered him in her
fall, and then proceed along his path of active, honorable, and
useful existence.

"I cannot be made unhappy by the fact that a contemptible woman
has committed a crime. I have only to find the best way out of
the difficult position in which she has placed me. And I shall
find it," he said to himself, frowning more and more. "I'm not
the first nor the last." And to say nothing of historical
instances dating from the "Fair Helen" of Menelaus, recently
revived in the memory of all, a whole list of contemporary
examples of husbands with unfaithful wives in the highest society
rose before Alexey Alexandrovitch's imagination. "Daryalov,
Poltavsky, Prince Karibanov, Count Paskudin, Dram ...Yes, even
Dram, such an honest, capable fellow.... Semyonov, Tchagin,
Sigonin," Alexey Alexandrovitch remembered. "Admitting that a
certain quite irrational ridicule falls to the lot of these men,
yet I never saw anything but a misfortune in it, and always felt
sympathy for it," Alexey Alexandrovitch said to himself, though
indeed this was not the fact, and he had never felt sympathy for
misfortunes of that kind, but the more frequently he had heard of
instances of unfaithful wives betraying their husbands, the more
highly he had thought of himself. "It is a misfortune which may
befall any one. And this misfortune has befallen me. The only
thing to be done is to make the best of the position."

And he began passing in review the methods of proceeding of men
who had been in the same position that he was in.

"Daryalov fought a duel...."

The duel had particularly fascinated the thoughts of Alexey
Alexandrovitch in his youth, just because he was physically a
coward, and was himself well aware of the fact. Alexey
Alexandrovitch could not without horror contemplate the idea of a
pistol aimed at himself, and never made use of any weapon in his
life. This horror had in his youth set him pondering on dueling,
and picturing himself in a position in which he would have to
expose his life to danger. Having attained success and an
established position in the world, he had long ago forgotten this
feeling; but the habitual bent of feeling reasserted itself, and
dread of his own cowardice proved even now so strong that Alexey
Alexandrovitch spent a long while thinking over the question of
dueling in all its aspects, and hugging the idea of a duel,
though he was fully aware beforehand that he would never under
any circumstances fight one.

"There's no doubt our society is still so barbarous (it's not the
same in England) that very many"--and among these were those
whose opinion Alexey Alexandrovitch particularly valued--"look
favorably on the duel; but what result is attained by it? Suppose
I call him out," Alexey Alexandrovitch went on to himself, and
vividly picturing the night he would spend after the challenge,
and the pistol aimed at him, he shuddered, and knew that he never
would do it--"suppose I call him out. Suppose I am taught," he
went on musing, "to shoot; I press the trigger," he said to
himself, closing his eyes, "and it turns out I have killed him,"
Alexey Alexandrovitch said to himself, and he shook his head as
though to dispel such silly ideas. "What sense is there in
murdering a man in order to define one's relation to a guilty
wife and son? I should still just as much have to decide what I
ought to do with her. But what is more probable and what would
doubtless occur--I should be killed or wounded. I, the innocent
person, should be the victim--killed or wounded. It's even more
senseless. But apart from that, a challenge to fight would be an
act hardly honest on my side. Don't I know perfectly well that my
friends would never allow me to fight a duel--would never allow
the life of a statesman, needed by Russia, to be exposed to
danger? Knowing perfectly well beforehand that the matter would
never come to real danger, it would amount to my simply trying to
gain a certain sham reputation by such a challenge. That would be
dishonest, that would be false, that would be deceiving myself
and others. A duel is quite irrational, and no one expects it of
me. My aim is simply to safeguard my reputation, which is
essential for the uninterrupted pursuit of my public duties."
Official duties, which had always been of great consequence in
Alexey Alexandrovitch's eyes, seemed of special importance to his
mind at this moment. Considering and rejecting the duel, Alexey
Alexandrovitch turned to divorce--another solution selected by
several of the husbands he remembered. Passing in mental review
all the instances he knew of divorces (there were plenty of them
in the very highest society with which he was very familiar),
Alexey Alexandrovitch could not find a single example in which
the object of divorce was that which he had in view. In all these
instances the husband had practically ceded or sold his
unfaithful wife, and the very party which, being in fault, had
not the right to contract a fresh marriage, had formed
counterfeit, pseudo-matrimonial ties with a self-styled husband.
In his own case, Alexey Alexandrovitch saw that a legal divorce,
that is to say, one in which only the guilty wife would be
repudiated, was impossible of attainment. He saw that the complex
conditions of the life they led made the coarse proofs of his
wife's guilt, required by the law, out of the question; he saw
that a certain refinement in that life would not admit of such
proofs being brought forward, even if he had them, and that to
bring forward such proofs would damage him in the public
estimation more than it would her.

An attempt at divorce could lead to nothing but a public scandal,
which would be a perfect godsend to his enemies for calumny and
attacks on his high position in society. His chief object, to
define the position with the least amount of disturbance
possible, would not be attained by divorce either. Moreover, in
the event of divorce, or even of an attempt to obtain a divorce,
it was obvious that the wife broke off all relations with the
husband and threw in her lot with the lover. And in spite of the
complete, as he supposed, contempt and indifference he now felt
for his wife, at the bottom of his heart, Alexey Alexandrovitch
still had one feeling left in regard to her--a disinclination to
see her free to throw in her lot with Vronsky, so that her crime
would be to her advantage. The mere notion of this so exasperated
Alexey Alexandrovitch, that directly it rose to his mind he
groaned with inward agony, and got up and changed his place in
the carriage, and for a long while after, he sat with scowling
brows, wrapping his numbed and bony legs in the fleecy rug.

"Apart from formal divorce, one might still do like Karibanov,
Paskudin, and that good fellow Dram--that is, separate from one's
wife," he went on thinking, when he had regained his composure.
But this step too presented the same drawback of public scandal
as a divorce, and what was more, a separation, quite as much as a
regular divorce, flung his wife into the arms of Vronsky. "No,
it's out of the question, out of the question!" he said again,
twisting his rug about him again. "I cannot be unhappy, but
neither she nor he ought to be happy."

The feeling of jealousy, which had tortured him during the period
of uncertainty, had passed away at the instant when the tooth had
been with agony extracted by his wife's words. But that feeling
had been replaced by another, the desire, not merely that she
should not be triumphant, but that she should get due punishment
for her crime. He did not acknowledge this feeling, but at the
bottom of his heart he longed for her to suffer for having
destroyed his peace of mind--his honor. And going once again over
the conditions inseparable from a duel, a divorce, a separation,
and once again rejecting them, Alexey Alexandrovitch felt
convinced that there was only one solution,--to keep her with
him, concealing what had happened from the world, and using every
measure in his power to break off the intrigue, and still more--
though this he did not admit to himself--to punish her. "I must
inform her of my conclusion, that thinking over the terrible
position in which she has placed her family, all other solutions
will be worse for both sides than an external status quo, and
that such I agree to retain, on the strict condition of obedience
on her part to my wishes, that is to say, cessation of all
intercourse with her lover." When this decision had been finale
adopted, another weighty consideration occurred to Alexey
Alexandrovitch in support of it. "By such a course only shall I
be acting in accordance with the dictates of religion," he told
himself. "In adopting this course, I am not casting off a guilty
wife, but giving her a chance of amendment; and, indeed,
difficult as the task will be to me, I shall devote part of my
energies to her reformation and salvation."

Though Alexey Alexandrovitch was perfectly aware that he could
not exert any moral influence over his wife, that such an attempt
at reformation could lead to nothing but falsity; though in
passing through these difficult moments he had not once thought
of seeking guidance in religion, yet now, when his conclusion
corresponded, as it seemed to him, with the requirements of
religion, this religious sanction to his decision gave him
complete satisfaction, and to some extent restored his peace of
mind. He was pleased to think that, even in such an important
crisis in life, no one would be able to say that he had not acted
in accordance with the principles of that religion whose banner
he had always held aloft amid the general coolness and
indifference. As he pondered over subsequent developments, Alexey
Alexandrovitch did not see, indeed, why his relations with his
wife should not remain practically the same as before. No doubt,
she could never regain his esteem, but there was not, and there
could not be, any sort of reason that his existence should be
troubled, and that he should suffer because she was a bad and
faithless wife. "Yes, time will pass; time, which arranges all
things, and the old relations will be reestablished," Alexey
Alexandrovitch told himself; "so far reestablished, that is, that
I shall not be sensible of a break in the continuity of my life.
She is bound to be unhappy, but I am not to blame, and so I
cannot be unhappy."

Chapter 14

As he neared Petersburg, Alexey Alexandrovitch not only adhered
entirely to his decision, but was even composing in his head the
letter he would write to his wife. Going into the porter's room,
Alexey Alexandrovitch glanced at the letters and papers brought
from his office, and directed that they should be brought to him
in his study.

"The horses can be taken out and I will see no one," he said in
answer to the porter, with a certain pleasure, indicative of his
agreeable frame of mind, emphasizing the words, "see no one."

In his study Alexey Alexandrovitch walked up and down twice, and
stopped at an immense writing-table, on which six candles had
already been lighted by the valet who had preceded him. He
cracked his knuckles and sat down, sorting out his writing
appurtenances. Putting his elbows on the table, he bent his head
on one side, thought a minute, and began to write, without
pausing for a second. He wrote without using any form of address
to her, and wrote in French, making use of the plural "vous,"
which has not the same note of coldness as the corresponding
Russian form.

"At our last conversation, I notified you of my intention to
communicate to you my decision in regard to the subject of that
conversation. Having carefully considered everything, I am
writing now with the object of fulfilling that promise. My
decision is as follows. Whatever your conduct may have been, I do
not consider myself justified in breaking the ties in which we
are bound by a Higher Power. The family cannot be broken up by a
whim, a caprice, or even by the sin of one of the partners in the
marriage, and our life must go on as it has done in the past.
This is essential for me, for you, and for our son. I am fully
persuaded that you have repented and do repent of what has called
forth the present letter, and that you will cooperate with me in
eradicating the cause of our estrangement, and forgetting the
past. In the contrary event, you can conjecture what awaits you
and your son. All this I hope to discuss more in detail in a
personal interview. As the season is drawing to a close, I would
beg you to return to Petersburg as quickly as possible, not later
than Tuesday. All necessary preparations shall be made for your
arrival here I beg you to note that I attach particular
significance to compliance with this request.

A. KAREN1N

"P.S.--I enclose the money which may be needed for your
expenses."

He read the letter through and felt pleased with it, and
especially that he had remembered to enclose money: there was not
a harsh word, not a reproach in it, nor was there undue
indulgence. Most of all, it was a golden bridge for return.
Folding the letter and smoothing it with a massive ivory knife,
and putting it in an envelope with the money, he rang the bell
with the gratification it always afforded him to use the
wellarranged appointments of his writing-table.

"Give this to the courier to be delivered to Anna Arkadyevna to-
morrow at the summer villa," he said, getting up.

"Certainly, your excellency; tea to be served in the study?"

Alexey Alexandrovitch ordered tea to be brought to the study, and
playing with the massive paper-knife, he moved to his easy-chair,
near which there had been placed ready for him a lamp and the
French work on Egyptian hieroglyphics that he had begun. Over the
easy-chair there hung in a gold frame an oval portrait of Anna, a
fine painting by a celebrated artist. Alexey Alexandrovitch
glanced at it. The unfathomable eyes gazed ironically and
insolently at him. Insufferably insolent and challenging was the
effect in Alexey Alexandrovitch's eyes of the black lace about
the head, admirably touched in by the painter, the black hair and
handsome white hand with one finger lifted, covered with rings.
After looking at the portrait for a minute, Alexey Alexandrovitch
shuddered so that his lips quivered and he uttered the sound
"brrr," and turned away. He made haste to sit down in his
easy-chair and opened the book. He tried to read, but he could
not revive the very vivid interest he had felt before in Egyptian
hieroglyphics. He looked at the book and thought of something
else. He thought not of his wife, but of a complication that had
arisen in his official life, which at the time constituted the
chief interest of it. He felt that he had penetrated more deeply
than ever before into this intricate affair, and that he had
originated a leading idea--he could say it without self-flattery-
-calculated to clear up the whole business, to strengthen him in
his official career, to discomfit his enemies, and thereby to be
of the greatest benefit to the government. Directly the servant
had set the tea and left the room, Alexey Alexandrovitch got up
and went to the writing-table. Moving into the middle of the
table a portfolio of papers, with a scarcely perceptible smile of
self-satisfaction, he took a pencil from a rack and plunged into
the perusal of a complex report relating to the present
complication. The complication was of this nature: Alexey
Alexandrovitch's characteristic quality as a politician, that
special individual qualification that every rising functionary
possesses, the qualification that with his unflagging ambition,
his reserve, his honesty, and with his self-confidence had made
his career, was his contempt for red tape, his cutting down of
corrrespondence, his direct contact, wherever possible, with the
living fact, and his economy. It happened that the famous
Commission of the 2nd of June had set on foot an inquiry into the
irrigation of lands in the Zaraisky province, which fell under
Alexey Alexandrovitch's department, and was a glaring example of
fruitless expenditure and paper reforms. Alexey Alexandrovitch
was aware of the truth of this. The irrigation of these lands in
the Zaraisky province had been initiated by the predecessor of
Alexey Alexandrovitch's predecessor. And vast sums of money had
actually been spent and were still being spent on this business,
and utterly unproductively, and the whole business could
obviously lead to nothing whatever. Alexey Alexandrovitch had
perceived this at once on entering office, and would have liked
to lay hands on the Board of Irrigation. But at first, when he
did not yet feel secure in his position, he knew it would affect
too many interests, and would be injudicious. Later on he had
been engrossed in other questions, and had simply forgotten the
Board of Irrigation. It went of itself, like all such boards, by
the mere force of inertia. (Many people gained their livelihood
by the Board of Irrigation, especially one highly conscientious
and musical family: all the daughters played on stringed
instruments, and Alexey Alexandrovitch knew the family and had
stood godfather to one of the elder daughters.) The raising of
this question by a hostile department was in Alexey
Alexandrovitch's opinion a dishonorable proceeding, seeing that
in every department there were things similar and worse, which no
one inquired into, for well-known reasons of official etiquette.
However, now that the glove had been thrown down to him, he had
boldly picked it up and demanded the appointment of a special
commission to investigate and verify the working of the Board of
Irrigation of the lands in the Zaraisky province. But in
compensation he gave no quarter to the enemy either. He demanded
the appointment of another special commission to inquire into the
question of the Native Tribes Organization Committee. The
question of the Native Tribes had been brought up incidentally in
the Commission of the 2nd of June, and had been pressed forward
actively by Alexey Alexandrovitch as one admitting of no delay on
account of the deplorable condition bf the native tribes. In the
commission this question had been a ground of contention between
several departments. The department hostile to Alexey
Alexandrovitch proved that the condition of the native tribes was
exceedingly flourishing, that the proposed reconstruction might
be the ruin of their prosperity, and that if there were anything-
wrong, it arose mainly from the failure on the part of Alexey
Alexandrovitch's department to carry out the measures prescribed
by law. Now Alexey Alexandrovitch intended to demand: First, that
a new commission should be formed which should be empowered to
investigate the condition of the native tribes on the spot;
secondly, if it should appear that the condition of the native
tribes actually was such as it appeared to be from the official
documents in the hands of the committee, that another new
scientific commission should be appointed to investigate the
deplorable condition of the native tribes from the--(1)
political, (2) administrative, (3) economic, (4) ethnographical,
(5) material, and (6) religious points of view; thirdly, that
evidence should be required from the rival department of the
measures that had been taken during the last ten years by that
department for averting the disastrous conditions in which the
native tribes were now placed; and fourthly and finally, that
that department explain why it had, as appeared from the evidence
before the committee, from No. 17,015 and 18,038, from December
5, 1863, and June 7, 1864, acted in direct contravention of the
intent of the law T... Act 18, and the note to Act 36. A flash of
eagerness suffused the face of Alexey Alexandrovitch as he
rapidly wrote out a synopsis of these ideas for his own benefit.
Having filled a sheet of paper, he got up, rang, and sent a note
to the chief secretary of his department to look up certain
necessary facts for him. Getting up and walking about the room,
he glance again at the portrait, frowned, and smiled
contemptuously. After reading a little more of the book on
Egyptian hieroglyphics, and renewing his interest in it, Alexey
Alexandrovitch went to bed at eleven o'clock, and recollecting as
he lay in bed the incident with his wife, he saw it now in by no
means such a gloomy light.

Chapter 15

Though Anna had obstinately and with exasperation contradicted
Vronsky when he told her their position was impossible, at the
bottom of her heart she regarded her own position as false and
dishonorable, and she longed with her whole soul to change it. On
the way home from the races she had told her husband the truth in
a moment of excitement, and in spite of the agony she had
suffered in doing so, she was glad of it. After her husband had
left her, she told herself that she was glad, that now everything
was made clear, and at least there would be no more lying and
deception. It seemed to her beyond doubt that her position was
now made clear forever. It might be bad, this new position, but
it would be clear; there would be no indefiniteness or falsehood
about it. The pain she had caused herself and her husband in
uttering those words would be rewarded now by everything being
made clear, she thought. That evening she saw Vronsky, but she
did not tell him of what had passed between her and her husband,
though, to make the position definite, it was necessary to tell
him.

When she woke up next morning the first thing that rose to her
mind was what she had said to her husband, and those words seemed
to her so awful that she could not conceive now how she could
have brought herself to utter those strange, coarse words, and
could not imagine what would come of it. But the words were
spoken, and Alexey Alexandrovitch had gone away without saying
anything. "I saw Vronsky and did not tell him. At the very
instant he was going away I would have turned him back and told
him, but I changed my mind, because it was strange that I had not
told him the first minute. Why was it I wanted to tell him and
did not tell him?" And in answer to this question a burning blush
of shame spread over her face. She knew what had kept her from
it, she knew that she had been ashamed. Her position, which had
seemed to her simplified the night before, suddenly struck her
now as not only not simple, but as absolutely hopeless. She felt
terrified at the disgrace, of which she had not ever thought
before. Directly she thought of what her husband would do, the
most terrible ideas came to her mind. She had a vision of being
turned out of the house, of her shame being proclaimed to all the
world. She asked herself where she should go when she was turned
out of the house, and she could not find an answer.

When she thought of Vronsky, it seemed to her that he did not
love her, that he was already beginning to be tired of her, that
she could not offer herself to him, and she felt bitter against
him for it. It seemed to her that the words that she had spoken
to her husband, and had continually repeated in her imagination,
she had said to every one, and every one had heard them. She
could not bring herself to look those of her own household in the
face. She could not bring herself to call her maid, and still
less go down-stairs and see her son and his governess.

The maid, who had been listening at her door for a long while,
came into her room of her own accord. Anna glanced inquiringly
into her face, and blushed with a scared look. The maid begged
her pardon for coming in, saying that she had fancied the bell
rang. She brought her clothes and a note. The note was from
Betsy. Betsy reminded her that Liza Merkalova and Baroness
Shtoltz were coming to play croquet with her that morning with
their adorers, Kaluzhskyand old Stremov. "Come, if only as a
study in morals. I shall expect you," she finished.

Anna read the note and heaved a deep sigh.

"Nothing, I need nothing," she said to Annushka, who was
rearranging the bottles and brushes on the dressing-table. "You
can go. I'll dress at once and come down. I need nothing."

Annushka went out, but Anna did not begin dressing, and sat in
the same position, her head and hands hanging listlessly, and
every now and then she shivered all over, seemed as though she
would make some gesture, utter some word, and sank back into
lifelessness again. She repeated continually, "My God! my God!"
But neither "God" nor "my" had any meaning to her. The idea of
seeking help in her difficulty in religion was as remote from her
as seeking help from Alexey Alexandrovitch himself, although she
had never had doubts of the faith in which she had been brought
up. She knew that the support of religion was possible only upon
condition of renouncing what made up for her the whole meaning of
life. She was not simply miserable, she began to feel alarm at
the new spiritual condition, never experienced before, in which
she found herself. She felt as though everything were beginning
to be double in her soul, just as objects sometimes appear double
to over-tired eyes. She hardly knew at times what it was she
feared, and what she hoped for. Whether she feared or desired
what had happened, or what was going to happen, and exactly what
she longed for, she could not have said.

"Ah, what am I doing!" she said to herself, feeling a sudden
thrill of pain in both sides of her head. When she came to
herself, she saw that she was holding her hair in both hands,
each side of her temples, and pulling it. She jumped up, and
began walking about.

"The coffee is ready, and mademoiselle and Seryozha are waiting,"
said Annushka, coming back again and finding Anna in the same
position.

"Seryozha? What about Seryozha?" Anna asked, with sudden
eagerness, recollecting her son's existence for the first time
that morning.

"He's been naughty, I think," answered Annushka with a smile.

"In what way?"

"Some peaches were lying on the table in the corner room. I think
he slipped in and ate one of them on the sly."

The recollection of her son suddenly roused Anna from the
helpless condition in which she found herself. She recalled the
partly sincere, though greatly exaggerated, role of the mother
living for her child, which she had taken up of late years, and
she felt with joy that in the plight in which she found herself
she had a support, quite apart from her relation to her husband
or to Vronsky. This support was her son. In whatever position she
might be placed, she could not lose her son. Her husband might
put her to shame and turn her out, Vronsky might grow cold to her
and go on living his own life apart (she thought of him again
with bitterness and reproach); she could not leave her son. She
had an aim in life. And she must act; act to secure this relation
to her son, so that he might not be taken from her. Quickly
indeed, as quickly as possible, she must take action before he
was taken from her. She must take her son and go away. Here was
the one thing she had to do now. She needed consolation. She must
be calm, and get out of this insufferable position. The thought
of immediate action binding her to her son, of going away
somewhere with him, gave her this consolation.

She dressed quickly, went down-stairs, and with resolute steps
walked into the drawing-room, where she found, as usual, waiting
for her, the coffee, Seryozha, and his governess. Seryozha, all
in white, with his back and head bent, was standing at a table
under a looking-glass, and with an expression of intense
concentration which she knew well, and in which he resembled his
father, he was doing something to the flowers he carried.

The governess had a particularly severe expression. Seryozha
screamed shrilly, as he often did, "Ah, mamma!" and stopped,
hesitating whether to go to greet his mother and put down the
flowers, or to finish making the wreath and go with the flowers.

The governess, after saying good-morning, began a long and
detailed account of Seryozha's naughtiness, but Anna did not hear
her; she was considering whether she would take her with her or
not. "No, I won't take her," she decided. "I'll go alone with my
child."

"Yes, it's very wrong," said Anna, and taking her son by the
shoulder she looked at him, not severely, but with a timid glance
that bewildered and delighted the boy, and she kissed him. "Leave
him to me," she said to the astonished governess, and not letting
go of her son, she sat down at the table, where coffee was set
ready for her.

"Mamma! I ...I ...didn't . . ." he said, trying to make out
from her expression what was in store for him in regard to the
peaches.

"Seryozha," she said, as soon as the governess had left the room,
"that was wrong, but you'll never do it again, will you? . . .
You love me?"

She felt that the tears were coming into her eyes. "Can I help
loving him?" she said to herself, looking deeply into his scared
and at the same time delighted eyes. "And can he ever join his
father in punishing me? Is it possible he will not feel for me?"
Tears were already flowing down her face, and to hide them she
got up abruptly and almost ran out on to the terrace.

After the thunder-showers of the last few days, cold, bright
weather had set in. The air was cold in the bright sun that
filtered through the freshly washed leaves.

She shivered, both from the cold and from the inward horror which
had clutched her with fresh force in the open air.

"Run along, run along to Mariette," she said to Seryozha, who had
followed her out, and she began walking up and down on the straw
matting of the terrace. "Can it be that they won't forgive me,
won't understand how it all couldn't be helped?" she said to
herself.

Standing still, and looking at the tops of the aspen-trees waving
in the wind, with their freshly washed, brightly shining leaves
in the cold sunshine, she knew that they would not forgive her,
that every one and everything would be merciless to her now as
was that sky, that green. And again she felt that everything was
split in two in her soul. "I mustn't, mustn't think," she said to
herself. "I must get ready. To go where? When? Whom to take with
me? Yes, to Moscow by the evening train. Annushka and Seryozha,
and only the most necessary things. But first I must write to
them both." She went quickly indoors into her boudoir, sat down
at the table, and wrote to her husband:--"After what has
happened, I cannot remain any longer in your house. I am going
away, and taking my son with me. I don't know the law, and so I
don't know with which of the parents the son should remain; but I
take him with me because I cannot live without him. Be generous,
leave him to me."

Up to this point she wrote rapidly and naturally, but the appeal
to his generosity, a quality she did not recognize in him, and
the necessity of winding up the letter with something touching,
pulled her up. "Of my fault and my remorse I cannot speak,
because . . ."

She stopped again, finding no connection in her ideas."No," she
said to herself, "there's no need of anything," and tearing up
the letter, she wrote it again, leaving out the allusion to
generosity, and sealed it up.

Another letter had to be written to Vronsky. "I have told my
husband," she wrote, and she sat a long while unable to write
more. It was so coarse, so unfeminine. "And what more am I to
write him?" she said to herself. Again a flush of shame spread
over her face; she recalled his composure, and a feeling of anger
against him impelled her to tear the sheet with the phrase she
had written into tiny bits. "No need of anything," she said to
herself, and closing her blotting-case she went upstairs, told
the governess and the servants that she was going that day to
Moscow, and at once set to work to pack up her things.

Chapter 16

All the rooms of the summer villa were full of porters,
gardeners, and footmen going to and fro carrying out things.
Cupboards and chests were open; twice they had sent to the shop
for cord; pieces of newspaper were tossing about on the floor.
Two trunks, some bags and strapped-up rugs, had been carried down
into the hall. The carriage and two hired cabs were waiting at
the steps. Anna, forgetting her inward agitation in the work of
packing, was standing at a table in her boudoir, packing her
traveling- bag, when Annushka called her attention to the rattle
of some carriage driving up. Anna looked out of the window and
saw Alexey Alexandrovitch's courier on the steps, ringing at the
front door bell.

"Run and find out what it is," she said, and with a calm sense of
being prepared for anything, she sat down in a low chair, folding
her hands on her knees. A footman brought in a thick packet
directed in Alexey Alexandrovitch's hand.

"The courier had orders to wait for an answer," he said.

"Very well," she said, and as soon as he had left the room she
tore open the letter with trembling fingers. A roll of unfolded
notes done up in a wrapper fell out of it. She disengaged the
letter and began reading it at the end. "Preparations shall be
made for your arrival here.... I attach particular significance
to compliance . . ." she read. She ran on, then back, read it all
through, and once more read the letter all through again from the
beginning. When she had finished, she felt that she was cold all
over, and that a fearful calamity, such as she had not expected,
had burst upon her.

In the morning she had regretted that she had spoken to her
husband, and wished for nothing so much as that those words could
be unspoken. And here this letter regarded them as unspoken, and
gave her what she had wanted. But now this letter seemed to her
more awful than anything she had been able ta~ponceive.

"He's right!" she said; "of course, he's always right; he's a
Christian, he's generous! Yes, vile, base creature! And no one
understands it except me, and no one ever will; and I can't
explain it. They say he's so religious, so high-principled, so
upright, so clever; but they don't see what I've seen. They don't
know how he has crushed my life for eight years, crushed
everything that was living in me--he has not once even thought
that I'm a live woman who must have love. They don't know how at
every step he's humiliated me, and been just as pleased with
himself. Haven't I striven, striven with all my strength, to find
something to give meaning to my life? Haven't I struggled to love
him, to love my son when I could not love my husband? But the
time came when I knew that I couldn't cheat myself any longer,
that I was alive, that I was not to blame, that God has made me
so that I must love and live. And now what does he do? If he'd
killed me, if he'd killed him, I could have borne anything, I
could have forgiven anything; but, no, he ...How was it I
didn't guess what he would do? He's doing just what's
characteristic of his mean character. He'll keep himself in the
right, while me, in my ruin, he'll drive still lower to worse
ruin yet...."

She recalled the words from the letter. "You can conjecture what
awaits you and your son...." "That's a threat to take away my
child, and most likely by their stupid law he can. But I know
very well why he says it. He doesn't believe even in my love for
my child, or he despises it (just as he always used to ridicule
it). He despises that feeling in me, but he knows that I won't
abandon my child, that I can't abandon my child, that there could
be no life for me without my child, even with him whom I love;
but that if I abandoned my child and ran away from him, I should
be acting like the most infamous, basest of women. He knows that,
and knows that I am incapable of doing that."

She recalled another sentence in the letter. "Our life must go on
as it has done in the past...." "That life was miserable enough
in the old days; it has been awful of late. What will it be now?
And he knows all that; he knows that I can't repent that I
breathe, that I love; he knows that it can lead to nothing but
lying and deceit; but he wants to go on torturing me. I know him;
I know that he's at home and is happy in deceit, like a fish
swimming in the water. No, I won't give him that happiness. I'll
break through the spiderweb of lies in which he wants to catch
me, come what may. Anything's better than lying and deceit.

"But how? My God! my God! Was ever a woman so miserable as I am?.
. ."

"No; I will break through it, I will break through it!" she
cried, jumping up and keeping back her tears. And she went to the
writing-table to write him another letter. But at the bottom of
her heart she felt that she was not strong enough to break
through anything, that she was not strong enough to get out of
her old position, however false and dishonorable it might be.

She sat down at the writing-table, but instead of writing she
clasped her hands on the table, and, laying her head on them,
burst into tears, with sobs and heaving breast like a child
crying. She was weeping that her dream of her position being made
clear and definite had been annihilated forever. She knew
beforehand that everything would go on in the old way; and far
worse, indeed, than in the old way. She felt that the position in
the world that she enjoyed, and that had seemed to her of so
little consequence in the morning, that this position was
precious to her, that she would not have the strength to exchange
it for the shameful position of a woman who has abandoned husband
and child to join her lover; that however much she might
struggle, she could not be stronger than herself. She would never
know freedom in love, but would remain

forever a guilty wife, with the menace of detection hanging over
her at every instant; deceiving her husband for the sake of a
shameful connection with a man living apart and away from her,
whose life she could never share. She knew that this was how it
would be, and at the same time it was so awful that she could not
even conceive what it would end in. And she cried without
restraint, as children cry when they are punished.

The sound of the footman's steps forced her to rouse herself, and
hiding her face from him, she pretended to be writing.

"The courier asks if there's an answer," the footman announced.

"An answer? Yes," said Anna. "Let him wait. I'll ring."

"What can I write?" she thought. "What can I decide upon alone?
What do I know? What do I want? What is there I care for?" Again
she felt that her soul was beginning to be split in two. She was
terrified again at this feeling, and clutched at the first
pretext for doing something which might divert her thoughts from
herself. "I ought to see Alexey" (so she called Vronsky in her
thoughts); "no one but he can tell me what I ought to do. I'll go
to Betsy's, perhaps I shall see him there," she said to herself,
completely forgetting that when she had told him the day before
that she was not going to Princess Tverskaya's, he had said that
in that case he should not go either. She went up to the table,
wrote to her husband, "I have received your letter.--A."; and,
ringing the bell, gave it to the footman.

"We are not going," she said to Annushka, as she came in.

"Not going at all?"

"No; don't unpack till to-morrow, and let the carriage wait. I'm
going to the princess's."

"Which dress am I to get ready?"

Chapter 17

The croquet party to which the Princess Tverskaya had invited
Anna was to consist of two ladies and their adorers. These two
ladies were the chief representatives of a select new Petersburg
circle, nicknamed, in imitation of some imitation, les sept
merveilles du monde. These ladies belonged to a circle which,
though of the highest society, was utterly hostile to that in
which Anna moved. Moreover, Stremov, one of the most influential
people in Petersburg, and the elderly admirer of Liza Merkalova,
was Alexey Alexandrovitch's enemy in the political world. From
all these considerations Anna had not meant to go, and the hints
in Princess Tverskaya's note referred to her refusal. But now
Anna was eager to go, in the hope of seeing Vronsky.

Anna arrived at Princess Tverskaya's earlier than the other
guests.

At the same moment as she entered, Vronsky's footman with side-
whiskers combed out like a Kammerjunker, went in too. He stopped
at the door, and, taking off his cap, let her pass. Anna
recognized him, and only then recalled that Vronsky had told her
the day before that he would not come. Most likely he was sending
a note to say so.

As she took off her outer garment in the hall, she heard the
footman, pronouncing his "r's" even like a Kammerjunker, say,
"From the count for the princess," and hand the note.

She longed to question him as to where his master was. She longed
to turn back and send him a letter to come and see her, or to go
herself to see him. But neither the first nor the second nor the
third course was possible. Already she heard bells ringing to
announce her arrival ahead of her, and Princess Tverskaya's
footman was standing at the open door waiting for her to go
forward into the inner rooms.

"The princess is in the garden; they will inform her immediately.
Would you be pleased to walk into the garden?" announced another
footman in another room.

The position of uncertainty, of indecision, was still the same as
at home--worse, in fact, since it was impossible to take any
step, impossible to see Vronsky, and she had to remain here among
outsiders, in company so uncongenial to her present mood. But she
was wearing a dress that she knew suited her. She was not alone;
all around was that luxurious setting of idleness that she was
used to, and she felt less wretched than at home. She was not
forced to think what she was to do. Everything would be done of
itself. On meeting Betsy coming towards her in a white gown that
struck her by its elegance, Anna smiled at her just as she always
did. Princess Tverskaya was walking with Tushkevitch and a young
lady, a relation, who, to the great joy of her parents in the
provinces, was spending the summer with the fashionable princess.

There was probably something unusual about Anna, for Betsy
noticed it at once.

"I slept badly," answered Anna, looking intently at the footman
who came to meet them, and, as she supposed, brought Vronsky's
note.

"How glad I am you've come!" said Betsy. "I'm tired, and was just
longing to have some tea before they come. You might go"--she
turned to Tushkevitch--"with Masha, and try the croquet-ground
over there where they've been cutting it. We shall have time to
talk a little over tea; we'll have a cozy chat, eh?" she said in
English to Anna, with a smile, pressing the hand with which she
held a parasol.

"Yes, especially as I can't stay very long with you. I'm forced
to go on to old Madame Vrede. I've been promising to go for a
century," said Anna, to whom lying, alien as it was to her
nature, had become not merely simple and natural in society, but
a positive source of satisfaction. Why she said this, which she
had not thought of a second before, she could not have explained.
She had said it simply from the reflection that as Vronsky would
not be here, she had better secure her own freedom, and try to
see him somehow. But why she had spoken of old Madame Vrede, whom
she had to go and see, as she had to see many other people, she
could not have explained; and yet, as it afterwards turned out,
had she contrived the most cunning devices to meet Vronsky, she
could have thought of nothing better.

"No. I'm not going to let you go for anything," answered Betsy,
looking intently into Anna's face. "Really, if I were not fond of
you, I should feel offended. One would think you were afraid my
society would compromise you. Tea in the little dining-room,
please," she said, half closing her eyes, as she always did when
addressing the footman.

Taking the note from him, she read it.

"Alexey's playing us false," she said in French; "he writes that
he can't come," she added in a tone as simple and natural as
though it could never enter her head that Vronsky could mean
anything more to Anna than a game of croquet. Anna knew that
Betsy knew everything, but, hearing how she spoke of Vronsky
before her, she almost felt persuaded for a minute that she knew
nothing.

"Ah!" said Anna indifferently, as though not greatly interested
in the matter, and she went on smiling: "How can you or your
friends compromise any one?"

This playing with words, this hiding of a secret, had a great
fascination for Anna, as, indeed, it has for all women. And it
was not the necessity of concealment, not the aim with which the
concealment was contrived, but the process of concealment itself
which attracted her.

"I can't be more Catholic than the Pope," she said. "Stremov and
Liza Merkalova, why, they're the cream of the cream of society.
Besides, they're received everywhere, and 1"--she laid special
stress on the I--"have never been strict and intolerant. It's
simply that I haven't the time."

"No; you don't care, perhaps, to meet Stremov? Let him and Alexey
Alexandrovitch tilt at each other in the committee--that's no
affair of ours. But in the world, he's the most amiable man I
know, and a devoted croquet- player. You shall see. And, in spite
of his absurd position as Liza's lovesick swain at his age, you
ought to see how he carries off the absurd position. He's very
nice. Sappho Shtoltz you don't know? Oh, that's a new type, quite
new."

Betsy said all this, and, at the same time, from her
good-humored, shrewd glance, Anna felt that she partly guessed
her plight, and was hatching something for her benefit. They were
in the little boudoir.

"I must write to Alexey though," and Betsy sat down to the table,
scribbled a few lines, and put the note in an envelope.

"I'm telling him to come to dinner. I've one lady extra to dinner
with me, and no man to take her in. Look what I've said, will
that persuade him? Excuse me, I must leave you for a minute.
Would you seal it up, please, and send it off?" she said from the
door; "I have to give some directions."

Without a moment's thought, Anna sat down to the table with
Betsy's letter, and, without reading it, wrote below: "It's
essential for me to see you. Come to the Vrede garden. I shall be
there at six o'clock." She sealed it up, and, Betsy coming back,
in her presence handed the note to be taken.

At tea, which was brought them on a little tea-table in the cool
little drawing-room, the cozy chat promised by Princess Tverskaya
before the arrival of her visitors really did come off between
the two women. They criticized the people they were expecting,
and the conversation fell upon Liza Merkalova.

"She's very sweet, and I always liked her," said Anna.

"You ought to like her. She raves about you. Yesterday she came
up to me after the races and was in despair at not finding you.
She says you're a real heroine of romance, and that if she were a
man she would do all sorts of mad things for your sake. Stremov
says she does that as it is."

"But do tell me, please, I never could make it out," said Anna,
after being silent for some time, speaking in a tone that showed
she was not asking an idle question, but that what she was asking
was of more importance to her than it should have been; "do tell
me, please, what are her relations with Prince Kaluzhsky, Mishka,
as he's called? I've met them so little. What does it mean?"

Betsy smiled with her eyes, and looked intently at Anna.

"It's a new manner," she said. "They've all adopted that manner.
They've flung their caps over the windmills. But there are ways
and ways of flinging them."

"Yes, but what are her relations precisely with Kaluzhsky?"

Betsy broke into unexpectedly mirthful and irrepressible
laughter, a thing which rarely happened with her.

"You're encroaching on Princess Myakaya's special domain now.
That's the question of an enfant terrible," and Betsy obviously
tried to restrain herself, but could not, and went off into peals
of that infectious laughter that people laugh who do not laugh
often. "You'd better ask them," she brought out, between tears of
laughter.

"No; you laugh," said Anna, laughing too in spite of herself,
"but I never could understand it. I can't understand the
husband's role in it."

"The husband? Liza Merkalova's husband carries her shawl, and is
always ready to be of use. But anything more than that in
reality, no one cares to inquire. You know in decent society one
doesn't talk or think even of certain details of the toilet.
That's how it is with this."

"Will you be at Madame Rolandak's fete?" asked Anna, to change
the conversation.

"I don't think so," answered Betsy, and, without looking at her
friend, she began filling the little transparent cups with
fragrant tea. Putting a cup before Anna, she took out a
cigarette, and, fitting it into a silver holder, she lighted it.

"It's like this, you see: I'm in a fortunate position," she
began, quite serious now, as she took up her cup. "I understand
you, and I understand Liza. Liza now is one of those naive
natures that, like children, don't know what's good and what's
bad. Anyway, she didn't comprehend it when she was very young.
And now she's aware that the lack of comprehension suits her.
Now, perhaps, she doesn't know on purpose," said Betsy, with a
subtle smile. "But, anyway, it suits her. The very same thing,
don't you see, may be looked at tragically, and turned into a
misery, or it may be looked at simply and even humorously.
Possibly you are inclined to look at things too tragically."

"How I should like to know other people just as I know myself!"
said Anna, seriously and dreamily. "Am I worse than other people,
or better? I think I'm worse."

"Enfant terrible, enfant terrible!" repeated Betsy. "But here
they are."

Chapter 18

They heard the sound of steps and a man's voice, then a woman's
voice and laughter, and immediately thereafter there walked in
the expected guests: Sappho Shtoltz, and a young man beaming with
excess of health, the so-called Vaska. It was evident that ample
supplies of beefsteak, truffles, and Burgundy never failed to
reach him at the fitting hour. Vaska bowed to the two ladies, and
glanced at them, but only for one second. He walked after Sappho
into the drawing-room, and followed her about as though he were
chained to her, keeping his sparkling eyes fixed on her as though
he wanted to eat her. Sappho Shtoltz was a blonde beauty with
black eyes. She walked with smart little steps in high-heeled
shoes, and shook hands with the ladies vigorously like a man.

Anna had never met this new star of fashion, and was struck by
her beauty, the exaggerated extreme to which her dress was
carried, and the boldness of her manners. On her head there was
such a superstructure of soft, golden hair--her own and false
mixed--that her head was equal in size to the elegantly rounded
bust, of which so much was exposed in front. The impulsive
abruptness of her movements was such that at every step the lines
of her knees and the upper part of her legs were distinctly
marked under her dress, and the question involuntarily rose to
the mind where in the undulating, piled-up mountain of material
at the back the real body of the woman, so small and slender, so
naked in front, and so hidden behind and below, really came to an
end.

Betsy made haste to introduce her to Anna.

"Only fancy, we all but ran over two soldiers," she began telling
them at once, using her eyes, smiling and twitching away her
tail, which she flung back at one stroke all on one side. "I
drove here with Vaska.... Ah, to be sure, you don't know each
other." And mentioning his surname she introduced the young man,
and reddening a little, broke into a ringing laugh at her
mistake--that is at her having called him Vaska to a stranger.
Vaska bowed once more to Anna, but he said nothing to her. He
addressed Sappho: "You've lost your bet. We got here first. Pay
up," said he, smiling.

Sappho laughed still more festively.

"Not just now," said she.

"Oh, all right, I'll have it later."

"Very well, very well. Oh, yes." She turned suddenly to Princess

Betsy: "I am a nice person ...I positively forgot it . . .
I've brought you a visitor. And here he comes." The unexpected
young visitor, whom Sappho had invited, and whom she had
forgotten, was, however, a personage of such consequence that, in
spite of his youth, both the ladies rose on his entrance.

He was a new admirer of Sappho's. He now dogged her footsteps,
like Vaska.

Soon after Prince Kaluzhsky arrived, and Liza Merkalova with
Stremov. Liza Merkalova was a thin brunette, with an Oriental,
languid type of face, and--as every one used to say--exquisite
enigmatic eyes. The tone of her dark dress (Anna immediately
observed and appreciated the fact) was in perfect harmony with
her style of beauty. Liza was as soft and enervated as Sappho was
smart and abrupt.

But to Anna's taste Liza was far more attractive. Betsy had said
to Anna that she had adopted the pose of an innocent child, but
when Anna saw her, she felt that this was not the truth. She
really was both innocent and corrupt, but a sweet and passive
woman. It is true that her tone was the same as Sappho's; that
like Sappho, she had two men, one young and one old, tacked onto
her, and devouring her with their eyes. But there was something
in her higher than what surrounded her. There was in her the glow
of the real diamond among glass imitations. This glow shone out
in her exquisite, truly enigmatic eyes. The weary, and at the
same time passionate, glance of those eyes, encircled by dark
rings, impressed one by its perfect sincerity. Every one looking
into those eyes fancied he knew her wholly, and knowing her,
could not but love her. At the sight of Anna, her whole face
lighted up at once with a smile of delight.

"Ah, how glad I am to see you!" she said, going up to her.
"Yesterday at the races all I wanted was to get to you, but you'd
gone away. I did so want to see you, yesterday especially. Wasn't
it awful?" she said, looking at Anna with eyes that seemed to lay
bare all her soul.

"Yes; I had no idea it would be so thrilling," said Anna,
blushing.

The company got up at this moment to go into the garden.

"I'm not going," said Liza, smiling and settling herself close to
Anna. "You won't go either, will you? Who wants to play croquet?"

"Oh, I like it," said Anna.

"There, how do you manage never to be bored by things? It's
delightful to look at you. You're alive, but I'm bored."

"How can you be bored? Why, you live in the liveliest set in
Petersburg," said Anna.

"Possibly the people who are not of our set are even more bored;
but we--I certainly--are not happy, but awfully, awfully bored."

Sappho smoking a cigarette went off into the garden with the two
young men. Betsy and Stremov remained at the tea-table.

"What, bored!" said Betsy. "Sappho says they did enjoy themselves
tremendously at your house last night."

"Ah, how dreary it all was!" said Liza Merkalova. "We all drove
back to my place after the races. And always the same people,
always the same. Always the same thing. We lounged about on sofas
all the evening. What is there to enjoy in that? No; do tell me
how you manage never to be bored?" she said, addressing Anna
again. "One has but to look at you and one sees, here's a woman
who may be happy or unhappy, but isn't bored. Tell me how you do
it?"

"I do nothing," answered Anna, blushing at these searching
questions.

"That's the best way," Stremov put it. Stremov was a man of
fifty, partly gray, but still vigorous-looking, very ugly, but
with a characteristic and intelligent face. Liza Merkalova was
his wife's niece, and he spent all his leisure hours with her. On
meeting Anna Karenina, as he was Alexey Alexandrovitch's enemy in
the government, he tried, like a shrewd man and a man of the
world, to be particularly cordial with her, the wife of his
enemy.

" 'Nothing,' " he put in with a subtle smile, "that's the very
best way. I told you long ago," he said, turning to Liza
Merkalova, "that if you don't want to be bored, you mustn't think
you're going to be bored. It's just as you mustn't be afraid of
not being able to fall asleep, if you're afraid of sleeplessness.
That's just what Anna Arkadyevna has just said."

"I should be very glad if I had said it, for it's not only clever
but true," said Anna, smiling.

"No, do tell me why it is one can't go to sleep, and one can't
help being bored?"

"To sleep well one ought to work, and to enjoy oneself one ought
to work too."

"What am I to work for when my work is no use to anybody? And I
can't and won't knowingly make a pretense about it."

"You're incorrigible," said Stremov, not looking at her, and he
spoke again to Anna. As he rarely met Anna, he could say nothing
but commonplaces to her, but he said those commonplaces as to
when she was returning to Petersburg, and how fond Countess Lidia
Ivanovna was of her, with an expression which suggested that he
longed with his whole soul to please her and show his regard for
her and even more than that.

Tushkevitch came in, announcing that the party were awaiting the
other players to begin croquet.

"No, don't go away, please don't," pleaded Liza Merkalova,
hearing that Anna was going. Stremov joined in her entreaties.

"It's too violent a transition," he said, "to go from such
company to old Madame Vrede. And besides, you will only give her
a chance for talking scandal, while here you arouse none but such
different feelings of the highest and most opposite kind," he
said to her.

Anna pondered for an instant in uncertainty. This shrewd man's
flattering words, the naive, childlike affection shown her by
Liza Merkalova, and all the social atmosphere she was used to,--
it was all so easy, and what was in store for her was so
difficult, that she was for a minute in uncertainty whether to
remain, whether to put off a little longer the painful moment of
explanation. But remembering what was in store for her alone at
home, if she did not come to some decision, remembering that
gesture--terrible even in memory--when she had clutched her hair
in both hands--she said good-bye and went away.

Chapter 19

In spite of Vronsky's apparently frivolous life in society,he was
a man who hated irregularity. In early youth in the Corps of
Pages, he had experienced the humiliation of a refusal, when he
had tried, being in difficulties, to borrow money, and since then
he had never once put himself in the same position again.

In order to keep his affairs in some sort of order, he used about
five times a year (more or less frequently, according to
circumstances) to shut himself up alone and put all his affairs
into definite shape. This he used to call his day of reckoning or
faire la lessive.

On waking up the day after the races, Vronsky put on a white
linen coat, and without shaving or taking his bath, he
distributed about the table moneys, bills, and letters, and set
to work. Petritsky, who knew he was ill-tempered on such
occasions, on waking up and seeing his comrade at the
writing-table, quietly dressed and went out without getting in
his way.

Every man who knows to the minutest details all the complexity of
the conditions surrounding him, cannot help imagining that the
complexity of these conditions, and the difficulty of making them
clear, is something exceptional and personal, peculiar to
himself, and never supposes that others are surrounded by just as
complicated an array of personal affairs as he is. So indeed it
seemed to Vronsky. And not with out inward pride, and not without
reason, he thought that any other man would long ago have been in
difficulties, would have been forced to some dishonorable course,
if he had found himself in such a difficult position. But Vronsky
felt that now especially it was essential for him to clear up and
define his position if he were to avoid getting into
difficulties.

What Vronsky attacked first as being the easiest was his
pecuniary position. Writing out on note-paper in his minute hand
all that he owed, he added up the amount and found that his debts
amounted to seventeen thousand and some odd hundreds, which he
left out for the sake of clearness. Reckoning up his money and
his bank-book, he found that he had left one thousand eight
hundred roubles, and nothing coming in before the New Year.
Reckoning over again his List of debts, Vronsky copied it,
dividing it into three classes. In the first class he put the
debts which he would have to pay at once, or for which he must in
any case have the money ready so that on demand for payment there
could not be a moment's delay in paying. Such debts amounted to
about four thousand: one thousand five hundred for a horse, and
two thousand five hundred as surety for a young comrade,
Venovsky, who had lost that sum to a cardsharper in Vronsky's
presence. Vronsky had wanted to pay the money at the time (he had
that amount then), but Venovsky and Yashvin had insisted that
they would pay and not Vronsky, who had not played. That was so
far well, but Vronsky knew that in this dirty business, though
his only share in it was undertaking by word of mouth to be
surety for Venovsky, it was absolutely necessary for him to have
the two thousand five hundred roubles so as to be able to fling
it at the swindler, and have no more words with him. And so for
this first and most important division he must have four thousand
roubles. The second class--eight thousand roubles--consisted of
less important debts. These were principally accounts owing in
connection with his race-horses, to the purveyor of oats and hay,
the English saddler, and so on. He would have to pay some two
thousand roubles on these debts too, in order to be quite free
from anxiety. The last class of debts--to shops, to hotels, to
his tailor--were such as need not be considered. So that he
needed at least six thousand roubles for current expenses, and he
only had one thousand eight hundred. For a man with one hundred
thousand roubles of revenue, which was what every one fixed as
Vronsky's income, such debts, one would suppose, could hardly be
embarrassing; but the fact was that he was far from having one
hundred thousand. His father's immense property, which alone
yielded a yearly income of two hundred thousand, was left
undivided between the brothers. At the time when the elder
brother, with a mass of debts, married Princess Varya Tchirkova,
the daughter of a Decembrist without any fortune whatever, Alexey
had given up to his elder brother almost the whole income from
his father's estate, reserving for himself only twenty-five
thousand a year from it. Alexey had said at the time to his
brother that that sum would be sufficient for him until he
married, which he probably never would do. And his brother, who
was in command of one of the most expensive regiments, and was
only just married, could not decline the gift. His mother, who
had her own separate property, had allowed ALexey every year
twenty thousand in addition to the twenty-five thousand he had
reserved, and ALexey had spent it all. Of late his mother,
incensed with him on account of his love- affair and his leaving
Moscow, had given up sending him the money. And in consequence of
this, Vronsky, who had been in the habit of Living on the scale
of forty-five thousand a year, having only received twenty
thousand that year, found himself now in difficulties.. To get
out of these difficulties, he could not apply to his mother for
money. Her last letter, which he had received the day before, had
particularly exasperated him by the hints in it that she was
quite ready to help him to succeed in the world and in the army,
but not to lead a life which was a scandal to all good society.
His mother's attempt to buy him stung him to the quick and made
him feel colder than ever to her. But he could not draw back from
the generous word when it was once uttered, even though he felt
now, vaguely foreseeing certain eventuaLities in his intrigue
with Madame Karenina, that this generous word had been spoken
thoughtlessly, and that even though he were not married he might
need all the hundred thousand of income. But it was impossible to
draw back. He had only to recall his brother's wife, to remember
how that sweet, delightful Varya sought, at every convenient
opportunity, to remind him that she remembered his generosity and
appreciated it, to grasp the impossibility of taking back his
gift. It was as impossible as beating a woman, stealing, or
Iying. One thing only could and ought to be done, and Vronsky
determined upon it without an instant's hesitation: to borrow
money from a money-lender, ten thousand roubles, a proceeding
which presented no difficulty, to cut down his expenses
generally, and to sell his race-horses. Resolving on this, he
promptly wrote a note to Rolandak, who had more than once sent to
him with offers to buy horses from him. Then he sent for the
Englishman and the money-lender, and divided what money he had
according to the accounts he intended to pay. Having finished
this business, he wrote a cold and cutting answer to his mother.
Then he took out of his note-book three notes of Anna's, read
them again, burned them, and remembering their conversation on
the previous day, he sank into meditation.

Chapter 20

Vronsky's life was particularly happy in that he had a code of
principles, which defined with unfailing certitude what he ought
and what he ought not to do. This code of principles covered only
a very small circle of contingencies, but then the principles
were never doubtful, and Vronsky, as he never went outside that
circle, had never had a moment's hesitation about doing what he
ought to do. These principles laid down as invariable rules: that
one must pay a cardsharper, but need not pay a tailor; that one
must never tell a lie to a man, but one may to a woman; that one
must never cheat any one, but one may a husband; that one must
never pardon an insult, but one may give one and so on. These
principles were possibly not reasonable and not good, but they
were of unfailing certainty, and so long as he adhered to them,
Vronsky felt that his heart was at peace and he could hold his
head up. Only quite lately in regard to his relations with Anna,
Vronsky had begun to feel that his code of principles did not
fully cover all possible contingencies, and to foresee in the
future difficulties and perplexities for which he could find no
guiding clue.

His present relation to Anna and to her husband was to his mind
clear and simple. It was clearly and precisely defined in the
code of principles by which he was guided.

She was an honorable woman who had bestowed her love upon him,
and he loved her, and therefore she was in his eyes a woman who
had a right to the same, or even more, respect than a lawful
wife. He would have had his hand chopped off before he would have
allowed himself by a word, by a hint, to humiliate her, or even
to fall short of the fullest respect a woman could look for.

His attitude to society, too, was clear. Every one might know,
might suspect it, but no one might dare to speak of it. If any
did so, he was ready to force all who might speak to be silent
and to respect the nonexistent honor of the woman he loved.

His attitude to the husband was the clearest of all. From the
moment that Anna loved Vronsky, he had regarded his own right
over her as the one thing unassailable. Her husband was simply a
superfluous and tiresome person. No doubt he was in a pitiable
position, but how could that be helped? The one thing the husband
had a right to was to demand satisfaction with a weapon in his
hand, and Vronsky was prepared for this at any minute.

But of late new inner relations had arisen between him and her,
which frightened Vronsky by their indefiniteness. Only the day
before she had told him that she was with child. And he felt that
this fact and what she expected of him called for something not
fully defined in that code of principles by which he had hitherto
steered his course in life. And he had been indeed caught
unawares, and at the first moment when she spoke to him of her
position, his heart had prompted him to beg her to leave her
husband. He had said that, but now thinking things over he saw
clearly that it would be better to manage to avoid that; and at
the same time, as he told himself so, he was afraid whether it
was not wrong.

"If I told her to leave her husband, that must mean uniting her
life with mine; am I prepared for that? How can I take her away
now, when I have no money? Supposing I could arrange ...But
how can I take her away while I'm in the service? If I say that--
I ought to be prepared to do it, that is, I ought to have the
money and to retire from the army."

And he grew thoughtful. The question whether to retire from the
service or not brought him to the other and perhaps the chief
though hidden interest of his life, of which none knew but he.

Ambition was the old dream of his youth and childhood, a dream
which he did 'not confess even to himself, though it was so
strong that now this passion was even doing battle with his love.
His first steps in the world and in the service had been
successful, but two years before he had made a great mistake.
Anxious to show his independence and to advance, he had refused a
post that had been offered him, hoping that this refusal would
heighten his value; but it turned out that he had been too bold,
and he was passed over. And having, whether he liked or not,
taken up for himself the position of an independent man, he
carried it off with great tact and good sense, behaving as though
he bore no grudge against any one, did not regard himself as
injured in any way, and cared for nothing but to be left alone
since he was enjoying himself. In reality he had ceased to enjoy
himself as long ago as the year before, when he went away to
Moscow. He felt that this independent attitude of a man who might
have done anything, but cared to do nothing was already beginning
to pall, that many people were beginning to fancy that he was not
really capable of anything but being a straightforward,
good-natured fellow. His connection with Madame Karenina, by
creating so much sensation and attracting general attention, had
given him a fresh distinction which soothed his gnawing worm of
ambition for a while, but a week before that worm had been roused
up again with fresh force. The friend of his childhood, a man of
the same set, of the same coterie, his comrade in the Corps of
Pages, Serpuhovskoy, who had left school with him and had been
his rival in class, in gymnastics, in their scrapes and their
dreams of glory, had come back a few days before from Central
Asia, where he had gained two steps up in rank, and an order
rarely bestowed upon generals so young.

As soon as he arrived in Petersburg, people began to talk about
him as a newly risen star of the first magnitude. A schoolfellow
of Vronsky's and of the same age, he was a general and was
expecting a command, which might have influence on the course of
political events; while Vronsky, independent and brilliant and
beloved by a charming woman though he was, was simply a cavalry
captain who was readily allowed to be as independent as ever he
liked. "Of course I don't envy Serpuhovskoy and never could envy
him; but his advancement shows me that one has only to watch
one's opportunity, and the career of a man like me may be very
rapidly made. Three years ago he was in just the same position as
I am. If I retire, I burn my ships. If I remain in the army, I
lose nothing. She said herself she did not wish to change her
position. And with her love I cannot feel envious of
Serpuhovskoy." And slowly twirling his mustaches, he got up from
the table and walked about the room. His eyes shone particularly
brightly, and he felt in that confident, calm, and happy frame of
mind which always came after he had thoroughly faced his
position. Everything was straight and clear, just as after former
days of reckoning. He shaved, took a cold bath, dressed and went
out.

Chapter 21

"We've come to fetch you. Your lessive lasted a good time
to-day," said Petritsky. "Well, is it over?"

"It is over," answered Vronsky, smiling with his eyes only, and
twirling the tips of his mustaches as circumspectly as though
after the perfect order into which his affairs had been brought
any over-bold or rapid movement might disturb it.

"You're always just as if you'd come out of a bath after it,"
said Petritsky. "I've come from Gritsky's" (that was what they
called the colonel); "they're expecting you."

Vronsky, without answering, looked at his comrade, thinking of
something else.

"Yes; is that music at his place?" he said, listening to the
familiar sounds of polkas and waltzes floating across to him.
"What's the fete?"

"Serpuhovskoy's come."

"Aha!" said Vronsky, "why, I didn't know."

The smile in his eyes gleamed more brightly than ever.

Having once made up his mind that he was happy in his love, that
he sacrificed his ambition to it--having anyway taken up this
position, Vronsky was incapable of feeling either envious of
Serpuhovskoy or hurt with him for not coming first to him when he
came to the regiment. Serpuhovskoy was a good friend, and he was
delighted he had come.

"Ah, I'm very glad!"

The colonel, Demin, had taken a large country house. The whole
party were in the wide lower balcony. In the courtyard the first
objects that met Vronsky's eyes were a band of singers in white
linen coats, standing near a barrel of vodka, and the robust,
good-humored figure of the colonel surrounded by officers. He had
gone out as far as the first step of the balcony and was loudly
shouting across the band that played Oflenbach's quadrille,
waving his arms and giving some orders to a few soldiers standing
on one side. A group of soldiers, a quartermaster, and several
subalterns came up to the balcony with Vronsky. The colonel
returned to the table, went out again onto the steps with a
tumbler in his hand, and proposed the toast, "To the health of
our former comrade, the gallant general, Prince Serpuhovskoy.
Hurrah!"

The colonel was followed by Serpuhovskoy, who came out onto the
steps smiling, with a glass in his hand.

"You always get younger, Bondarenko," he said to the
rosy-checked, smart-looking quartermaster standing just before
him, still youngishlooking though doing his second term of
service.

It was three years since Vronsky had seen Serpuhovskoy. He looked
more robust, had let his whiskers grow, but was still the same
graceful creature, whose face and figure were even more striking
from their softness and nobility than their beauty. The only
change Vronsky detected in him was that subdued, continual
radiance of beaming content which settles on the faces of men who
are successful and are sure of the recognition of their success
by every one. Vronsky knew that radiant air, and immediately
observed it in Serpuhovskoy.

As Serpuhovskoy came down the steps he saw Vronsky. A smile of
pleasure lighted up his face. He tossed his head upwards and
waved the glass in his hand, greeting Vronsky, and showing him by
the gesture that he could not come to him before the
quartermaster, who stood craning forward his lips ready to be
kissed.

"Here he is!" shouted the colonel. "Yashvin told me you were in
one of your gloomy tempers."

Serpuhovskoy kissed the moist, fresh lips of the gallant-looking
quartermaster, and wiping his mouth with his handkerchief, went
up to Vronsky.

"How glad I amI" he said, squeezing his hand and drawing him on
one side.

"You look after him," the colonel shouted to Yashvin, pointing to
Vronsky; and he went down below to the soldiers.

"Why weren't you at the races yesterday? I expected to see you
there," said Vronsky, scrutinizing Serpuhovskoy.

"I did go, but late. I beg your pardon," he added, and he turned
to the adjutant: "Please have this divided from me, each man as
much as it runs to." And he hurriedly took notes for three
hundred roubles from his pocketbook, blushing a little.

"Vronskyl Have anything to eat or drink?" asked Yashvin. "Hi,
something for the count to eat! Ah, here it is: have a glass!"

The fete at the colonel's lasted a long while. There was a great
deal of drinking. They tossed Serpuhovskoy in the air and caught
him again several times. Then they did the same to the colonel.
Then, to the accompanirnent of the band, the colonel himself
danced with Petritsky. Then the colonel, who began to show signs
of feebleness, sat down on a bench in the courtyard and began
demonstrating to Yashvin the superiority of Russia over Poland,
especially in cavalry attack, and there was a lull in the revelry
for a moment. Serpubovskoy went into the house to the bathroom to
wash his hands and found Vronsky there; Vronsky was drenching his
head with water. He had taken off his coat and put his sunburnt,
hairy neck under the tap, and was rubbing it and his head with
his hands. When he had finished, Vronsky sat down by
Serpuhovskoy. They both sat down in the bathroom on a lounge,
and a conversation began which was very interesting to both of
them.

"I've always been hearing about you through my wife," said
Serpuhovskoy. "I'm glad you've been seeing her pretty often."

"She's friendly with Varya, and they're the only women in
Petersburg I care about seeing," answered Vronsky, smiling. He
smiled because he foresaw the topic the conversation would turn
on, and he was glad of it.

"The only ones?" Serpuhovskoy queried, smiling.

"Yes; and I heard news of you, but not only through your wife,"
said Vronsky, checking his hint by a stern expression of face. "I
was greatly delighted to hear of your success, but not a bit
surprised. I expected even more."

Serpuhovskoy smiled. Such an opinion of him was obviously
agreeable to him, and he did not think it necessary to conceal
it.

"Well, I on the contrary expected less--I'll own frankly. But I'm
glad, very glad. I'm ambitious; that's my weakness, and I confess
to it."

"Perhaps you wouldn't confess to it if you hadn't been
successful," said Vronsky.

"I don't suppose so," said Serpuhovskoy, smiling again. "I won't
say life wouldn't be worth living without it, but it would be
dull. Of course I may be mistaken, but I fancy I have a certain
capacity for the line I've chosen, and that power of any sort in
my hands, if it is to be, will be better than in the hands of a
good many people I know," said Serpuhovskoy, with beaming
consciousness of success; "and so the nearer I get to it, the
better pleased I am."

"Perhaps that is true for you, but not for every one. I used to
think so too, but here I live and think life worth living not
only for that."

"There it's out! here it comes!" said Serpuhovskoy, laughing.
"Ever since I heard about you, about your refusal, I began . . .
Of course, I approved of what you did. But there are ways of
doing everything. And I think your action was good in itself, but
you didn't do it quite in the way you ought to have done."

"What's done can't be undone, and you know I never go back on
what I've done. And besides, I'm very well off."

"Very well off--for the time. But you're not satisfied with that.
I wouldn't say this to your brother. He's a nice child, like our
host here. There he goes!" he added, listening to the roar of
"hurrah!"--"and he's happy, but that does not satisfy you."

"I didn't say it did satisfy me."

"Yes, but that's not the only thing. Such men as you are wanted."

"By whom?"

"By whom? By society, by Russia. Russia needs men; she needs a
party, or else everything goes and will go to the dogs."

"How do you mean? Bertenev's party against the Russian
communists?"

"No," said Serpuhovskoy, frowning with vexation at being
suspected of such an absurdity. "Tout pa est une blague. That's
always been and always will be. There are no communists. But
intriguing people have to invent a noxious, dangerous party. It's
an old trick. No, what's wanted is a powerful party of
independent men like you and me."

"But why so?" Vronsky mentioned a few men who were in power. "Why
aren't they independent men?"

"Simply because they have not, or have not had from birth, an
independent fortune; they've not had a name, they've not been
close to the sun and center as we have. They can be bought either
by money or by favor. And they have to find a support for
themselves in inventing a policy. And they bring forward some
notion, some policy that they don't believe in, that does harm ~
and the whole policy is really only a means to a government house
and so much income. Cela n'est pas plus fin que ca, when you get
a peep at their cards. I may be inferior to them, stupider
perhaps, though I don't see why I should be inferior to them. But
you and I have one important advantage over them for certain, in
being more difficult to buy. And such men are more needed than
ever."

Vronsky listened attentively, but he was not so much interested
by the meaning of the words as by the attitude of Serpuhovskoy
who was already contemplating a struggle with the existing
powers, and already had his likes and dislikes in that higher
world, while his own interest in the governing world did not go
beyond the interests of his regiment. Vronsky felt, too, how
powerful Serpuhovskoy might become through his unmistakable
faculty for thinking things out and for taking things in, through
his intelligence and gift of words, so rarely met with in the
world in which he moved. And, ashamed as he was of the feeling,
he felt envious.

"Still I haven't the one thing of most importance for that," he
answered; "I haven't the desire for power. I had it once, but
it's gone."

"Excuse me, that's not true," said Serpuhovskoy, smiling.

"Yes, it is true, it is true ...now!" Vronsky added, to be
truthful.

"Yes, it's true now, that's another thing; but that now won't
last forever."

"Perhaps," answered Vronsky.

"You say perhaps," Serpuhovskoy went on, as though guessing his
thoughts, "but I SAY FOR CERTAIN. And that's what I wanted to see
you for. Your action was just what it should have been. I see
that, but you ought not to keep it up. I only ask you to give me
carte Blanche. I'm not going to offer you my protection . . .
though, indeed, why shouldn't I protect you?--you've protected me
often enough! I should hope our friendship rises above all that
sort of thing. Yes," he said, smiling to him as tenderly as a
woman, "give me carte blanche, retire from the regiment, and I'll
draw you upwards imperceptibly."

"But you must understand that I want nothing," said Vronsky,
"except that all should be as it is."

Serpubovskoy got up and stood facing him.

"You say that all should be as it is. I understand what that
means. But listen: we're the same age, you've known a greater
number of women perhaps than I have." Serpohovskoy's smile and
gestures told Vronsky that he mustn't be afraid, that he would be
tender and careful in touching the sore place. "But I'm married,
and believe me, in getting to know thoroughly one's wife, if one
loves her, as some one has said, one gets to know all women
better than if one knew thousands of them."

"We're coming directly!" Vronsky shouted to an officer, who
looked into the room and called them to the colonel.

Vronsky was longing now to hear to the end and know what
Serpuhovskey would say to him.

"And here's my opinion for you. Women are the chief stumbling-
block in a man's career. It's hard to love a woman and do
anything. There's only one way of having love conveniently
without its being a hindrance--that's marriage. How, how am I to
tell you what I mean?" said Serpuhovskoy, who liked similes.
"Wait a minute, wait a minute! Yes, just as you can only carry a
fardeau and do something with your hands, when the fardeau is
tied on your back, and that's marriage. And that's what I felt
when I was married. My hands were suddenly set free. But to drag
that fardeau about with you without marriage, your hands will
always be so full that you can do nothing. Look at Mazankov, at
Krupov. They've ruined their careers for the sake of women."

"What women!" said Vronsky, recalling the Frenchwoman and the
actress with whom the two men he had mentioned were connected.

"The firmer the woman's footing in society, the worse it is.
That's much the same as--not merely carrying the fardeau in your
arms--but tearing it away from some one else."

"You have never loved," Vronsky said softly, looking straight
before him and thinking of Anna.

"Perhaps. But you remember what I've said to you. And another
thing, women are all more materialistic than men. We make
something immense out of love, but they are always
terre-a-terre."

"Directly, directly!" he cried to a footman who came in. But the
footman had not come to call them again, as he supposed. The
footman brought Vronsky a note.

"A man brought it from Princess Tverskaya."

Vronsky opened the letter, and flushed crimson.

"My head's begun to ache; I'm going home," he said to
Serpuhovskoy.

"Oh, good-bye then. You give me carte Blanche!"

"We'll talk about it later on; I'll look you up in Petersburg."

Chapter 22

It was six o'clock already, and so, in order to be there quickly,
and at  the same time not to drive with his own horses, known to
every one, Vronsky got into Yashvin's hired fly, and told the
driver to drive as quickly as possible. It was a roomy,
old-fashioned fly, with seats for four. He sat in one corner,
stretched his legs out on the front seat, and sank into
meditation.

A vague sense of the order into which his affairs had been
brought, a vague recollection of the friendliness and flattery of
Serpuhovskoy, who had considered him a man that was needed, and
most of all, the anticipation of the interview before him--all
blended into a general, joyous sense of life. This feeling was so
strong that he could not help smiling. He dropped his legs,
crossed one leg over the other knee, and taking it in his hand,
felt the springy muscle of the calf, where it had been grazed the
day before by his fall, and leaning back he drew several deep
breaths.

"I'm happy, very happy!" he said to himself. He had often before
had this sense of physical joy in his own body, but he had never
felt so fond of himself, of his own body, as at that moment. He
enjoyed the slight ache in his strong leg, he enjoyed the
muscular sensation of movement in his chest as he breathed. The
bright, cold August day, which had made Anna feel so hopeless,
seemed to him keenly stimulating, and refreshed his face and neck
that still tingled from the cold water. The scent of brilliantine
on his whiskers struck him as particularly pleasant in the fresh
air. Everything he saw from the carriage-window, everything in
that cold pure air, in the pale light of the sunset, was as
fresh, and gay, and strong as he was himself: the roofs of the
houses shining in the rays of the setting sun, the sharp outlines
of fences and angles of buildings, the figures of passers- by,
the carriages that met him now and then, the motionless green of
the trees and grass, the fields with evenly drawn furrows of
potatoes, and the slanting shadows that fell from the houses, and
trees, and bushes, and even from the rows of potatoes--everything
was bright like a pretty landscape just finished and freshly
varnished.

"Get on, get on!" he said to the driver, putting his head out of
the window, and pulling a three-rouble note out of his pocket he
handed it to the man as he looked round. The driver's hand
fumbled with something at the lamp, the whip cracked, and the
carriage rolled rapidly along the smooth highroad.

"I want nothing, nothing but this happiness," he thought, staring
at the bone button of the bell in the space between the windows,
and picturing to himself Anna just as he had seen her last time.
"And as I go on, I love her more and more. Here's the garden of
the Vrede Villa. Whereabouts will she be? Where? How? Why did she
fix on this place to meet me, and why does she write in Betsy's
letter?" he thought, wondering now for the first time at it. But
there was now no time for wonder. He called to the driver to stop
before reaching the avenue, and opening the door, jumped out of
the carriage as it was moving,and went into the avenue that led
up to the house. There was no one in the avenue; but looking
round to the right he caught sight of her. Her face was hidden by
a veil, but he drank in with glad eyes the special movement in
walking, peculiar to her alone, the slope of the shoulders, and
the setting of the head, and at once a sort of electric shock ran
all over him. With fresh force, he felt conscious of himself from
the springy motions of his legs to the movements of his lungs as
he breathed, and something set his lips twitching.

Joining him, she pressed his hand tightly.

"You're not angry that I sent for you? I absolutely had to see
you," she said; and the serious and set line of her lips, which
he saw under the veil, transformed his mood at once.

"I angry! But how have you come, where from?"

"Never mind," she said, laying her hand on his, "come along, I
must talk to you."

He saw that something had happened, and that the interview would
not be a joyous one. In her presence he had no will of his own:
without knowing the grounds of her distress, he already felt the
same distress unconsciously passing over him.

"What is it? what?" he asked her, squeezing her hand with his
elbow, and trying to read her thoughts in her face.

She walked on a few steps in silence, gathering up her courage;
then suddenly she stopped.

"I did not tell you yesterday," she began, breathing quickly and
painfully, "that coming home with Alexey Alexandrovitch I told
him everything ...told him I could not be his wife, that. . .
and told him everything."

He heard her, unconsciously bending his whole figure down to her
as though hoping in this way to soften the hardness of her
position for her. But directly she had said this he suddenly drew
himself up, and a proud and hard expression came over his face.

"Yes, yes, that's better, a thousand times better! I know how
painful it was," he said. But she was not listening to his words,
she was reading his thoughts from the expression of his face. She
could not guess that that expression arose from the first idea
that presented itself to Vronsky--that a duel was now
inevitable. The idea of a duel had never crossed her mind, and so
she put a different interpretation on this passing expression of
hardness.

When she got her husband's letter, she knew then at the bottom of
her heart that everything would go on in the old way, that she
would not have the strength of will to forego her position, to
abandon her son, and to join her lover. The morning spent at
Princess Tverskaya's had confirmed her still more in this. But
this interview was still of the utmost gravity for her. She hoped
that this interview would transform her position, and save her.
If on hearing this news he were to say to her resolutely,
passionately, without an instant's wavering: "Throw up everything
and come with me!" she would give up her son and go away with
him. But this news had not produced what she had expected in him;
he simply seemed as though he were resenting some affront.

"It was not in the least painful to me. It happened of itself,"
she said irritably; "and see ..." She pulled her husband's
letter out of her glove.

"I understand, I understand," he interrupted her, taking the
letter, but not reading it, and trying to soothe her. "The one
thing I longed for, the one thing I prayed for, was to cut short
this position, so as to devote my life to your happiness."

"Why do you tell me that?" she said. "Do you suppose I can doubt
it? If I doubted . . ."

"Who's that coming?" said Vronsky suddenly, pointing to two
ladies walking towards them. "Perhaps they know us!" and he
hurriedly turned off, drawing her after him into a side path.

"Oh, I don't care!" she said. Her lips were quivering. And he
fancied that her eyes looked with strange fury at him from under
the veil. "I tell you that's not the point--I can't doubt that;
but see what he writes to me. Read it." She stood still again.

Again, just as at the first moment of hearing of her rupture with
her husband, Vronsky, on reading the letter, was unconsciously
carried away by the natural sensation aroused in him by his own
relation to the betrayed husband. Now while he held his letter in
his hands, he could not help picturing the challenge, which he
would most likely find at home to- day or to-morrow, and the duel
itself in which, with the same cold and haughty expression that
his face was assuming at this moment he would await the injured
husband's shot, after having himself fired into the air. And at
that instant there flashed across his mind the thought of what
Serpuhovskoy had just said to him, and what he had himself been
thinking in the morning--that it was better not to bind himself--
and he knew that this thought he could not tell her.

Having read the letter, he raised his eyes to her, and there was
no determination in them. She saw at once that he had been
thinking about it before by himself. She knew that whatever he
might say to her, he would not say all he thought. And she knew
that her last hope had failed her. This was not what she had been
reckoning on.

"You see the sort of man he is," she said, with a shaking voice;
"he . . .''

"Forgive me, but I rejoice at it," Vronsky interrupted. "For
God's sake, let me finish!" he added, his eyes imploring her to
give him time to explain his words. "I rejoice, because things
cannot, cannot possibly remain as he supposes."

"Why can't they?" Anna said, restraining her tears, and obviously
attaching no sort of consequence to what he said. She felt that
her fate was sealed.

Vronsky meant that after the duel--inevitable, he thought--things
could not go on as before, but he said something different.

"It can't go on. I hope that now you will leave him. I hope"--he
was confused, and reddened--"that you will let me arrange and
plan our life. To-morrow . . ." he was beginning.

She did not let him go on.

"But my child!" she shrieked. "You see what he writes! I should
have to leave him, and I can't and won't do that."

"But, for God's sake, which is betters.--leave your child, or
keep up this degrading position?"

"To whom is it degrading?"

"To all, and most of all to you."

"You say degrading ...don't say that. Those words have no
meaning for me," she said in a shaking voice. She did not want
him now to say what was untrue. She had nothing left her but his
love, and she wanted to love him. "Don't you understand that from
the day I loved you everything has changed for me? For me there
is one thing, and one thing only --your love. If that's mine, I
feel so exalted, so strong, that nothing can be humiliating to
me. I am proud of my position, because ...proud of being . . .
proud . . ." She could not say what she was proud of. Tears of
shame and despair choked her utterance. She stood still and
sobbed.

He felt, too, something swelling in his throat and twitching in
his nose, and for the first time in his life he felt on the point
of weeping. He could not have said exactly what it was touched
him so. He felt sorry for her, and he felt he could not help her,
and with that he knew that he was to blame for her wretchedness,
and that he had done something wrong.

"Is not a divorce possible?" he said feebly. She shook her head,
not answering. "Couldn't you take your son, and still leave him?"

"Yes; but it all depends on him. Now I must go to him," she said
shortly. Her presentiment that all would again go on in the old
way had not deceived her.

"On Tuesday I shall be in Petersburg, and everything can be
settled."

"Yes," she said. "But don't let us talk any more of it."

Anna's carriage, which she had sent away, and ordered to come
back to the little gate of the Vrede garden, drove up. Anna said
good-bye to Vronsky, and drove home.

Chapter 23

On Monday there was the usual sitting of the Commission of the
2nd of June. Alexey Alexandrovitch walked into the hall where the
sitting was held, greeted the members and the president, as
usual, and sat down in his place, putting his hand on the papers
laid ready before him. Among these papers lay the necessary
evidence and a rough outline of the speech he intended to make.
But he did not really need these documents. He remembered every
point, and did not think it necessary to go over in his memory
what he would say. He knew that when the time came, and when he
saw his enemy facing him, and studiously endeavoring to assume an
expression of indifference, his speech would flow of itself
better than he could prepare it now. He felt that the import of
his speech was of such magnitude that every word of it would have
weight. Meantime, as he listened to the usual report, he had the
most innocent and inoffensive air. No one, looking at his white
hands, with their swollen veins and long fingers, so softly
stroking the edges of the white paper that lay before him, and at
the air of weariness with which his head drooped on one side,
would have suspected that in a few minutes a torrent of words
would flow from his lips that would arouse a fearful storm, set
the members shouting and attacking one another, and force the
president to call for order. When the report was over, Alexey
Alexandrovitch announced in his subdued, delicate voice that he
had several points to bring before the meeting in regard to the
Commission for the Reorganization of the Native Tribes. All
attention was turned upon him. Alexey Alexandrovitch cleared his
throat, and not looking at his opponent, but selecting, as he
always did while he was delivering his speeches, the first person
sitting opposite him, an inoffensive little old.man, who never
had an opinion of any sort in the Commission, began to expound
his views. When he reached the point about the fundamental and
radical law, his opponent jumped up and began to protest.
Stremov, who was also a member of the Commission, and also stung
to the quick, began defending himself, and altogether a stormy
sitting followed; but Alexey Alexandrovitch triumphed, and his
motion was carried, three new commissions were appointed, and the
next day in a certain Petersburg circle nothing else was talked
of but this sitting. Alexey Alexandrovitch's success had been
even greater than he had anticipated.

Next morning, Tuesday, Alexey Alexandrovitch, on waking up,
recollected with pleasure his triumph of the previous day, and he
could not help smiling, though he tried to appear indifferent,
when the chief secretary of his department, anxious to flatter
him, informed him of the rumors that had reached him concerning
what had happened in the Commission.

Absorbed in business with the chief secretary, Alexey
Alexandrovitch had completely forgotten that it was Tuesday, the
day fixed by him for the return of Anna Arkadyevna, and he was
surprised and received a shock of annoyance when a servant came
in to inform him of her arrival.

Anna had arrived in Petersburg early in the morning; the carriage
had been sent to meet her in accordance with her telegram, and so
Alexey Alexandrovitch might have known of her arrival. But when
she arrived, he did not meet her. She was told that he had not
yet gone out, but was busy with his secretary. She sent word to
her husband that she had come, went to her own room, and occupied
herself in sorting out her things, expecting he would come to
her. But an hour passed; he did not come. She went into the
dining-room on the pretext of giving some directions, and spoke
loudly on purpose, expecting him to come out there; but he did
not come, though she heard him go to the door of his study as he
parted from the chief secretary. She knew that he usually went
out quickly to his office, and she wanted to see him before that,
so that their attitude to one another might be defined.

She walked across the drawing-room and went resolutely to him.
When she went into his study he was in official uniform,
obviously ready to go out, sitting at a little table on which he
rested his elbows, looking dejectedly before him. She saw him
before he saw her, and she saw that he was thinking of her.

On seeing her, he would have risen, but changed his mind, then
his face flushed hotly a thing Anna had never seen before, and he
got up quickly and went to meet her, looking not at her eyes, but
above them at her forehead and hair. He went up to her, took her
by the hand, and asked her to sit down.

"I am very glad you have come," he said, sitting down beside her,
and obviously wishing to say something, he stuttered. Several
times he tried to begin to speak, but stopped. In spite of the
fact that, preparing herself for meeting him, she had schooled
herself to despise and reproach him, she did not know what to say
to him, and she felt sorry for him. And so the silence lasted for
some time. "Is Seryozha quite well?" he said, and not waiting for
an answer, he added: "I shan't be dining at home to-day, and I
have got to go out directly."

"I had thought of going to Moscow," she said.

"No, you did quite, quite right to come," he said, and was silent
again.

Seeing that he was powerless to begin the conversation, she began
herself.

"Alexey Alexandrovitch," she said, looking at him and not
dropping her eyes under his persistent gaze at her hair, "I'm a
guilty woman, I'm a bad woman, but I am the same as I was, as I
told you then, and I have come to tell you that I can change
nothing."

"I have asked you no question about that," he said, all at once,
resolutely and with hatred looking her straight in the face;
"that was as I had supposed." Under the influence of anger he
apparently regained complete possession of all his faculties.
"But as I told you then, and have written to you," he said in a
thin, shrill voice, "I repeat now, that I am not bound to know
this. I ignore it. Not all wives are so kind as you, to be in
such a hurry to communicate such agreeable news to their
husbands." He laid special emphasis on the word "agreeable." "I
shall ignore it so long as the world knows nothing of it, so long
as my name is not disgraced. And so I simply inform you that our
relations must be just as they have always been, and that only in
the event of your compromising me I shall be obliged to take
steps to secure my honor."

"But our relations cannot be the same as always," Anna began in a
timid voice, looking at him with dismay.

When she saw once more those composed gestures, heard that
shrill, childish, and sarcastic voice, her aversion for him
extinguished her pity for him, and she felt only afraid, but at
all costs she wanted to make clear her position.

"I cannot be your wife while I . . ." she began.

He laughed a cold and malignant laugh.

"The manner of life you have chosen is reflected, I suppose, in
your ideas. I have too much respect or contempt, or both ...I
respect your past and despise your present ...that I was far
from the interpretation you put on my words."

Anna sighed and bowed her head.

"Though indeed I fail to comprehend how, with the independence
you show," he went on, getting hot, " announcing your infidelity
to your husband and seeing nothing reprehensible in it,
apparently--you can see anything reprehensible in performing a
wife's duties in relation to your husband."

"Alexey Alexandrovitch! What is it you want of me?"

"I want you not to meet that man here, and to conduct yourself so
that neither the world nor the servants can reproach you . . .
not to see him. That's not much, I think. And in return you will
enjoy all the privileges of a faithful wife without fulfilling
her duties. That's all I have to say to you. Now it's time for me
to go. I'm not dining at home." He got up and moved towards the
door.

Anna got up too. Bowing in silence, he let her pass before him.

Chapter 24

The night spent by Levin on the haycock did not pass without
result for him. The way in which he had been managing his land
revolted him and had lost all attraction for him. In spite of the
magnificent harvest, never had there been, or, at least, never it
seemed to him, had there been so many hindrances and so many
quarrels between him and the peasants as that year, and the
origin of these failures and this hostility was now perfectly
comprehensible to him. The delight he had experienced in the work
itself, and the consequent greater intimacy with the peasants,
the envy he felt of them, of their life, the desire to adopt that
life, which had been to him that night not a dream but an
intention, the execution of which he had thought out in detail--
all this had so transformed his view of the farming of the land
as he had managed it, that he could not take his former interest
in it, and could not help seeing that unpleasant relation between
him and the workspeople which was the
foundation of it all. The herd of improved cows such as Pava, the
whole land ploughed over and enriched, the nine level fields
surrounded with hedges, the two hundred and forty acres heavily
manured, the seed sown in drills, and all the rest of it--it was
all splendid if only the work had been done for themselves, or
for themselves and comrades--people in sympathy with them. But he
saw clearly now (his work on a book of agriculture, in which the
chief element in husbandry was to have been the laborer, greatly
assisted him in this) that the sort of farming he was carrying on
was nothing but a cruel and stubborn struggle between him and the
laborers, in which there was on one side--his side--a continual
intense effort to change everything to a pattern he considered
better; on the other side, the natural order of things. And in
the struggle he saw that with immense expenditure of force on his
side, and with no effort or even intention on the other side, all
that was attained was that the work did not go to the liking of
either side, and that splendid tools, splendid cattle and land
were spoiled with no good to any one. Worst of all, the energy
expended on this work was not simply wasted. He could not help
feeling now, since the meaning of this system had become clear to
him, that the aim of his energy was a most unworthy one. In
reality, what was the struggle about? He was struggling for every
farthing of his share (and he could not help it, for he had only
to relax his efforts, and he would not have had the money to pay
his laborers' wages), while they were only struggling to be able
to do their work easily and agreeably, that is to say, as they
were used to doing it. It was for his interests that every
laborer should work as hard as possible, and that while doing so
he should keep his wits about him, so as to try not to break the
winnowing-machines, the horse-rakes, the thrashing-machines, that
he should attend to what he was doing. What the laborer wanted
was to work as pleasantly as possible, with rests, and above all,
carelessly and heedlessly, without thinking. That summer Levin
saw this at every step. He sent the men to mow some clover for
hay, picking out the worst patches where the clover was overgrown
with grass and weeds and of no use for seed; again and again they
mowed the best acres of clover, justifying themselves by the
pretense that the bailiff had told them to, and trying to pacify
him with the assurance that it would be splendid hay; but he knew
that it was owing to those acres being so much easier to mow. He
sent out a hay machine for pitching the hay--it was broken at the
first row because it was dull work for a peasant to sit on the
seat in front with the great wings waving above him. And he was
told, "Don't trouble, your honor, sure, the women-folks will
pitch it quick enough." The ploughs were practically useless,
because it never occurred to the laborer to raise the share when
he turned the plough, and forcing it round, he strained the
horses and tore up the ground, and Levin was begged not to mmd
about it. The horses were allowed to stray into the wheat because
not a single laborer would consent to be night-watchman, and in
spite of orders to the contrary, the laborers insisted on taking
turns for night duty, and Ivan, after working all day long, fell
asleep, and was very penitent for his fault, saying, "Do what you
will to me, your honor."

They killed three of the best calves by letting them into the
clover aftermath without care as to their drinking, and nothing
would make the men believe that they had been blown out by the
clover, but they told him, by way of consolation, that one of his
neighbors had lost a hundred and twelve head of cattle in three
days. All this happened, not because any one felt ill-will to
Levin or his farm; on the contrary, he knew that they liked him,
thought him a simple gentleman (their highest praise); but it
happened simply because all they wanted was to work merrily and
carelessly, and his interests were not only remote and
incomprehensible to them, but fatally opposed to their most just
claims. Long before, Levin had felt dissatisfaction with his own
position in regard to the land. He saw where his boat leaked, but
he did not look for the leak, perhaps purposely deceiving
himself. (Nothing would be left him if he lost faith in it.) But
now he could deceive himself no longer. The farming of the land,
as he was managing it, had become not merely unattractive but
revolting to him, and he could take no further interest in it.

To this now was joined the presence, only twenty-five miles off,
of Kitty Shtcherbatskaya, whom he longed to see and could not
see. Darya Alexandrovna Oblonskaya had invited him, when he was
over there, to come; to come with the object of renewing his
offer to her sister, who would, so she gave him to understand,
accept him now. Levin himself had felt on seeing Kitty
Shtcherbatskaya that he had never ceased to love her; but he
could not go over to the Oblonskys', knowing she was there. The
fact that he had made her an offer, and she had refused him,
had-placed an insuperable barrier between her and him. "I can't
ask her to be my wife merely because she can't be the wife of the
man she wanted to marry," he said to himself. The thought of this
made him cold and hostile to her. "I should not be able to speak
to her without a feeling of reproach.; I could not look at her
without resentment; and she will only hate me all the more, as
she's bound to. And besides, how can I now, after what Darya
Alexandrovna told me, go to see them? Can I help showing that I
know what she told met And me to go magnanimously to forgive her,
and have pity on her! Me go through a performance before her of
forgiving, and deigning to bestow my love on her! ...What
induced Darya Alexandrovna to tell me that? By chance I might
have seen her, then everything would have happened of itself;
but, as it is, it's out of the question, out of the question!"

Darya Alexandrovna sent him a letter, asking him for a
side-saddle for Kitty's use. "I'm told you have a side-saddle,"
she wrote to him; "I hope you will bring it over yourself."

This was more than he could stand. How could a woman of any
intelligence, of any delicacy, put her sister in such a
humiliating position! He wrote ten notes, and tore them all up,
and sent the saddle without any reply. To write that he would go
was impossible, because he could not go; to write that he could
not come because something prevented him, or that he would be
away, that was still worse. He sent the saddle without an answer,
and with a sense of having done something shameful; he handed
over all the now revolting business of the estate to the bailiff,
and set off next day to a remote district to see his friend
Sviazhsky, who had splendid marshes for grouse in his
neighborhood, and had lately written to ask him to keep a
long-standing promise to stay with him. The grouse-marsh, in the
Surovsky district, had long tempted Levin, but he had continually
put off this visit on account of his work on the estate. Now he
was glad to get away from the neighborhood of the Shtcherbatskys,
and still more from his farm-work, especially on a shoot ing
expedition, which always in trouble served as the best
consolation.

Chapter 25

In the Surovsky district there was no railway nor service of
post-horses, and Levin drove there with his own horses in his
big, old-fashioned carriage.

He stopped half-way at a well-to-do peasant's to feed his horses.
A bald, well-preserved old man, with a broad, red beard, gray on
his cheeks, opened the gate, squeezing against the gatepost to
let the three horses pass. Directing the coachman to a place
under the shed in the big, clean, tidy yard, with charred,
old-fashioned ploughs in it, the old man asked Levin to come into
the parlor. A cleanly dressed young woman, with clogs on her bare
feet, was scrubbing the floor in the new outer room. She was
frightened of the dog, that ran in after Levin, and uttered a
shriek, but began laughing at her own fright at once when she was
told the dog would not hurt her. Pointing Levin with her bare arm
to the door into the parlor, she bent down again, hiding her
handsome face, and went on scrubbing.

"Would you like the samovar?" she asked.

"Yes, please."

The parlor was a big room, with a Dutch stove, and a screen
dividing it into two. Under the holy pictures stood a table
painted in patterns, a bench, and two chairs. Near the entrance
was a dresser full of crockery. The shutters were closed, there
were few flies, and it was so clean that Levin was anxious that
Laska, who had been running along the road and bathing in
puddles, should not muddy the floor, and ordered her to a place
in the corner by the door. After looking round the parlor, Levin
went out in the back yard. The good-looking young woman in clogs,
swinging the empty pails on the yoke, ran on before him to the
well for water.

"Look sharp, my girl!" the old man shouted after her,
good-humoredly, and he went up to Levin. "Well, sir, are you
going to Nikolay Ivanovitch Sviazhsky? His honor comes to us
too," he began, chatting, leaning his elbows on the railing of
the steps. In the middle of the old man's account of his
acquaintance with Sviazhsky, the gates creaked again, and
laborers came into the yard from the fields, with wooden ploughs
and harrows. The horses harnessed to the ploughs and harrows were
sleek and fat. The laborers were obviously of the household: two
were young men in cotton shirts and caps, the two others were
hired laborers in homespun shirts, one an old man, the other a
young fellow. Moving off from the steps, the old man went up to
the horses and began unharnessing them.

"What have they been ploughing?" asked Levin.

"Ploughing up the potatoes. We rent a bit of land too. Fedot,
don't let out the gelding, but take it to the trough, and we'll
put the other in harness."

"Oh, father, the ploughshares I ordered, has he brought them
along?" asked the big, healthy-looking fellow, obviously the old
man's son.

"There ...in the outer room," answered the old man, bundling
together the harness he had taken off, and flinging it on the
ground. "You can put them on, while they have dinner."

The good-looking young woman came into the outer room with the
full pails dragging at her shoulders. More women came on the
scene from somewhere, young and handsome, middle-aged, old and
ugly, with children and without children.

The samovar was beginning to sing; the laborers and the family,
having disposed of the horses, came in to dinner. Levin, getting
his provisions out of his carriage, invited the old man to take
tea with him.

"Well, I have had some to-day already," said the old man,
obviously accepting the invitation with pleasure. "But just a
glass for company."

Over their tea Levin heard all about the old man's farming. Ten
years before, the old man had rented three hundred acres from the
lady who owned them, and a year ago he had bought them and rented
another three hundred from a neighboring landowner. A small part
of the land-- the worst part--he let out for rent, while a
hundred acres of arable land he cultivated himself with his
family and two hired laborers. The old man complained that things
were doing badly. But Levin saw that he simply did so from a
feeling of propriety, and that his farm was in a flourishing
condition. If it had been unsuccessful he would not have bought
land at thirty-five roubles the acre, he would not have married
his three sons and a nephew, he would not have rebuilt twice
after fires, and each time on a larger scale. In spite of the old
man's complaints, it was evident that he was proud, and justly
proud, of his prosperity, proud of his sons, his nephew, his
sons' wives, his horses and his cows, and especially of the fact
that he was keeping all this farming going. From his conversation
with the old man, Levin thought he was not averse to new methods
either. He had planted a great many potatoes, and his potatoes,
as Levin had seen driving past, were already past flowering and
beginning to die down, while Levin's were only just coming into
flower. He earthed up his potatoes with a modern plough borrowed
from a neighboring landowner. He sowed wheat. The trifling fact
that, thinning out his rye, the old man used the rye he thinned
out for his horses, specially struck Levin. How many times had
Levin seen this splendid fodder wasted, and tried to get it
saved; but always it had turned out to be impossible. The peasant
got this done, and he could not say enough in praise of it as
food for the beasts.

"What have the wenches to do? They carry it out in bundles to the
roadside, and the cart brings it away."

"Well, we landowners can't manage well with our laborers," said
Levin, handing him a glass of tea.

"Thank you," said the old man, and he took the glass, but refused
sugar, pointing to a lump he had left. "They're simple
destruction," said he. "Look at Sviazhsky's, for instance. We
know what the land's like--first-rate, yet there's not much of a
crop to boast of. It's not looked after enough--that's all it
is!"

"But you work your land with hired laborers?"

"We're all peasants together. We go into everything ourselves. If
a man's no use, he can go, and we can manage by ourselves."

"Father, Finogen wants some tar," said the young woman in the
clogs, coming in.

"Yes, yes, that's how it is, sir!" said the old man, getting up,
and crossing himself deliberately, he thanked Levin and went out.

When Levin went into the kitchen to call his coachman he saw the
whole family at dinner. The women were standing up waiting on
them. The young, sturdy-looking son was telling something funny
with his mouth full of pudding, and they were all laughing, the
woman in the clogs, who was pouring cabbage-soup into a bowl,
laughing most merrily of all.

Very probably the good-looking face of the young woman in the
dogs had a good deal to do with the impression of well-being this
peasant household made upon Levin, but the impression was so
strong that Levin could never get rid of it. And all the way from
the old peasant's to Sviazhsky's he kept recalling this peasant
farm as though there were something in this impression that
demanded his special attention.

Chapter 26

Sviazhsky was the marshal of his district. He was five years
older than Levin, and had long been married. His sister-in-law, a
young girl Levin liked very much, lived in his house; and Levin
knew that Sviazhsky and his wife would have greatly liked to
marry the girl to him. He knew this with certainty, as so-called
eligible young men always know it, though he could never have
brought himself to speak of it to any one; and he knew too that,
although he wanted to get married, and although by every token
this very attractive girl would make an excellent wife, he could
no more have married her, even if he had not been in love with
Kitty Shtcherbatskaya, than he could have flown up to the sky.
And this knowledge poisoned the pleasure he had hoped to find in
the visit to Sviazhsky.

On getting Sviazhsky's letter with the invitation for shooting,
Levin had immediately thought of this; but in spite of it he had
made up his mind that Sviazhsky's having such views for him was
simply his own groundless supposition, and so he would go, all
the same. Besides, at the bottom of his heart he had a desire to
try himself, put himself to the test in regard to this girl. The
Sviazhskys' home-life was exceedingly pleasant, and
Sviazhsky~himself, the best type of man taking part in local
affairs that Levin knew, was very interesting to him.

Sviazhsky was one of those people, always a source of wonder to
Levin, whose convictions, very logical though never original, go
one way by themselves, while their life, exceedingly definite and
firm in its direction, goes its way quite apart and almost always
in direct contradiction to their convictions. Sviazhsky was an
extremely advanced man. He despised the nobility, and believed
the mass of the nobility to be secretly in favor of serfdom, and
only concealing their views from cowardice. He regarded Russia as
a ruined country, rather after the style of Turkey, and the
government of Russia as so bad that he never permitted himself to
criticize its doings seriously, and yet he was a functionary of
that government and a model marshal of nobility, and when he
drove about he always wore the cockade of office and the cap with
the red band. He considered human life tolerable only abroad, and
went abroad to stay at every opportunity, and at the same time he
carried on a complex and improved system of agriculture in
Russia, and with extreme interest followed everything and knew
everything that was being done in Russia. He considered the
Russian peasant as occupying a stage of development intermediate
between the ape and the man, and at the same time in the local
assemblies no one was readier to shake hands with the peasants
and listen to their opinion. He believed neither in God nor the
devil, but was much concerned about the question of the
improvement of the clergy and the maintenance of their revenues,
and took special trouble to keep up the church in his village.

On the woman question he was on the side of the extreme advocates
of complete liberty for women, and especially their right to
labor. But he lived with his wife on such terms that their
affectionate childless home-life was the admiration of every one,
and arranged his wife's life so that she did nothing and could do
nothing but share her husband's efforts that her time should pass
as happily and as agreeably as possible.

If it had not been a characteristic of Levin's to put the most
favorable interpretation on people, Sviazhsky's character would
have presented no doubt or difficulty to him: he would have said
to himself, "a fool or a knave," and everything would have seemed
clear. But he could not say "a fool," because Sviazhsky was
unmistakably clever, and moreover, a highly cultivated man, who
was exceptionally modest over his culture. There was not a
subject he knew nothing of. But he did not display his knowledge
except when he was compelled to do so. Still less could Levin say
that he was a knave, as Sviazhsky was unmistakably an honest,
goodhearted, sensible man, who worked good-humoredly, keenly, and
perseveringly at his work; he was held in high honor by every one
about him, and certainly he had never consciously done, and was
indeed incapable of doing, anything base.

Levin tried to understand him, and could not understand him, and
looked at him and his life as at a living enigma.

Levin and he were very friendly, and so Levin used to venture to
sound Sviazhsky, to try to get at the very foundation of his view
of life; but it was always in vain. Every time Levin tried to
penetrate beyond the outer chambers of Sviazhsky's mind, which
were hospitably open to all, he noticed that Sviazhsky was
slightly disconcerted; faint signs of alarm were visible in his
eyes, as though he were afraid Levin would understand him, and he
would give him a kindly, good-humored repulse.

Just now, since his disenchantment with farming, Levin was
particularly glad to stay with Sviazhsky. Apart from the fact
that the sight of this happy and affectionate couple, so pleased
with themselves and every one else, and their well-ordered home
had always a cheering effect on Levin, he felt a longing, now
that he was so dissatisfied with his own life, to get at that
secret in Sviazhsky that gave him such clearness, definiteness,
and good courage in life. Moreover, Levin knew that at
Sviazhsky's he should meet the landowners of the neighborhood,
and it was particularly interesting for him just now to hear and
take part in those rural conversations concerning crops,
laborers' wages, and so on, which, he was aware, are
conventionally regarded as something very low, but which seemed
to him just now to constitute the one subject of importance. "It
was not, perhaps, of importance in the days of serfdom, and it
may not be of importance in England. In both cases the conditions
of agriculture are firmly established; but among us now, when
everything has been turned upside down and is only just taking
shape, the question what form these conditions will take is the
one question of importance in Russia," thought Levin.

The shooting turned out to be worse than Levin had expected. The
marsh was dry and there were no grouse at all. He walked about
the whole day and only brought back three birds, but to make up
for that-- he brought back, as he always did from shooting, an
excellent appetite, excellent spirits, and that keen,
intellectual mood which with him always accompanied violent
physical exertion. And while out shooting, when he seemed to be
thinking of nothing at all, suddenly the old man and his family
kept coming back to his mind, and the impression of them seemed
to claim not merely his attention, but the solution of some
question connected with them.

In the evening at tea, two landowners who had come about some
business connected with a wardship were of the party, and the
interesting conversation Levin had been looking forward to sprang
up.

Levin was sitting beside his hostess at the tea-table, and was
obliged to keep up a conversation with her and her sister, who
was sitting opposite him. Madame Sviazhskaya was a round-faced,
fair-haired, rather short woman, all smiles and dimples. Levin
tried through her to get a solution of the weighty enigma her
husband presented to his mind; but he had not complete freedom of
ideas, because he was in an agony of embarrassment. This agony of
embarrassment was due to the fact that the sister-in-law was
sitting opposite to him, in a dress, specially put on, as he
fancied, for his benefit, cut particularly open, in the shape of
a trapeze, on her white bosom. This quadrangular opening, in
spite of the bosom's being very white, or just because it was
very white, deprived Levin of the full use of his faculties. He
imagined, probably mistakenly, that this low- necked bodice had
been made on his account, and felt that he had no right to look
at it, and tried not to look at it; but he felt that he was to
blame for the very fact of the low-necked bodice having been
made. It seemed to Levin that he had deceived some one, that he
ought to explain something, but that to explain it was
impossible, and for that reason he was continually blushing, was
ill at ease and awkward. His awkwardness infected the pretty
sister-in-law too. But their hostess appeared not to observe
this, and kept purposely drawing her into the conversation.

"You say," she said, pursuing the subject that had been started,
"that my husband cannot be interested in what's Russian. It's
quite the contrary; he is always in cheerful spirits abroad, but
not as he is here. Here, he feels in his proper place. He has so
much to do, and he has the faculty of interesting himself in
everything. Oh, you've not been to see our school, have you?"

"I've seen it.... The little house covered with ivy, isn't it?"

"Yes; that's Nastia's work," she said, indicating her sister.

"You teach in it yourself?" asked Levin, trying to look above the
open neck, but feeling that wherever he looked in that direction
he should see it.

"Yes; I used to teach in it myself, and do teach still, but we
have a first- rate schoolmistress now. And we've started
gymnastic exercises."

"No, thank you, I won't have any more tea," said Levin, and
conscions of doing a rude thing, but incapable of continuing the
conversation, he got up, blushing. "I hear a very interesting
conversation," he added, and walked to the other end of the
table, where Sviazhsky was sitting with the two gentlemen of the
neighborhood. Sviazhsky was sit. tiny sideways, with one elbow on
the table, and a cup in one hand, while with the other hand he
gathered up his beard, held it to his nose and let it drop again,
as though he were smelling it. His brilliant black eyes were
looking straight at the excited country gentleman with gray
whiskers, and apparently he derived amusement from his remarks.
The gentleman was complaining of the peasants. It was evident to
Levin that Sviazhsky knew an answer to this gentleman's
complaints, which would at once demolish his whole contention,
but that in his position he could not give utterance to this
answer, and listened, not without pleasure, to the landowner's
comic speeches.

The gentleman with the gray whiskers was obviously an inveterate
adherent of serfdom and a devoted agriculturist, who had lived
all his life in the country. Levin saw proofs of this in his
dress, in the oldfashioned threadbare coat, obviously not his
every-day attire, in his shrewd deep- set eyes, in his idiomatic,
fluent Russian, in the imperious tone that had become habitual
from long use, and in the resolute gestures of his large, red,
sunburnt hands, with an old betrothal-ring on the little finger.

Chapter 27

"If I'd only the heart to throw up what's been set going . . .
such a lot of trouble wasted ...I'd turn my back on the whole
business, sell up, go off like Nikolay Ivanovitch ...to hear
La Belle Hiline," said the landowner, a pleasant smile lighting
up his shrewd old face.

"But you see you don't throw it up," said Nikolay Ivanovitch
Sviazhsky; "so there must be something gained."

"The only gain is that I live in my own house, neither bought nor
hired. Besides, one keeps hoping the people will learn sense.
Though, instead of that, you'd never believe it--the drunkenness,
the immorality! They keep chopping and changing their bits of
land. Not a sight of a horse or a cow. The peasant's dying of
hunger, but just go and take him on as a laborer, he'll do his
best to do you a mischief, and then bring you up before the
justice of the peace."

"But then you make complaints to the justice too," said
Sviazhsky.

"I lodge complaints? Not for anything in the world! Such a
talking, and such a to-do, that one would have cause to regret
it. At the works, for instance, they pocketed the advance-money
and made off. What did the justice do? Why, acquitted them.
Nothing keeps them in order but their own communal court and
their village elder. He'll flog them in the good old style! But
for that there'd be nothing for it but to give it all up and run
away."

Obviously the landowner was chaffing Sviazhsky, who, far from
resenting it, was apparently amused by it.

"But you see we manage our land without such extreme measures,"
said he, smiling: "Levin and I and this gentleman."

He indicated the other landowner.

"Yes, the thing's done at Mihail Petrovitch's, but ask him how
it's done. Do you call that a rational system?" said the
landowner, obviously rather proud of the word "rational."

"My system's very simple," said Mihail Petrovitch, "thank God.
All my management rests on getting the money ready for the autumn
taxes, and the peasants come to me, 'Father, master, help us!'
Well, the peasants are all one's neighbors; one feels for them.
So one advances them a third, but one says: 'Remember, lads, I
have helped you, and you must help me when I need it--whether
it's the sowing of the oats, or the haycutting, or the harvest';
and well, one agrees, so much for each taxpayer-- though there
are dishonest ones among them too, it's true."

Levin, who had long been familiar with these patriarchal methods,
exchanged glances with Sviazhsky and interrupted Mihail
Petrovitch, turtung again to the gentleman with the gray
whiskers.

"Then what do you think?" he asked; "what system is one to adopt
nowadays?"

"Why, manage like Mihail Petrovitch, or let the land for half the
crop or for rent to the peasants; that one can do Only that's
just how the general prosperity of the country is being ruined.
Where the land with serf-labor and good management gave a yield
of nine to one, on the half-crop system it yields three to one.
Russia has been ruined by the emancipation!"

Sviazhsky looked with smiling eyes at Levin, and even made a
faint gesture of irony to him; but Levin did not think the
landowner's words absurd, he understood them better than he did
Sviazhsky. A great deal more of what the gentleman with the gray
whiskers said to show in what way Russia was ruined by the
emancipation struck him indeed as very true, new to him, and
quite incontestable. The landowner unmistakably spoke his own
individual thought--a thing that very rarely happens-- and a
thought to which he had been brought not by a desire of finding
some exercise for an idle brain, but a thought which had grown up
out of the conditions of his life, which he had brooded over in
the solitude of his village, and had considered in every aspect.

"The point is, don't you see, that progress of every sort is only
made by the use of authority," he said, evidently wishing to show
he was not without culture. "Take the reforms of Peter, of
Catherine, of Alexander. Take European history. And progress in
agriculture more than anything else the potato, for instance,
that was introduced among us by force. The wooden plough too
wasn't always used. It was introduced maybe in the days before
the Empire, but it was probably brought in by force.

Now, in our own day, we landowners in the serf times used various
improvements in our husbandry: drying machines and thrashing-
machines, and carting manure and all the modem implements--all
that we brought into use by our authority, and the peasants
opposed it at first, and ended by imitating us. Now by the
abolition of serfdom we have been deprived of our authority; and
so our husbandry, where it had been raised to a high level, is
bound to sink to the most savage primitive condition. That's how
I see it."

"But why so? If it's rational, you'll be able to keep up the same
system with hired labor," said Sviazhsky.

"We've no power over them. With whom am I going to work the
system, allow me to ask?"

"There it is--the labor force--the chief element in agriculture,"
thought Levin.

"With laborers."

"The laborers won't work well, and won't work with good
implements. Our laborer can do nothing but get drunk like a pig,
and when he's drunk he ruins everything you give him. He makes
the horses ill with too much water, cuts good harness, barters
the tires of the wheels for drink, drops bits of iron into the
thrashing-machine, so as to break it. He loathes the sight of
anything that's not after his fashion. And that's how it is the
whole level of husbandry has fallen. Lands gone out of
cultivation, overgrown with weeds, or divided among the peasants,
and where millions of bushels were raised you get a hundred
thousand; the wealth of the country has decreased. If the same
thing had been done, but with care that . . ."

And he proceeded to unfold his own scheme of emancipation by
means of which these drawbacks might have been avoided.

This did not interest Levin, but when he had finished, Levin went
back to his first position, and, addressing Sviazhsky, and trying
to draw him into expressing his serious opinion:--

"That the standard of culture is falling, and that with our
present relations to the peasants there is no possibility of
famling on a rational system to yield a profit--that's perfectly
true," said he.

"I don't believe it," Sviazhsky replied quite seriously; "all I
see is that we don't know how to cultivate the land, and that our
system of agriculture in the serf-days was by no means too high,
but too low. We have no machines, no good stock, no efficient
supervision; we don't even know how to keep accounts. Ask any
landowner; he won't be able to tell you what crop's profitable,
and what's not."

"Italian bookkeeping," said the gentleman of the gray whiskers
ironically. "You may keep your books as you like, but if they
spoil everything for you, there won't be any profit."

"Why do they spoil things? A poor thrashing-machine, or your
Russian presser, they will break, but my steam-press they don't
break. A wretched Russian nag they'll ruin, but keep good
dray-horses--they won't ruin them. And so it is all round. We
must raise our farming to a higher level."

"Oh, if one only had the means to do it, Nikolay Ivanovitch' It's
all very well for you; but for me, with a son to keep at the
university, lads to be educated at the high school--how am I
going to buy these dray- horses?"

"Well, that's what the land banks are for."

"To get what's left me sold by auction? No, thank you."

"I don't agree that it's necessary or possible to raise the level
of agriculture still higher," said Levin. "I devote myself to it,
and I have means but I can do nothing. As to the banks, I don't
know to whom they're any good. For my part, anyway, whatever I've
spent money on in the way of husbandry, it has been a loss:
stock--a loss, machinery--a loss."

"That's true enough," the gentleman with the gray whiskers chimed
in, positively laughing with satisfaction.

"And I'm not the only one," pursued Levin. "I mix with all the
neighboring landowners, who are cultivating their land on a
rational system; they all, with rare exceptions, are doing so at
a loss. Come, tell us how does your land do--does it pay?" said
Levin, and at once in Sviazhsky's eyes he detected that fleeting
expression of alamm which he had noticed whenever he had tried to
penetrate beyond the outer chambers of Sviazhsky's mind.

Moreover, this question on Levin's part was not quite in good
faith Madame Sviazeskaya had just told him at tea that they had
that summer invited a Gemman expert in bookkeeping from Moscow,
who for a consideration of five hundred roubles had investigated
the management of their property, and found that it was costing
them a loss of three thousand odd roubles. She did not remember
the precise sum, but it appeared that the Gemman had worked it
out to the fraction of a farthing.

The gray-whiskered landowner smiled at the mention of the profits
of Sviazhsky's famling, obviously aware how much gain his
neighbor and marshal was likely to be making.

"Possibly it does not pay," answered Sviazhsky. "That merely
proves either that I'm a bad manager, or that I've sunk my
capital for the increase of my rents."

"Oh, rent!" Levin cried with horror. "Rent there may be in
Europe, where land has been improved by the labor put into it,
but with us all the land is deteriorating from the labor put into
it--in other words they're working it out; so there's no question
of rent."

"How no rent? It's a law."

"Then we're outside the law; rent explains nothing for us, but
simply muddles us. No, tell me how there can be a theory of rent'
. . ."

"Will you have some junket? Masha, pass us some junket or
raspberries." He turned to his wife. "Extraordinarily late the
raspberries are lasting this year."

And in the happiest frame of mind Sviazhsky got up and walked
off, apparently supposing the conversation to have ended at the
very point when to Levin it seemed that it was only just
beginning.

Having lost his antagonist, Levin continued the conversation with
the gray-whiskered landowner, trying to prove to him that all the
difficulty arises from the fact that we don't find out the
peculiarities and habits of our laborer; but the landowner, like
all men who think inde pendently and in isolation, was slow in
taking in any other person's idea, and particularly partial to
his own. He stuck to it that the Russian peasant is a swine and
likes swinishness, and that to get him out of his swinishness one
must have authority, and there is none; one must have the stick,
and we have become so liberal that we have all of a sudden
replaced the stick that served us for a thousand years by lawyers
and model prisons, where the worthless, stinking peasant is fed
on good soup and has a fixed allowance of cubic feet of air.

"What makes you think," said Levin, trying to get back to the
question, "that it's impossible to find some relation to the
laborer in which the labor would become productive?"

"That never could be so with the Russian peasantry; we've no
power over them," answered the landowner.

"How can new conditions be found?" said Sviazhsky. Having eaten
some junket and lighted a cigarette, he came back to the
discussion. "All possible relations to the labor force have been
defined and studied," he said. "The relic of barbarism, the
primitive commune with each guarantee for all, will disappear of
itself; serfdom has been abolished-- there remains nothing but
free labor, and its fomms are fixed and ready made, and must be
adopted. Permanent hands, day-laborers, rammers-- you can't get
out of those fomms."

"But Europe is dissatisfied with these fomms."

"Dissatisfied, and seeking new ones. And will find them, in all
probability."

"That's just what I was meaning," answered Levin. "Why shouldn't
we seek them for ourselves?"

"Because it would be just like inventing afresh the means for
constructing railways. They are ready, invented."

"But if they don't do for us, if they're stupid?" said Levin.

And again he detected the expression of alarm in the eyes of
Sviazhsky.

"Oh, yes; we'll bury the world under our caps! We've found the
secret Europe was seeking for! I've heard all that; but, excuse
me, do you know all that's been done in Europe on the question of
the organic zation of labor?"

"No, very little."

"That question is now absorbing the best minds in Europe. The

Schulze-Delitsch movement.... And then all this enommous
literature of the labor question, the most liberal Lassalle
movement ...the Mulhausen experiment? That's a fact by now, as
you're probably aware."

"I have some idea of it, but very vague."

"No, you only say that; no doubt you know-all about it as well as
I do. I'm not a professor of sociology, of course, but it
interested me, and really, if it interests you, you ought to
study it."

"But what conclusion have they come to?"

"Excuse me ..."

The two neighbors had risen, and Sviazhsky, once more checking
Levin in his inconvenient habit of peeping into what was beyond
the outer chambers of his mind, went to see his guests out.

Chapter 28

Levin was insufferably bored that evening with the ladies; he was
stirred as he had never been before by the idea that the
dissatisfaction he was feeling with his system of managing his
land was not an exceptional case, but the general condition of
things in Russia; that the organization of some relation of the
laborers to the soil in which they would work, as with the
peasant he had met half-way to the Sviazhskys', was not a dream,
but a problem which must be solved. And it seemed to him that the
problem could be solved, and that he ought to try and solve it.

After saying good-night to the ladies, and promising to stay the
whole of the next day, so as to make an expedition on horseback
with them to see an interesting ruin in the crown forest, Levin
went, before going to bed, into his host's study to get the books
on the labor question that Sviazhsky had offered him. SviazDsky's
study was a huge room, surrounded by bookcases and with two
tables in it--one a massive writingtable, standing in the middle
of the room, and the other a round table, covered with recent
numbers of reviews and journals in different languages, ranged
like the rays of a star round the lamp. On the writingtable was a
stand of drawers marked with gold lettering, and full of
papers-of various sorts.

Sviazhsky took out the books, and sat down in a rocking-chair.

"What are you looking at there?" he said to Levin, who was
standing at the round table looking through the reviews.

"Oh, yes, there's a very interesting article here," said
Sviazhsky of the review Levin was holding in his hand. "It
appears," he went on, with eager interest, ``that Friedrich was
not, after all, the person chiefly responsible for the partition
of Poland. It is proved . . ."

And with his characteristic clearness, he summed up those new,
very important' and interesting revelations. Although Levin was
engrossed at the moment by his ideas about the problem of the
land, he wondered, as he heard Sviazshky: "What is there inside
of him? And why, why is he interested in the partition of
Poland?" When Sviazhsky had finished, Levin could not help
asking: "Well, and what then?" But there was nothing to follow.
It was simply interesting that it had been proved to be so and
so. But Sviazhsky did not explain, and saw no need to explain why
it was interesting to him.

"Yes, but I was very much interested by your irritable neighbor,"
said Levin, sighing. "He's a clever fellow, and said a lot that
was true."

"Oh, get along with you! An inveterate supporter of serfdom at
heart, like all of them!" said Sviazhsky.

"Whose marshal you are."

"Yes, only I marshal them in the other direction," said
Sviazhsky, laughing.

"I'll tell you what interests me very much," said Levin. "He's
right that our system, that's to say of rational farming, doesn't
answer, that the only thing that answers is the money-lender
system, like that meek-looking gentleman's, or else the very
simplest ...Whose fault is it?"

"Our own, of course. Besides, it's not true that it doesn't
answer. It answers with Vassiltchikov."

"A factory . . ."

"But I really don't know what it is you are surprised at. The
people are at such a low stage of rational and moral development,
that it's obvious they're bound to oppose everything that's
strange to them. In Europe, a rational system answers because the
people are educated; it follows that we must educate the people--
that's all."

"But how are we to educate the people?"

"To educate the people three things are needed: schools, and
schools, and schools.

"But you said yourself the people are at such a low stage of
material development: what help are schools for that?"

"Do you know, you remind me of the story of the advice given to
the sick man--You should try purgative medicine. Taken: worse.
Try leeches. Tried them: worse. Well, then, there's nothing left
but to pray to God. Tried it: worse. That's just how it is with
us. I say political economy; you say--worse. I say socialism:
worse. Education: worse."

"But how do schools help matters?"

"They give the peasant fresh wants."

"Well, that's a thing I've never understood," Levin replied with
heat. "In what way are schools going to help the people to
improve their material position? You say schools, education, will
give them fresh wants. So much the worse, since they won't be
capable of satisfying them. And in what way a knowledge of
addition and subtraction and the catechism is going to improve
their material condition, I never could make out. The day before
yesterday, I met a peasant woman in the evening with a little
baby, and asked her where she was going. She said she was going
to the wise woman; her boy had screaming fits, so she was taking
him to be doctored. I asked, 'Why, how does the wise woman cure
screaming fits?' 'She puts the child on the hen-roost and repeats
some charm....' "

"Well, you're saying it yourself! What's wanted to prevent her
taking her child to the hen-roost to cure it of screaming fits is
just . . ." Sviazhsky said, smiling good-humoredly.

"Oh, no!" said Levin with annoyance; "that method of doctoring I
merely meant as a simile for doctoring the people with schools.
The people are poor and ignorant--that we see as surely as the
peasant woman sees the baby is ill because it screams. But in
what way this trouble of poverty and ignorance is to be cured by
schools is as incomprehensible as how the hen-roost affects the
screaming. What has to be cured is what makes him poor."

"Well, in that, at least, you're in agreement with Spencer, whom
you dislike so much. He says, too, that education may be the
consequence of greater prosperity and comfort, of more frequent
washing, as he says, but not of being able to read and write...."

"Well, then, I'm very glad--or the contrary, very sorry, that I'm
in agreement with Spencer; only I've known it a long while.
Schools can do no good; what will do good is an economic
organization in which the people will become richer, will have
more leisure--and then there will be schools."

"Still, all over Europe now schools are obligatory."

"And how far do you agree with Spencer yourself about it?" asked
Levin.

But there was a gleam of alarm in Sviazhsky's eyes, and he said
smiling:

"No; that screaming story is positively capital! Did you really
hear it yourself?"

Levin saw that he was not to discover the connection between this
man's life and his thoughts. Obviously he did not care in the
least what his reasoning led him to; all he wanted was the
process of reasoning. And he did not like it when the process of
reasoning brought him into a blind alley. That was the only thing
he disliked, and avoided by changing the conversation to
something agreeable and amusing.

All the impressions of the day, beginning with the impression
made by the old peasant, which served, as it were, as the
fundamental basis of all the conceptions and ideas of the day,
threw Levin into violent excitement. This dear good Sviazhsky,
keeping a stock of ideas simply for social purposes, and
obviously having some other principles hidden from Levin, while
with the crowd, whose name is legion, he guided public opinion by
ideas he did not share; that irascible country gentleman,
perfectly correct in the conclusions that he had been worried
into by life, but wrong in his exasperation against a whole
class, and that the best class in Russia; his own dissatisfaction
with the work he had been doing, and the vague hope of finding a
remedy for all this--all was blended in a sense of inward
turmoil, and anticipation of some solution near at hand.