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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"Well, it's a long while since you've been to see us, Ronstantin
DmitrievitchI"

Not only he knew all about it, but he was unmistakably delighted
and making efforts to conceal his joy. Looking into his kindly
old eyes, Levin realized even something new in his happiness.

"Are they up?"

"Pray walk in! Leave it here," said he, smiling, as Levin would
have come back to take his hat. That meant something.

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

The footman, though a young man, and one of the new school of
footmen, a dandy, was a very kind-hearted, good fellow, and he
too knew all about it.

"The princess ...the prince ...the young princess . . ."
said Levin.

The first person he saw was Mademoiselle Linon. She walked across
the room, and her ringlets and her face were beaming. He had only
just spoken to her, when suddenly he heard the rustle of a skirt
at the door, and Mademoiselle Linon vanished from Levin's eyes,
and a joyful terror came over him at the nearness of his
happiness. Mademoiselle Linon was in great haste, and leaving
him, went out at the other door. Directly she had gone out,
swift, swift light steps sounded on the parquet, and his bliss,
his life, himself--what was best in himself, what he had so long
sought and longed for--was quickly, so quickly approaching him.
She did not walk, but seemed, by some unseen force, to float to
him. He saw nothing but her clear, truthful eyes, frightened by
the same bliss of love that flooded his heart. Those eyes were
shining nearer and nearer, blinding him with their light of love.
She stopped still close to him, touching him. Her hands rose and
dropped onto his shoulders.

She had done all she could--she had run up to him and given
herself up entirely, shy and happy. He put his arms round her and
pressed his lips to her mouth that sought his kiss.

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

Her mother and father had consented without demur, and were happy
in her happiness. She had been waiting for him. She wanted to be
the first to tell him her happiness and his. She had got ready to
see him alone, and had been delighted at the idea, and had been
shy and ashamed, and did not know herself what she was doing. She
had heard his steps and voice, and had waited at the door for
Mademoiselle Linon to go. Mademoiselle Linon had gone away.
Without thinking, without asking herself how and what, she had
gone up to him, and did as she was doing.

"Let us go to mamma!" she said, taking him by the hand. For a
long while he could say nothing, not so much because he was
afraid of desecrating the loftiness of his emotion by a word, as
that every time he tried to say something, instead of words he
felt that tears of happiness were welling up. He took her hand
and kissed it.

"Can it be true?" he said at last in a choked voice. "I can't
believe you love me, dear!"

She smiled at that "dear," and at the timidity with which he
glanced at her.

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

Not letting go his hands, she went into the drawing-room. The
princess, seeing them, breathed quickly, and immediately began to
cry and then immediately began to laugh and with a vigorous step
Levin had not expected, ran up to him, and hugging his head,
kissed him, wetting his cheeks with her tears.

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

"You've not been long settling things," said the old prince,
trying to seem unmoved; but Levin noticed that his eyes were wet
when he turned to him.

"I've long, always wished for this!" said the prince, taking
Levin by the arm and drawing him towards himself. "Even when this
little feather-head fancied . . ."

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

"Well, I won't!" he said. "I'm very, very ...plea ...Oh,
what a fool I am . . ."

He embraced Kitty, kissed her face, her hand, her face again and
made the sign of the cross over her.

And there came over Levin a new feeling of love for this man,
till then BO little known to him, when he saw how slowly and
tenderly Kitty kissed his muscular hand.

Chapter 16

The princess sat in her armchair, silent and smiling; the prince
sat  down beside her. Kitty stood by her father's chair, still
holding his hand. All were silent.

The princess was the first to put everything into words, and to
translate all thoughts and feelings into practical questions. And
all equally felt this strange and painful for the first minute.

"When is it to be? We must have the benediction and announcement.
And when's the wedding to be? What do you think, Alexander?"

"Here he is," said the old prince, pointing to Levin--"he's the
principal person in the matter."

"When?" said Levin blushing. "To-morrow; If you ask me, I should
say, the benediction to-day and the wedding to-morrow."

"Come, mon cher, that's nonsense!"

"Well, in a week."

"He's quite mad."

"No, why so?"

"Well, upon my wordl" said the mother, smiling, delighted at this
haste. "How about the trousseau?"

"Will there really be a trousseau and all that?" Levin thought
with horror. "But can the trousseau and the benediction and all
that--can it spoil my happiness? Nothing can spoil it!" He
glanced at Kitty, and noticed that she was not in the least, not
in the very least, disturbed by the idea of the trousseau. "Then
it must be all right," he thought.

"Oh, I know nothing about it; I only said what I should like," he
said apologetically.

"We'll talk it over, then. The benediction and announcement can
take place now. That's very well."

The princess went up to her husband, kissed him, and would have
gone away, but he kept her, embraced her, and tenderly as a young
lover, kissed her several times, smiling. The old people were
obviously muddled for a moment, and did not quite know whether it
was they who were in love again or their daughter. When the
prince and the princess had gone, Levin went up to his betrothed
and took her hand. He was self-possessed now and could speak, and
he had a great deal he wanted to tell her. But he said not at all
what he had to say.

"How I knew it would be so! I never hoped for it; and yet in my
heart I was always sure," he said. "I believe that it was
ordained."

"And I!" she said. "Even when . . ." She stopped and went on
again, looking at him resolutely with her truthful eyes, "Even
when I thrust from me my happiness. I always loved you alone, but
I was carried away. I ought to tell you ...Can you forgive
that?"

"Perhaps it was- for the best. You will have to forgive me so
much. I ought to tell you . . ."

This was one of the things he had meant to speak about. He had
resolved from the first to tell her two things--that he was not
chaste as she was, and that he was not a believer. It was
agonizing, but he considered he ought to tell her both these
facts.

"No, not now, later!" he said.

"Very well, later, but you must certainly tell me. I'm not afraid
of anything. I want to know everything. Now it is settled."

He added: "Settled that you'll take me whatever I may be--you
won't give me up? Yes?"

"Yes, yes."

Their conversation was interrupted by Mademoiselle Linon, who
with an affected but tender smile came to congratulate her
favorite pupil. Before she had gone, the servants came in with
their congratulations. Then relations arrived, and there began
that state of blissful absurdity from which Levin did not emerge
till the day after his wedding. Levin was in a continual state of
awkwardness and discomfort, but the intensity of his happiness
went on all the while increasing. He felt continually that a
great deal was being expected of him--what, he did not know; and
he did everything he was told, and it all gave him happiness. He
had thought his engagement would have nothing about it like
others, that the ordinary conditions of engaged couples would
spoil his special happiness; but it ended in his doing exactly as
other people did, and his happiness being only increased thereby
and becoming more and more special, more and more unlike anything
that had ever happened.

"Now we shall have sweetmeats to eat," said Mademoiselle Linon--
and Levin drove off to buy sweetmeats.

"Well, I'm very glad," said Sviazhsky. "I advise you to get the
bouquets from Fomin's."

"Oh, are they wanted?" And he drove to Fomin's.

His brother offered to lend him money, as he would have so many
expenses, presents to give....

"Oh, are presents wanted?" And he galloped to Foulde's.

And at the confectioner's, and at Fomin's, and at Foulde's he saw
that he was expected; that they were pleased to see him, and
prided themselves on his happiness, just as every one whom he had
to do with during those days. What was extraordinary was that
every one not only liked him, but even people previously
unsympathetic, cold, and callous, were enthusiastic over him,
gave way to him in everything, treated his feeling with
tenderness and delicacy, and shared his conviction that he was
the happiest man in the world because his betrothed was beyond
perfection. Kitty too felt the same thing. When Countess Nordston
ventured to hint that she had hoped for something better, Kitty
was so angry and proved so conclusively that nothing in the world
could be better than Levin, that Countess Nordston had to admit
it, and in Kitty's presence never met Levin without a smile of
ecstatic admiration.

The confession he had promised was the one painful incident of
this time. He consulted the old prince, and with his sanction
gave Kitty his diary, in which there was written the confession
that tortured him. He had written this diary at the time with a
view to his future wife. Two things caused him anguish: his lack
of purity and his lack of faith. His confession of unbelief
passed unnoticed. She was religious, had never doubted the truths
of religion, but his external unbelief did not affect her in the
least. Through love she knew all his soul, and in his soul she
saw what she wanted, and that such a state of soul should be
called unbelieving was to her a matter of no account. The other
confession set her weeping bitterly.

Levin, not without an inner struggle, handed her his diary. He
knew that between him and her there could not be, and should not
be, secrets, and so he had decided that so it must be. But he had
not realized what an effect it would have on her, he had not put
himself in her place. It was only when the same evening he came
to their house before the theater, went into her room and saw her
tear-stained, pitiful, sweet face, miserable with suffering he
had caused and nothing could undo, he felt the abyss that
separated his shameful past from her dovelike purity, and was
appalled at what he had done.

"Take them, take these dreadful books!" she said, pushing away
the note-books lying before her on the table. "Why did you give
them me? No, it was better anyway," she added, touched by his
despairing face. "But it's awful, awful!"

His head sank, and he was silent. He could say nothing.

"You can't forgive me," he whispered.

"Yes, I forgive you; but it's terrible!"

But his happiness was so immense that this confession did not
shatter it, it only added another shade to it. She forgave him;
but from that time more than ever he considered himself unworthy
of her, morally bowed down lower than ever before her, and prized
more highly than ever his undeserved happiness.

Chapter 17

Unconsciously going over in his memory the conversations that had
taken place during and after dinner, Alexey Alexandrovitch
returned to his solitary room. Darya Alexandrovna's words about
forgiveness had aroused in him nothing but annoyance. The
applicability or non- applicability of the Christian precept to
his own case was too difficult a question to be discussed
lightly, and this question had long ago been answered by Alexey
Alexandrovitch in the negative. Of all that had been said, what
stuck most in his memory was the phrase of stupid, good-natured
Turovtsin--"ACTED LIKE A MAN, HE DID! CALLED HIM OUT AND SHOT
HIM!" Every one had apparently shared this feeling, though from
politeness they had not expressed it.

"But the matter is settled, it's useless thinking about it,"
Alexey Alexandrovitch told himself. And thinking of nothing but
the journey before him, and the revision work he had to do, he
went into his room and asked the porter who escorted him where
his man was. The porter said that the man had only just gone out.
Alexey Alexandrovitch ordered tea to be sent him, sat down to the
table, and taking the guide-book, began considering the route of
his journey.

"Two telegrams," said his manservant, coming into the room. "I
beg your pardon, your excellency; I'd only just that minute gone
out."

Alexey Alexandrovitch took the telegrams and opened them. The
first telegram was the announcement of Stremov's appointment to
the very post Karenin had coveted. Alexey Alexandrovitch flung
the telegram down, and flushing a little, got up and began to
pace up and down the room. "Quos cult perdere dementat," he said,
meaning by quos the persons responsible for this appointment. He
was not so much annoyed that he had not received the post, that
he had been conspicuously passed over; but it was
incomprehensible, amazing to him that they did not see that the
wordy phrase-monger Stremov was the last man fit for it. How
could they fail to see how they were ruining themselves, lowering
their prestige by this appointment?

"Something else in the same line," he said to himself bitterly,
opening the second telegram. The telegram was from his wife. Her
name, written in blue pencil, "Anna," was the first thing that
caught his eye. "I am dying; I beg, I implore you to come. I
shall die easier with your forgiveness," he read. He smiled
contemptuously, and flung down the telegram. That this was a
trick and a fraud, of that, he thought for the first minute,
there could be no doubt.

"There is no deceit she would stick at. She was near her
confinement. Perhaps it is the confinement. But what can be their
aim? To legitimize the child, to compromise me, and prevent a
divorce," he thought. "But something was said in it: I am dying .
. ." He read the telegram again, and suddenly the plain meaning
of what was said in it struck him.

"And if it is true?" he said to himself. "If it is true that in
the moment of agony and nearness to death she is genuinely
penitent, and I, taking it for a trick, refuse to go? That would
not only be cruel, and every one would blame me, but it would be
stupid on my part."

"Piotr, call a coach; I am going to Petersburg," he said to his
servant.

Alexey Alexandrovitch decided that he would go to Petersburg and
see his wife. If her illness was a trick, he would say nothing
and go away again. If she was really in danger, and wished to see
him before her

death, he would forgive her if he found her alive, and pay her
the last duties if he came too late.

All the way he thought no more of what he ought to do.

With a sense of weariness and uncleanness from the night spent in
the train, in the early fog of Petersburg Alexey Alexandrovitch
drove through the deserted Nevsky and stared straight before him,
not thinking of what was awaiting him. He could not think about
it, because in picturing what would happen, he could not drive
away the reflection that her death would at once remove all the
difficulty of his position. Bakers, closed shops, night-cabmen,
porters sweeping the pavements flashed past his eyes, and he
watched it all, trying to smother the thought of what was
awaiting him, and what he dared not hope for, and yet was hoping
for He drove up to the steps. A sledge and a carriage with the
coachman asleep stood at the entrance. As he went into the entry,
Alexey Alexandrovitch, as it were, got out his resolution from
the remotest corner of his brain, and mastered it thoroughly. Its
meaning ran: "If it's a trick, then calm contempt and departure.
If truth, do what is proper."

The porter opened the door before Alexey Alexandrovitch rang. The
porter, Kapitonitch, looked queer in an old coat, without a tie,
and iD skippers.

"How is your mistress?"

"A successful confinement yesterday."

Alexey Alexandrovitch stopped short and turned white. He felt
distinctly now how intensely he had longed for her death.

"And how is she?"

Korney in his morning apron ran down-stairs.

"Very ill," he answered. "There was a consultation yesterday, and
the doctor's here now."

"Take my things," said Alexey Alexandrovitch, and feeling some
relief at the news that there was still hope of her death, he
went into the hall

On the hat-stand there was a military overcoat. Alexey
Alexandrovitch noticed it and asked:

"Who is here?"

"The doctor, the midwife and Count Vronsky."

Alexey Alexandrovitch went into the inner rooms.

In the drawing-room there was no one; at the sound of his steps
there came out of her boudoir the midwife in a cap with lilac
ribbons.

She went up to Alexey Alexandrovitch, and with the familiarity
given by the approach of death took him by the arm and drew him
towards the bedroom.

"Thank God you've come! She keeps on about you and nothing but
you," she said.

"Make haste with the ice!" the doctor's peremptory voice said
from the bedroom. Alexey Alexandrovitch went into her boudoir.

At the table, sitting side-ways in a low chair, was Vronsky, his
face hidden in his hands, weeping. He jumped up at the doctor's
voice, took his hands from his face, and saw Alexey
Alexandrovitch. Seeing the husband, he was so overwhelmed that he
sat down again, drawing his head down to his shoulders, as if he
wanted to disappear; but he made an effort over himself, got up
and said:

"She is dying. The doctors say there is no hope. I am entirely in
your power, only let me be here ...though I am at your
disposal. I . . ."

Alexey Alexandrovitch, seeing Vronsky's tears, felt a rush of
that nervous emotion always produced in him by the sight of other
people's suffering, and turning away his face, he moved hurriedly
to the door, without hearing the rest of his words. From the
bedroom came the sound of Anna's voice saying something. Her
voice was lively, eager, with exceedingly distinct intonations.
Alexey Alexandrovitch went into the bedroom, and went up to the
bed. She was lying turned with her face towards him. Her cheeks
were flushed crimson, her eyes glittered, her little white hands
thrust out from the sleeves of her dressing-gown were playing
with the quilt, twisting it about. It seemed as though she were
not only well and blooming, but in the happiest frame of mind.
She was talking rapidly, musically, and with exceptionally
correct articulation and expressive intonation.

"For Alexey--I am speaking of Alexey Alexandrovitch (what a
strange and awful thing that both are Alexey, isn't it?)--Alexey
would not refuse me. I should forget, he would forgive.... But
why doesn't he come? He's so good he doesn't know himself how
good he is. Ah, my God, what agony! Give me some water, quick!
Oh, that will be bad for her, my little girl! Oh, very well then,
give her to a nurse. Yes, I agree, it's better in fact. He'll be
coming; it will hurt him to see her. Give her to the nurse."

"Anna Arkadyevna, he has come. Here he is!" said the midwife,
trying to attract her attention to Alexey Alexandrovitch.

"Oh, what nonsense!" Anna went on, not seeing her husband. "No,
give her to me; give me my little one! He has not come yet. You
say he won't forgive me, because you don't know him. No one knows
him. I'm the only one, and it was hard for me even. His eyes I
ought to know--Seryozha has just the same eyes--and I can't bear
to see them because of it. Has Seryozha had his dinner? I know
every one will forget him. He would not forget. Seryozha must be
moved into the corner room, and Mariette must be asked to sleep
with him."

All of a sudden she shrank back, was silent; and in terror, as
though expecting a blow, as though to defend herself, she raised
her hands to her face. She had seen her husband.

"No, no!" she began. "I am not afraid of him; I am afraid of
death. Alexey, come here. I am in a hurry, because I've no time,
I've not long left to live; the fever will begin directly and I
shall understand nothing more. Now I understand, I understand it
all, I see it all!"

Alexey Alexandrovitch's wrinkled face wore an expression of
agony; he took her by the hand and tried to say something, but he
could not utter it; his lower lip quivered, but he still went on
struggling with his emotion, and only now and then glanced at
her. And each time he glanced at her, he saw her eyes gazing at
him with such passionate and triumphant tenderness as he had
never seen in them.

"Wait a minute, you don't know ...stay a little, stay! . . ."
She stopped, as though collecting her ideas. "Yes," she began;
"yes, yes, yes. This is what I wanted to say. Don't be surprised
at me. I'm still the same ...But there is another woman in me,
I'm afraid of her: she loved that man, and I tried to hate you,
and could not forget about her that used to be. I'm not that
woman. Now I'm my real self, all myself. I'm dying now, I know I
shall die, ask him. Even now I feel--see here, the weights on my
feet, on my hands, on my fingers. My fingers--see how huge they
are! But this will soon all be over.... Only one thing I want:
forgive me, forgive me quite. I'm terrible, but my nurse used to
tell me; the holy martyr--what was her name? She was worse. And
I'll go to Rome; there's a wilderness, and there I shall be no
trouble to any one, only I'll take Seryozha and the little
one.... No, you can't forgive me! I know, it can't be forgiven!
No, no, go away, you're too good!" She held his hand in one
burning hand,while she pushed him away with the other.

The nervous agitation of Alexey Alexandrovitch kept increasing,
and had by now reached such a point that he ceased to struggle
with it. He suddenly felt that what he had regarded as nervous
agitation was on the contrary a blissful spiritual condition that
gave him all at once a new happiness he had never known. He did
not think that the Christian law that he had been all his life
trying to follow, enjoined on him to forgive and love his
enemies; but a glad feeling of love and forgiveness for his
enemies filled his heart. He knelt down, and laying his head in
the curve of her arm, wbuch burned him as with fire through the
sleeve, he sobbed like a little child. She put her arm around his
head, moved towards him, and with defiant pride lifted up her
eyes.

"That is he. I knew him! Now, forgive me, every one, forgive me!
...They've come again; why don't they go away? ...Oh, take
these cloaks off me!"

The doctor unloosed her hands, carefully laying her on the
pillow, and covered her up to the shoulders. She lay back
submissively, and looked before her with beaming eyes.

"Remember one thing, that I needed nothing but forgiveness, and I
want nothing more.... Why doesn't he come?" she said, turning to
the door towards Vronsky. "Do come, do come! Give him your hand."

Vronsky came to the side of the bed, and seeing Anna, again hid
his face in his hands. "Uncover your face--look at him! He's a
saint," she said. "Oh! uncover your face, do uncover itl" she
said angrily. "Alexey Alexandrovitch, do uncover his face! I want
to see him."

Alexey Alexandrovitch took Vronsky's hands and drew them away
from his face, which was awful with the expression of agony and
shame upon it.

"Give him your hand. Forgive him."

Alexey Alexandrovitch gave him his hand, not attempting to
restrain the tears that streamed from his eyes.

"Thank God, thank God!" she said, "now everything is ready. Only
to stretch my legs a little. There, that's capital. How badly
these flowers are done--not a bit like a violet," she said,
pointing to the hangings. "My God, my God! when will it end? Give
me some morphine. Doctor, give me some morphine! Oh, my God, my
God!"

And she tossed about on the bed.

The doctors said that it was puerperal fever, and that it was
ninety-nine chances in a hundred it would end in death. The whole
day long there was fever, delirium, and unconsciousness. At
midnight the patient lay without consciousness, and almost
without pulse.

The end was expected every minute.

Vronsky had gone home, but in the morning he came to inquire, and
Alexey Alexandrovitch meeting him in the hall, said: "Better
stay, she might ask for you," and himself led him to his wife's
boudoir. Towards morning, there was a return again of excitement,
rapid thought and talk, and again it ended in unconsciousness. On
the third day it was the same thing, and the doctors said there
was hope. That day Alexey Alexandrovitch went into the boudoir
where Vronsky was sitting, and closing the door sat down opposite
him.

"Alexey Alexandrovitch," said Vronsky, feeling that a statement
of the position was coming, "I can't speak, I can't understand.
Spare me! However hard it is for you, believe me, it is more
terrible for me."

He would have risen; but Alexey Alexandrovitch took him by the
hand and said:

"I beg you to hear me out; it is necessary. I must explain my
feelings, the feelings that have guided me and will guide me, so
that you may not be in error regarding me. You know I had
resolved on a divorce, and had even begun to take proceedings. I
won't conceal from you that in beginning this I was in
uncertainty, I was in misery; I will confess that I was pursued
by a desire to revenge myself on you and on her. When I got the
telegram, I came here with the same feelings; I will say more, I
longed for her death. But . . ." He paused, pondering whether to
disclose or not to disclose his feeling to him. "But I saw her
and forgave her. And the happiness of forgiveness has revealed to
me my duty. I forgive completely. I would offer the other cheek,
I would give my cloak if my coat be taken. I pray to God only not
to take from me the bliss of forgiveness!"

Tears stood in his eyes, and the luminous, serene look in them
impressed Vronsky.

"This is my position: you can trample me in the mud, make me the
laughing-stock of the world, I will not abandon her, and I will
never utter a word of reproach to you," Alexey Alexandrovitch
went on. "My duty is clearly marked for me; I ought to be with
her, and I will be. If she wishes to see you, I will let you
know, but now I suppose it would be better for you to go away."

He got up, and sobs cut short his words. Vronsky too was getting
up, and in a stooping, not yet erect posture, looked up at him
from under his brows. He did not understand Alexey
Alexandrovitch's feeling, but he felt that it was something
higher and even unattainable for him with his view of life.

Chapter 18

After the conversation with Alexey Alexandrovitch, Vronsky went
out onto the steps of the Karenins' house and stood still, with
difficulty remembering where he was, and where he ought to walk
or drive. He felt disgraced, humiliated, guilty, and deprived of
all possibility of washing away his humiliation. He felt thrust
out of the beaten Pack along which he had so proudly and lightly
walked till then. All the habits and rules of his life that had
seemed so firm, had turned out suddenly false and inapplicable.
The betrayed husband, who had figured till that time as a
pitiful creature, an incidental and somewhat ludicrous obstacle
to his happiness, had suddenly been summoned by her herself,
elevated to an awe-inspiring pinnacle, and on the pinnacle that
husband had shown himself, not malignant, not false, not
ludicrous, but kind and straightforward and large. Vronsky could
not but feel this, and the parts were suddenly reversed. Vronsky
felt his elevation and his own abasement, his truth and his own
falsehood. He felt that the husband was magnanimous even in his
sorrow, while he had been base and petty in his deceit. But this
sense of his own humiliation before the man he had unjustly
despised made up only a small part of his misery. He felt
unutterably wretched now, for his passion for Anna, which had
seemed to him of late to be growing cooler, now that he knew he
had lost her forever, was stronger than ever it had been. He had
seen all of her in her illness, had come to know her very soul,
and it seemed to him that he had never loved her till then. And
now when he had learned to know her, to love her as she should be
loved, he had been humiliated before her, and had lost her
forever, leaving with her nothing of himself but a shameful
memory. Most terrible of all had been his ludicrous, shameful
position when Alexey Alexandrovitch had pulled his hands away
from his humiliated face. He stood on the steps of the Karenins'
house like one distraught, and did not know what to do.

"A sledge, sir?" asked the porter.

"Yes, a sledge."

On getting home, after three sleepless nights, Vronsky, without
undressing, lay down fiat on the sofa, clasping his hands and
laying his head on them. His head was heavy. Images, memories,
and ideas of the strangest description followed one another with
extraordinary rapidity and vividness. First it was the medicine
he had poured out for the patient and spilt over the spoon, then
the midwife's white hands, then the queer posture of Alexey
Alexandrovitch on the floor beside the bed.

"To sleep! To forget!" he said to himself with the serene
confidence of a healthy man that if he is tired and sleepy, he
will go to sleep at once. And the same instant his head did begin
to feel drowsy and he began to drop off into forgetfulness. The
waves of the sea of unconsciousness had begun to meet over his
head, when all at once--it was as though a violent shock of
electricity had passed over him. He started so that he leaped up
on the springs of the sofa, and leaning on his arms got in a
panic onto his knees. His eyes were wide open as though he had
never been asleep. The heaviness in his head and the weariness in
his limbs that he had felt a minute before had suddenly gone.

"You may trample me in the mud," he heard Alexey Alexandrovitch's
words and saw him standing before him, and saw Anna's face with
its burning flush and glittering eyes, gazing with love and
tenderness not at him but at Alexey Alexandrovitch; he saw his
own, as he fancied, foolish and ludicrous figure when Alexey
Alexandrovitch took his hands away from his face. He stretched
out his legs again and flung himself on the sofa in the same
position and shut his eyes.

"To sleep! To forget!" he repeated to himself. But with his eyes
shut he saw more distinctly than ever Anna's face as it had been
on the memorable evening before the races.

"That is not and will not be, and she wants to wipe it out of her
memory. But I cannot live without it. How can we be reconciled!
how can we be reconciled?" he said aloud, and unconsciously began
to repeat these words. This repetition checked the rising up of
fresh images and memories, which he felt were thronging in his
brain. But repeating words did not check his imagination for
long. Again in extraordinarily rapid succession his best moments
rose before his mind,and then his recent humiliation. "Take away
his hands," Anna's voice says. He takes away his hands and feels
the shamestruck and idiotic expression of his face.

He still lay down, trying to sleep, though he felt there was not
the smallest hope of it, and kept repeating stray words from some
chain of thought, trying by this to check the rising flood of
fresh images. He listened, and heard in a strange, mad whisper
words repeated: "I did not appreciate it, did not make enough of
it. I did not appreciate it, did not make enough of it."

"What's this? Am I going out of my mind?" he said to himself.
"Perhaps. What makes men go out of their minds; what makes men
shoot themselves?" he answered himself, and opening his eyes, he
saw with wonder an embroidered cushion beside him, worked by
Varya, his brother's wife. He touched the tassel of the cushion,
and tried to think of Varya, of when he had seen her last. But to
think of anything extraneous was an agonizing effort. "No, I must
sleep!" He moved the cushion up, and pressed his head into it,
but he had to make an effort to keep his eyes shut. He jumped up
and sat down. "That's all over for me," he said to himself. "I
must think what to do. What is left?" His mind rapidly ran
through his life apart from his love of Anna.

"Ambition? Serpohovskoy? Society? The court?" He could not come
to a pause anywhere. All of it had had meaning before, but now
there was no reality in it. He got up from the sofa, took off his
coat, undid his belt, and uncovering his hairy chest to breathe
more freely, walked up and down the room. "This is how people go
mad," he repeated, "and how they shoot themselves ...to escape
humiliation," he added slowly.

He went to the door and closed it, then with fixed eyes and
clenched teeth he went up to the table, took a revolver, looked
round him, turned it to a loaded bamel, and sank into thought.
For two minutes, his head bent forward with an expression of an
intense effort of thought, he stood with the revolver in his
hand, motionless, thinking.

"Of course," he said to himself, as though a logical, continuous,
and clear chain of reasoning had brought him to an indubitable
conclusion. In reality this "of course," that seemed convincing
to him, was simply the result of exactly the same circle of
memories and images through which he had passed ten times already
during the last hour--memories of happiness lost forever. There
was the same conception of the senselessness of everything to
come in life, the same consciousness of humiliation. Even the
sequence of these images and emotions was the same.

"Of course," he repeated, when for the third time his thought
passed again round the same spellbound circle of memories and
images, and pulling the revolver to the left side of his chest,
and clutching it vigorously with his whole hand, as it were,
squeezing it in his fist, he pulled the trigger. He did not hear
the sound of the shot, but a violent blow on his chest sent him
reeling. He tried to clutch at the edge of the table, dropped the
revolver, staggered, and sat down on the ground, looking about
him in astonishment. He did not recognize his room, looking up
from the ground, at the bent legs of the table, at the
wastepaper-basket, and the tiger-skin rug. The hurried, creaking
steps of his servant coming through the drawing-room brought him
to his senses. He made an effort at thought, and was aware that
he was on the floor; and seeing blood on the tiger-skin rug and
on his arm, he knew he had shot himself. "Idiotic! Missed!" he
said, fumbling after the revolver. The revolver was close beside
him--he sought further off. Still feeling for it, he stretched
out to the other side, and not being strong enough to keep his
balance, fell over, streaming with blood.

The elegant, whiskered manservant, who used to be continually
complaining to his acquaintances of the delicacy of his nones,
was so panic-stricken on seeing his master lying on the floor,
that he left him losing blood while he ran for assistance. An
hour later Varya, his brother's wife, had arrived, and with the
assistance of three doctors, whom she had sent for in all
directions, and who all appeared at the same moment, she got the
wounded man to bed, and remained to nurse him.

Chapter 19

The mistake made by Alexey Alexandrovitch in that, when preparing
for seeing his wife, he had overlooked the possibility that her
repentance might be sincere, and he might forgive her, and she
might not die--this mistake was two months after his return from
Moscow brought home to him in all its significance. But the
mistake made by him had arisen not simply from his having
overlooked that contingency, but also from the fact that until
that day of his interview with his dying wife, he had not known
his own heart. At his sick wife's bedside he had for the first
time in his life given way to that feeling of sympathetic
suffering always roused in him by the sufferings of others, and
hitherto looked on by him with shame as a harmful weakness. And
pity for her, and remorse for having desired her death, and most
of all, the joy of forgiveness, made him at once conscious, not
simply of the relief of his own sufferings, but of a spiritual
peace he had never experienced before. He suddenly felt that the
very thing that was the source of his sufferings had become the
source of his spiritual joy; that what had seemed insoluble while
he was judging, blaming, and hating, had become clear and simple
when he forgave and loved.

He forgave his wife and pitied her for her sufferings and her
remorse. He forgave Vronsky, and pitied him, especially after
reports reached him of his despairing action. He felt more for
his son than before. And he blamed himself now for having taken
too little interest in him. But for the little new-born baby he
felt a quite peculiar sentiment, not of pity, only, but of
tenderness. At first, from a feeling of compassion alone, he had
been interested in the delicate little creature, who was not his
child, and who was cast on one side during her mother's illness,
and would certainly have died if he had not troubled about her,
and he did not himself obsene how fond he became of her. He would
go into the nursery several times a day, and sit there for a long
while, so that the nurses, who were at first afraid of him, got
quite used to his presence. Sometimes for half an hour at a
stretch he would sit silently gazing at the saffron-red, downy,
wrinkled face of the sleeping baby, watching the movements of the
frowning brows, and the fat little hands, with clenched fingers,
that rubbed the little eyes and nose. At such moments
particularly, Alexey Alexandrovitch had a sense of perfect peace
and inward harmony, and saw nothing extraordinary in his
position, nothing that ought to be changed.

But as time went on, he saw more and more distinctly that however
natural the position now seemed to him, he would not long be
allowed to remain in it. He felt that besides the blessed
spiritual force controlling his soul, there was another, a brutal
force, as powerful, or more powerful, which controlled his life,
and that this force would not allow him that humble peace he
longed for. He felt that every one was looking at him with
inquiring wonder, that he was not understood, and that something
was expected of him. Above all, he felt the instability and
unnaturalness of his relations with his wife.

When the softening effect of the near approach of death had
passed away, Alexey Alexandrovitch began to notice that Anna was
afraid of him, ill at ease with him, and could not look him
straight in the face. She seemed to be wanting, and not daring,
to tell him something; and as though foreseeing their present
relations could not continue, she seemed to be expecting
something from him.

Towards the end of February it happened that Anna's baby
daughter, who had been named Anna too, fell ill. Alexey
Alexandrovitch was in the nursery in the morning, and leaving
orders for the doctor to be sent for, he went to his office. On
finishing his work, he returned home at four. Going into the hall
he saw a handsome groom, in a braided livery and a bear fur cape,
holding a white fur cloak.

"Who is here?" asked Alexey Alexandrovitch.

"Princess Elizaveta Federovna Tverskaya," the groom answered, and
it seemed to Alexey Alexandrovitch that he grinned.

During all this difficult time Alexey Alexandrovitch had noticed
that his worldly acquaintances, especially women, took a peculiar
interest in him and his wife. All these acquaintances he observed
with difficulty concealing their mirth at something; the same
mirth that he had perceived in the lawyer's eyes, and just now in
the eyes of this groom. Every one seemed, somehow, hugely
delighted, as though they had just been at a wedding. When they
met him, with ill-disguised enjoyment they inquired after his
wife's health. The presence of Princess Tverskaya was unpleasant
to Alexey Alexandrovitch from the memories associated with her,
and also because he disliked her, and he went straight to the
nursery. In the day-nursery Seryozha, leaning on the table with
his legs on a chair, was drawing and chatting away merrily. The
English governess, who had during Anna's illness replaced the
French one, was sitting near the boy knitting a shawl. She
hurriedly got up, curtseyed, and pulled Seryozha. Alexey
Alexandrovitch stroked his son's hair, answered the governess's
inquiries about his wife, and asked what the doctor had said of
the baby.

"The doctor said it was nothing serious, and he ordered a bath,
sir."

"But she is still in pain," said Alexey Alexandrovitch, listening
to the baby's screaming in the next room.

"I think it's the wet-nurse, sir," the Englishwoman said firmly.

"What makes you think so?" he asked, stopping short.

"It's just as it was at Countess Paul's, sir. They gave the baby
medicine, and it turned out that the baby was simply hungry: the
nurse had no milk, sir."

Alexey Alexandrovitch pondered, and after standing still a few
seconds he went in at the other door. The baby was lying with its
head thrown back, stiffening itself in the nurse's arms, and
would not take the plump breast offered it; and it never ceased
screaming in spite of the double hushing of the wet-nurse and the
other nurse, who was bending over her.

"Still no better?" said Alexey Alexandrovitch.

"She's very restless," answered the nurse in a whisper.

"Miss Edwarde says that perhaps the wet-nurse has no milk," he
said.

"I think so too, Alexey Alexandrovitch."

"Then why didn't you say so?"

"Who's one to say it to? Anna Arkadyevna still ill . . ." said
the nurse discontentedly.

The nurse was an old servant of the family. And in her simple
words there seemed to Alexey Alexandrovitch an allusion to his
position.

The baby screamed louder than ever, struggling and sobbing. The
nurse, with a gesture of despair, went to it, took it from the
wet-nurse's arms, and began walking up and down, rocking it.

"You must ask the doctor to examine the wet-nurse," said Alexey
Alexandrovitch. The smartly dressed and healthy-looking nurse,
frightened at the idea of losing her place, muttered something to
herself, and covering her bosom, smiled contemptuously at the
idea of doubts being cast on her abundance of milk. In that
smile, too, Alexey Alexandrovitch saw a sneer at his position.

"Luckless child!" said the nurse, hushing the baby, and still
walking up and down with it.

Alexey Alexandrovitch sat down, and with a despondent and
suffering face watched the nurse walking to and fro.

When the child at last was still, and had been put in a deep bed,
and the nurse, after smoothing the little pillow, had left her,
Alexey Alexandrovitch got up, and walking awkwardly on tiptoe,
approached the baby. For a minute he was still, and with the same
despondent face gazed at the baby; but all at once a smile, that
moved his hair and the skin of his forehead, came out on his
face, and he went as softly out of the room.

In the dining-room he rang the bell, and told the servant who
came in to send again for the doctor. He felt vexed with his wife
for not being anxious about this exquisite baby, and in this
vexed humor he had no wish to go to her; he had no wish, either,
to see Princess Betsy. But his wife might wonder why he did not
go to her as usual; and so, overcoming his disinclination, he
went towards the bedroom. As he walked over the soft rug towards
the door, he could not help overhearing a conversation he did not
want to hear.

"If he hadn't been going away, I could have understood your
answer and his too. But your husband ought to be above that,"
Betsy was saying.

"It's not for my husband; for myself I don't wish it. Don't say
that!" answered Anna's excited voice.

"Yes, but you must care to say good-bye to a man who has shot
himself on your account...."

"That's just why I don't want to."

With a dismayed and guilty expression, Alexey Alexandrovitch
stopped and would have gone back unobserved. But reflecting that
this would be undignified, he turned back again, and clearing his
throat, he went up to the bedroom. The voices were silent, and he
went in.

Anna, in a gray dressing-gown, with a crop of short clustering
black curls on her round head, was sitting on a settee. The
eagerness died out of her face, as it always did, at the sight of
her husband; she dropped her head and looked round uneasily at
Betsy. Betsy, dressed in the height of the latest fashion, in a
hat that towered somewhere over her head like a shade on a lamp,
in a blue dress with violet crossway stripes slanting one way on
the bodice and the other way on the skirt, was sitting beside
Anna, her tall flat figure held erect. Bowing her head, she
greeted Alexey Alexandrovitch with an ironical smile.

"Ahl" she said, as though surprised. "I'm very glad you're at
home. You never put in an appearance anywhere, and I haven't seen
you ever since Anna has been ill. I have heard all about it--your
anxiety. Yes, you're a wonderful husband," she said, with a
meaning and affable air, as though she were bestowing an order of
magnanimity on him for his conduct to his wife.

Alexey Alexandrovitch bowed frigidly, and kissing his wife's
hand, asked how she was.

"Better, I think," she said, avoiding his eyes.

"But you've rather a feverish-looking color," he said, laying
stress on the word "feverish."

"We've been talking too much," said Betsy. "I feel it's
selfishness on my part, and I am going away." She got up, but
Anna, suddenly flushing, quickly caught at her hand. "No, wait a
minute, please. I must tell you ...no, you." She turned to
Alexey Alexandrovitch, and her neck and brow were suffused with
crimson. "I won't and can't keep anything secret from you," she
said.

Alexey Alexandrovitch cracked his fingers and bowed his head.

"Betsy's been telling me that Count Vronsky wants to come here to
say good-bye before his departure for Tashkend." She did not look
at her husband, and was evidently in haste to have everything
out, however hard it might be for her. "I told her I could not
receive him."

"You said, my dear, that it would depend on Alexey
Alexandrovitch," Betsy corrected her.

"Oh, no, I can't receive him; and what object would there . . ."
She stopped suddenly, and glanced inquiringly at her husband (he
did not look at her). "In short, I don't wish it...."

Alexey Alexandrovitch advanced and would have taken her hand.

Her first impulse was to jerk back her hand from the damp hand
with big swollen veins that sought hers, but with an obvious
effort to control herself she pressed his hand.

"I am very grateful to you for your confidence, but. . ." he
said, feeling with confusion and annoyance that what he could
decide easily and clearly by himself, he could not discuss before
Princess Tverskaya, who to him stood for the incarnation of that
brute force which would inevitably control him in the life he led
in the eyes of the world, and hinder him from giving way to his
feeling of love and forgiveness. He stopped short, looking at
Princess Tverskaya.

"Well, good-bye, my darling," said Betsy, getting up. She kissed
Anna, and went out. Alexey Alexandrovitch escorted her out.

"Alexey Alexandrovitch! I know you are a truly magnanimous man,"
said Betsy, stopping in the little drawing-room, and with special
warmth shaking hands with him once more. "I am an outsider, but I
so love her and respect you that I venture to advise. Receive
him. Alexey Vronsky is the soul of honor, and he is going away to
Tashkend."

"Thank you, princess, for your sympathy and advice. But the
question of whether my wife can or cannot see any one she must
decide herself."

He said this from habit, lifting his brows with dignity, and
reflected immediately that whatever his words might be, there
could be no dignity in his position. And he saw this by the
suppressed, malicious, and ironical smile with which Betsy
glanced at him after this phrase.

Chapter 20

Alexey Alexandrovitch took leave of Betsy in the drawing-room,
and went to his wife. She was lying down, but hearing his steps
she sat up hastily in her former attitude, and looked in a scared
way at him. He saw she had been crying.

"I am very grateful for your confidence in me." He repeated
gently in Russian the phrase he had said in Betsy's presence in
French, and sat down beside her. When he spoke to her in Russian,
using the Russian "thou" of intimacy and affection, it was
insufferably irritating to Anna. "And I am very grateful for your
decision. I, too, imagine that since he is going away, there is
no sort of necessity for Count Vronsky to come here. However, if
. . ."

"But I've said so already, so why repeat it?" Anna suddenly
interrupted him with an irritation she could not succeed in
repressing. "No sort of necessity," she thought, "for a man to
come and say good- bye to the woman he loves, for whom he was
ready to ruin himself, and has ruined himself, and who cannot
live without him. No sort of necessityI" She compressed her lips,
and dropped her burning eyes to his hands with their swollen
veins. They were rubbing each other.

"Let us never speak of it," she added more calmly.

"I have left this question to you to decide, and I am very glad
to see . . ." Alexey Alexandrovitch was beginning.

"That my wish coincides with your own," she finished quickly,
exasperated at his talking so slowly while she knew beforehand
all he would say.

"Yes," he assented; "and Princess Tverskaya's interference in the
most difficult private affairs is utterly uncalled for. She
especially . . ."

"I don't believe a word of what's said about her," said Anna
quickly. "I know she really cares for me."

Alexey Alexandrovitch sighed and said nothing. She played
nervously with the tassel of her dressing-gown, glancing at him
with that torturing sensation of physical repulsion for which she
blamed herself, though she could not control it. Her only desire
now was to be rid of his oppressne presence.

"I have just sent for the doctor," said Alexey Alexandrovitch.

"I am very well; what do I want the doctor for?"

"No, the little one cries, and they say the nurse hasn't enough
milk."

"Why didn't you let me nurse her, when I begged to? Anyway"
(Alexey Alexandrovitch knew what was meant by that "anyway"),
"she's a baby, and they're killing her." She rang the bell and
ordered the baby to be brought her. "I begged to nurse her, I
wasn't allowed to, and now I'm blamed for it."

"I don't blame . . ."

"Yes, you do blame me! My God! why didn't I die!" And she broke
into sobs. "Forgive me, I'm nervous, I'm unjust," she said,
controlling herself, "but do go away . . ."

"No, it can't go on like this," Alexey Alexandrovitch said to
himself decidedly as he left his wife's room.

Never had the impossibility of his position in the world's eyes,
and his wife's hatred of him, and altogether the might of that
mysterious brutal force that guided his life against his
spiritual inclinations, and exacted conformity with its decrees
and change in his attitude to his wife, been presented to~him
with such distinctness as that day. He saw clearly that all the
world and his wife expected of him something, but what exactly,
he could not make out. He felt that this was rousing in his soul
a feeling of anger destructive of his peace of mind and of all
the good of his achievement. He believed that for Anna herself it
would be better to break off all relations with Vronsky; but if
they all thought this out of the question, he was even ready to
allow these relations to be renewed, so long as the children were
not disgraced, and he was not deprived of them nor forced to
change his position. Bad as this might be, it was anyway better
than a rupture, which would put her in a hopeless and shameful
position, and deprive him of everything he cared for. But he felt
helpless; he knew beforehand that every one was against him, and
that he would not be allowed to do what seemed to him now so
natural and right, but would be forced to do what was wrong,
though it seemed the proper thing to them.

Chapter 21

Before Betsy had time to walk out of the drawing-room, she was
met in the doorway by Stepan Arkadyevitch, who had just come from
Yeliseev's, where a consignment of fresh oysters had been
received.

"Ah! princess! what a delightful meeting!" he began. "I've been
to see you."

"A meeting for one minute, for I'm going," said Betsy, smiling
and putting on her glove.

"Don't put on your glove yet, princess; let me kiss your hand.
There's nothing I'm so thankful to the revival of the old
fashions for as the kissing the hand." He kissed Betsy's hand.
"When shall we see each other?"

"You don't deserve it," answered Betsy, smiling.

"Oh, yes, I deserve a great deal, for I've become a most serious
person. I don't only manage my own affairs, but other people's
too," he said with a significant expression.

"Oh, I'm so glad!" answered Betsy, at once understanding that he
was speaking of Anna. And going back into the drawing-room, they
stood in a corner. "He's killing her," said Betsy in a whisper
full of meaning. "It's impossible, impossible . . ."

"I'm so glad you think so," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, shaking his
head with a serious and sympathetically distressed expression,
"that's what I've come to Petersburg for."

"The whole town's talking of it," she said. "It's an impossible
position. She pines and pines away. He doesn't understand that
she's one of those women who can't trifle with their feelings.
One of two things t either let him take her away, act with
energy, or give her a divorce. This is stifling her."

"Yes, yes ...just so . . ." Oblonsky said, sighing. "That's
what I've come for. At least not solely for that ...I've been
made a Kammerherr,' of course, one has to say thank you. But the
chief thing was having to settle this."

"Well, God help you!" said Betsy.

After accompanying Betsy to the outside hall, once more kissing
her hand above the glove, at the point where the pulse beats, and
murmuring to her such unseemly nonsense that she did not know
whether to laugh or be angry, Stepan Arkadyevitch went to his
sister. He found her in tears.

Although he happened to be bubbling over with good spirits,
Stepan Arkadyevitch immediately and quite naturally fell into the
sympathetic, poetically emotional tone which harmonized with her
mood. He asked her how she was, and how she had spent the
morning.

"Very, very miserably. To-day and this morning and all past days
and days to come," she said.

"I think you're giving way to pessimism. You must rouse yourself,
you must look life in the face. I know it's hard, but . . ."

"I have heard it said that women love men even for their vices,"
Anna began suddenly, "but I hate him for his virtues. I can't
live with him. Do you understand? the sight of him has a physical
effect on me, it makes me beside myself. I can't, I can't live
with him. What am I to do? I have been unhappy, and used to think
one couldn't be more unhappy, but the awful state of things I am
going through now, I could never have conceived. Would you
believe it, that knowing he's a good man, a splendid man, that
I'm not worth his little finger, still I hate him. I hate him for
his generosity. And there's nothing left for me but . . ."

She would have said death, but Stepan Arkadyevitch would not let
her finish.

"You are ill and overwrought," he said; "believe me, you're
exagaerating dreadfully. There's nothing so terrible in it."

And Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled. No one else in Stepan
Arkadyevitch's place, having to do with such despair, would have
ventured to smile (the smile would have seemed brutal); but in
his smile there was so much of sweetness and almost feminine
tenderness that his smile did not wound, but softened and
soothed. His gentle, soothing words and smiles were as soothing
and softening as almond oil. And Anna soon felt this.

"No, Stiva," she said, "I'm lost, lost! worse than lost! I can't
say yet that all is over; on the contrary, I feel that it's not
over. I'm an overstrained string that must snap. But it's not
ended yet ...and it will have a fearful end." "No matter, we
must let the string be loosened, little by little. There's no
position from which there is no way of escape."

"I have thought, and thought. Only one . . ."

Again he knew from her terrified eyes that this one way of escape
in her thought was death, and he would not let her say it.

"Not at all," he said. "Listen to me. You can't see your own
position as I can. Let me tell you candidly my opinion." Again he
smiled discreetly his almond-oil smile. "I'll begin from the
beginning. You married a man twenty years older than yourself.
You married him without love and not knowing what love was. It
was a mistake, let's admit."

"A fearful mistake!" said Anna.

"But I repeat, it's an accomplished fact. Then you had, let us
say, the misfortune to love a man not your husband. That was a
misfortune; but that, too, is an accomplished fact. And your
husband knew it and forgave it." He stopped at each sentence,
waiting for her to object, but she made no answer. "That's so.
Now the question is: can you go on living with your husband? Do
you wish it? Does he wish it?"

"I know nothing, nothing."

"But you said yourself that you can't endure him."

"No, I didn't say so. I deny it. I can't tell, I don't know
anything about it."

"Yes, but let . . ."

"You can't understand. I feel I'm lying head downwards in a sort
of pit, but I ought not to save myself. And I can't . . ."

"Never mind, we'll slip something under and pull you out. I
understand you: I understand that you can't take it on yourself
to express your wishes, your feelings."

"There's nothing, nothing I wish ...except for it to be all
over."

"But he sees this and knows it. And do you suppose it weighs on
him any less than on you7 You're wretched, he's wretched, and
what good can come of it? while divorce would solve the
difficulty completely." With some effort Stepan Arkadyevitch
brought out his central idea, and looked significantly at her.

She said nothing, and shook her cropped head in dissent. But from
the look in her face, that suddenly brightened into its old
beauty, he saw that if she did not desire this, it was simply
because it seemed to her unattainable happiness.

"I'm awfully sorry for yout And how happy I should be if I could
arrange things!" said Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling more boldly.
"Don't speak, don't say a word! God grant only that I may speak
as I feel. I'm going to him."

Anna looked at him with dreamy, shining eyes, and said nothing.

Chapter 22

Stepan Arkadyevitch, with the same somewhat solemn expression
with which he used to take his presidential chair at his board,
walked into Alexey Alexandrovitch's room. Alexey Alexandrovitch
was walking about his room with his hands behind his back,
thinking of just what Stepan Arkadyevitch had been discussing
with his wife.

"I'm not interrupting you?" said Stepan Arkadyevitch, on the
sight of his brother-in-law becoming suddenly aware of a sense of
embarrassment unusual with him. To conceal this embarrassment he
took out a cigarette-case he had just bought that opened in a new
way, and sniffing the leather, took a cigarette out of it.

"No. Do you want anything?" Alexey Alexandrovitch asked without
eagerness.

"Yes, I wished ...I wanted ...yes, I wanted to talk to
you," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, with surprise aware of an
unaccustomed timidity.

This feeling was so unexpected and so strange that he did not
believe it was the voice of conscience telling him that what he
was meaning to do was wrong.

Stepan Arkadyevitch made an effort and struggled with the
timidity that had come over him.

"I hope you believe in my love for my sister and my sincere
affection and respect for you," he said, reddening.

Alexey Alexandrovitch stood still and said nothing, but his face
struck Stepan Arkadyevitch by its expression of an unresisting
sacrifice.

"I intended ...I wanted to have a little talk with you about
my sister and your mutual position," he said, still struggling
with an unaccustomed constraint.

Alexey Alexandrovitch smiled mournfully, looked at his
brother-inlaw, and without answering went up to the table, took
from it an unfinished letter, and handed it to his
brother-in-law.

"I think unceasingly of the same thing. And here is what I had
begun writing, thinking I could say it better by letter, and that
my presence irritates her," he said, as he gave him the letter.

Stepan Arkadyevitch took the letter, looked with incredulous
surprise at the lusterless eyes fixed so immovably on him, and
began to read.

"I see that my presence is irksome to you. Painful as it is to me
to believe it, I see that it is so, and cannot be otherwise. I
don't blame you, and God is my witness that on seeing you at the
time of your illness I resolved with my whole heart to forget all
that had passed between us and to begin a new life. I do not
regret, and shall never regret, what I have done; but I have
desired one thing--your good, the good of your soul--and now I
see I have not attained that. Tell me yourself what will give you
true happiness and peace to your soul. I put myself entirely in
your hands, and trust to your feeling of what's right."

Stepan Arkadyevitch handed back the letter, and with the same
surprise continued looking at his brother-in-law, not knowing
what to say. This silence was so awkward for both of them that
Stepan Arkadyevitch's lips began twitching nervously, while he
still gazed without speak~ng at Karemn's face.

"That's what I wanted to say to her," said Alexey Alexandrovitch,
turning away.

"Yes, yes . . ." said Stepan Arkadyevitch, not able to answer for
the tears that were choking him.

"Yes, yes, I understand you," he brought out at last.

"I want to know what she would like," said Alexey Alexandrovitch.

"I am afraid she does not understand her own position. She is not
a judge," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, recovering himself. "She is
crushed, simply crushed by your generosity. If she were to read
this letter, she would be incapable of saying anything, she would
only hang her head lower than ever."

"Yes, but what's to be done in that case? how explain, how find
out her wishes?"

"If you will allow me to give my opinion, I think that it lies
with you to point out directly the steps you consider necessary
to end the position.

"So you consider it must be ended?" Alexey Alexandrovitch
interrupted him. "But how?" he added, with a gesture of his hands
before his eyes not usual with him. "I see no possible way out of
it."

"There is some way of getting out of every position," said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, standing up and becoming more cheerful. "There was
a time when you thought of breaking off.... If you are convinced
now that you cannot make each other happy . . ."

"Happiness may be variously understood. But suppose that I agree
to everything, that I want nothing: what way is there of getting
out of our position?"

"If you care to know my opinion," said Stepan Arkadyevitch with
the same smile of softening, almond-oil tenderness with which he
had been talking to Anna. His kindly smile was so winning that
Alexey Alexandrovitch, feeling his own weakness and unconsciously
swayed by it, was ready to believe what Stepan Arkadyevitch was
saying.

"She will never speak out about it. But one thing is possible,
one thing she might desire," he went on: "that is the cessation
of your relations and all memories associated with them. To my
thinking, in your position what's essential is the formation of a
new attitude to one another. And that can only rest on a basis of
freedom on both sides."

"Divorce," Alexey Alexandrovitch interrupted, in a tone of
aversion.

"Yes, I imagine that divorce--yes, divorce," Stepan Arkadyevitch
repeated, reddening. "That is from every point of view the most
rational course for married people who find themselves in the
position you are in. What can be done if married people find that
life is impossible for them together? That may always happen."

Alexey Alexandrovitch sighed heavily and closed his eyes.

"There's only one point to be considered: is either of the
parties desirous of forming new ties? If not, it is very simple,"
said Stepan Arkadyevitch, feeling more and more free from
constraint.

Alexey Alexandrovitch, scowling with emotion, muttered something
to himself, and made no answer. All that seemed so simple to
Stepan Arkadyevitch, Alexey Alexandrovitch had thought over
thousands of times. And, so far from being simple, it all seemed
to him utterly irnpossible. Divorce, the details of which he knew
by this time, seemed to him now out of the quesdon, because the
sense of his own dignity and respect for religion forbade his
taking upon himself a fictitious charge of adultery, and still
more suffering his wife, pardoned and beloved by him, to be
caught in the fact and put to public shame. Divorce appeared to
him impossible also on other still more weighty grounds.

What would become of his son in case of a divorce? To leave him
with his mother was out of the question. The divorced mother
would have her own illegitimate family, in which his position as
a stepson and his education would not be good. Keep him with him?
He knew that would be an act of vengeance on his part, and that
he did not want. But apart from this, what more than all made
divorce seem impossible to Alexey Alexandrovitch was, that by
consenting to a divorce he would be completely ruining Anna. The
saying of Darya Alexandrovna at Moscow, that in deciding on a
divorce he was thinking of himself, and not consideAng that by
this he would be ruining her irrevocably, had sunk into his
heart. And connecting this saying with his forgiveness of her,
with his devotion to the children, he understood it now in his
own way. To consent to a divorce, to give her her freedom, meant
in his thoughts to take from himself the last tie that bound him
to life--the children whom he loved; and to take from her the
last prop that stayed her on the path of right, to thrust her
down to her ruin. If she were divorced, he knew she would join
her life to Vronsky's, and their tie would be an illegitimate and
criminal one, since a-wife, by the interpretation of the
ecclesiastical law, could not marry while her husband was hying.
"She will join him, and in a year or two he will throw her over,
or she will form a new tie," thought Alexey Alexandrovitch. "And
I, by agreeing to an unlawful divorce, shall be to blame for her
ruin." He had thought it all over hundreds of times, and was
convinced that a divorce was not at all simple, as Stepan
Arkadyevitch had said, but was utterly impossible. He did not
believe a single word Stepan Arkadyevitch said to him; to every
word  he had a thousand objections to make, but he listened to
him, feelings that his words were the expression of that mighty
brutal force which controlled his life and to which he would have
to submit.

"The only question is on what terms you agree to give her a
divorce. She does not want anything, does not dare ask you for
anything, she leaves it all to your generosity."

"My God, my God! what for?" thought Alexey Alexandrovitch,
remembering the details of divorce proceedings in which the
husband took the blame on himself, and with just the same gesture
with which Vronsky had done the same, he hid his face for shame
in his hands.

"You are distressed, I understand that. But if you think it over
. . ."

"Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the
other also; and if any man take away thy coat, let him have thy
cloak also," thought Alexey Alexandrovitch.

"Yes, yes!" he cried in a shrill voice. "I will take the disgrace
on myself, I will give up even my son, but ...but wouldn't it
be better to let it alone? Still you may do as you like . . ."

And turning away so that his brother-in-law could not see him, he
sat down on a chair at the window. There was bitterness, there
was shame in his heart, but with bitterness and shame he felt joy
and emotion at the height of his own meekness.

Stepan Arkadyevitch was touched. He was silent for a space.

"Alexey Alexandrovitch, believe me, she appreciates your
generosity," he said. "But it seems it was the will of God," he
added, and as he said it felt how foolish a remark it was, and
with difficulty repressed a smile at his own foolishness.

Alexey Alexandrovitch would have made some reply, but tears
stopped him.

"This is an unhappy fatality, and one must accept it as such. I
accept the calamity as an accomplished fact, and am doing my best
to help both her and you," said Stepan Arkadyevitch.

When he went out of his brother-in-law's room he was touched, but
that did not prevent him from being glad he had successfully
brought the matter to a conclusion, for he felt certain Alexey
Alexandrovitch would not go back on his words. To this
satisfaction was added the fact that an idea had just struck him
for a riddle turning on his successful achievement, that when the
affair was over he would ask his wife and most intimate friends.
He put this riddle into two or three different ways. "But I'll
work it out better than that," he said to himself with a smile.

Chapter 23

Vronsky's wound had been a dangerous one, though it did not
touch the heart, and for several days he had lain between life
and death. The first time he was able to speak, Varya, his
brother's wife, was death. The first time he was able to speak,
Varya, his brother's wife, was alone in the room.

"Varya," he said, looking sternly at her, "I shot myself by
accident. And please never speak of it, and tell every one so. Or
else it's too ridiculous."

Without answering his words, Varya bent over him, and with a
delighted smile gazed into his face. His eyes were clear, not
feverish; but their expression was stern.

"Thank God!" she said. "You're not in pain?"

"A little here." He pointed to his breast.

"Then let me change your bandages."

In silence, stiffening his broad jaws, he looked at her while she
bandaged him up. When she had finished he said:

"I'm not delirious. Please manage that there may be no talk of my
having shot myself on purpose."

"No one does say so. Only I hope you won't shoot yourself by
accident any more," she said, with a questioning smile.

"Of course I won't, but it would have been better . . ."

And he smiled gloomily.

In spite of these words and this smile, which so frightened
Varya, when the inflammation was over and he began to recover, he
felt that he was completely free from one part of his misery. By
his action he had, as it were, washed away the shame and
humiliation he had felt before. He could now think calmly of
Alexey Alexandrovitch. He recognized all his magnanimity, but he
did not now feel himself humiliated by it. Besides, he got back
again into the beaten track of his life. He saw the possibility
of looking men in the face again without shame, and he could live
in accordance with his own habits. One thing he could not pluck
out of his heart, though he never ceased struggling with it, was
the regret, amounting to despair, that he had lost her forever.
That now, having expiated his sin against the husband, he was
bound to renounce her, and never in future to stand between her
with her repentance and her husband, he had firmly decided in his
heart; but he could not tear out of his heart his regret at the
loss of her love, he could not erase from his memory those
moments of happiness that he had so little prized at the time,
and that haunted him in all their charm.

Serpuhovskoyhad planned his appointment at Tashkend, and Vronsky
agreed to the proposition without the slightest hesitation. But
the nearer the time of departure came, the bitterer was the
sacrifice he was making to what he thought his duty.

His wound had healed, and he was driving about making
preparations for his departure for Tashkend.

"To see her once and then to bury myself, to die," he thought,
and as ee was paying farewell visits, he uttered this thought to
Betsy. Charged with this commission, Betsy had gone to Anna, and
brought him back a negative reply.

"So much the better," thought Vronsky, when he received the news.
"It was a weakness, which would have shattered what strength I
have left."

Next day Betsy herself came to him in the morning, and announced
that she had heard through Oblonsky as a positive fact that
Alexey Alexandrovitch had agreed to a divorce, and that therefore
Vronsky could see Anna.

Without even troubling himself to see Betsy out of his fiat,
forgetting all his resolutions, without asking when he could see
her, where her husband was, Vronsky drove straight to the
Karenins'. He ran up the stairs