
                           XXV.


"So you see," pursued Nikolai Levin, painfully wrinkling his
forehead and twitching.

It was obviously difficult for him to think of what to say and do.

"Here, do you see?... He pointed to some sort of short iron bars,
fastened together with twine, lying in a corner of the room. "Do you
see that? That's the beginning of a new enterprise we're going into.
This enterprise will be an industrial association...."

Konstantin scarcely heard him. He looked into his sickly,
consumptive face, and he was more and more sorry for him, and he could
not force himself to listen to what his brother was telling him
about the association. He saw that this association was a mere
anchor to save him from self-contempt. Nikolai Levin went on talking:

"You know that capital oppresses the worker. Our workers, the
mouzhiks, bear all the burden of labor, and are so placed that, no
matter how much they work, they can't escape from their position of
beasts of burden. All the profits of labor, on which they might
improve their position, and gain leisure for themselves, and after
that education- all the surplus values, are taken from them by the
capitalists. And society is so constituted that the harder they
work, the greater the profit of the merchants and landowners, while
they stay beasts of burden to the end. And that state of things must
be changed," he finished up, and looked questioningly at his brother.

"Yes, of course," said Konstantin, looking at the patch of red
that had come out on his brother's projecting cheekbones.

"And so we're founding a locksmiths' association, where all the
production and profit, and the chief instruments of production-
everything- will be in common."

"Where is the association to be?" asked Konstantin Levin.

"In the village of Vozdrem, government of Kazan."

"But why in a village? In the villages, I think, there is plenty
of work as it is. Why a locksmiths' association in a village?"

"Why? Because the peasants are just as much slaves as they ever
were, and that's why you and Sergei Ivanovich don't like people to try
and get them out of their slavery," said Nikolai Levin, exasperated by
the objection.

Konstantin Levin sighed, looking meanwhile about the cheerless and
dirty room. This sigh seemed to exasperate Nikolai still more.

"I know Sergei Ivanovich's, and your, aristocratic views. I know
that he applies all the power of his intellect to justify existing
evils."

"I say, why do you talk of Sergei Ivanovich?" Levin let drop,
smiling.

"Sergei Ivanovich? I'll tell you why!" Nikolai Levin shrieked
suddenly at the name of Sergei Ivanovich. "I'll tell you why... But
what's the use of talking? There's only one thing... What did you come
to me for? You look down on all this; very well, then; but go away, in
God's name- go away!" he shrieked, getting up from his chair. "Go
away- go away!"

"I don't look down on it at all," said Konstantin Levin timidly.
"I don't even dispute it."

At that instant Marya Nikolaevna came back. Nikolai Levin looked
round angrily at her. She went quickly to him, and whispered
something.

"I'm not well; I've grown irritable," said Nikolai Levin, getting
calmer and breathing painfully; "and then you talk to me of Sergei
Ivanovich and his essay. It's such rubbish, such lying, such
self-deception! What can a man write about justice who knows nothing
of it? Have you read his essay?" he turned to Kritsky, sitting down
again at the table, and clearing a space for himself by pushing back
some half-made cigarettes.

"I haven't," Kritsky responded gloomily, obviously not desiring to
enter into the conversation.

"Why not?" said Nikolai Levin, now turning with exasperation upon
Kritsky.

"Because I didn't see the use of wasting my time over it."

"Oh, if you please- how did you know it would be wasting your
time? That essay's too deep for many people- that is to say, it's over
their heads. But it's different with me, I see through his ideas,
and I know wherein the essay's weakness lies."

They all fell silent. Kritsky got up sluggishly and reached for
his cap.

"Won't you have supper? All right, good-by! Come round tomorrow with
the locksmith."

Kritsky had hardly gone out when Nikolai Levin smiled and winked.

"He, too, is poor stuff," he said. "For I can see..."

But at that instant Kritsky, at the door, called him.

"What do you want now?" he said, and went out to him in the passage.
Left alone with Marya Nikolaevna, Levin turned to her.

"Have you been long with my brother?" he said to her.

"Yes, more than a year. His health has become very poor. He drinks a
great deal," she said.

"Just how?"

"He drinks vodka, and it's bad for him."

"And a great deal?" whispered Levin.

"Yes," she said, looking timidly toward the doorway, where Nikolai
Levin had reappeared.

"What were you talking about?" he said, knitting his brows, and
turning his scared eyes from one to the other. "What was it?"

"Oh, nothing," Konstantin answered in confusion.

"Oh, if you don't want to say, don't. Only it's no good your talking
to her. She's a wench, and you're a gentleman," he said, with a jerk
of the neck. "You understand everything, I see, and have taken stock
of everything, and look with commiseration on my transgressions," he
began again, raising his voice.

"Nikolai Dmitrich, Nikolai Dmitrich," whispered Marya Nikolaevna,
again going up to him.

"Oh, very well, very well!... But where's the supper? Ah, here it
is," he said, seeing a waiter with a tray. "Here, set it here," he
added angrily, and promptly seizing the vodka, he poured out a pony
and drank it greedily. "Like a drink?" he turned to his brother, and
at once became better-humored. "Well, enough of Sergei Ivanovich.
I'm glad to see you, anyway. After all's said and done, we're not
strangers. Come, have a drink. Tell me what you're doing," he went on,
greedily munching a piece of bread, and pouring out another pony. "How
are things with you?"

"I live alone in the country, as I always have. I'm busy looking
after the land," answered Konstantin, watching with horror the
greediness with which his brother ate and drank, and trying to conceal
that he noticed it.

"Why don't you get married?"

"No opportunity has presented itself," Konstantin answered,
reddening.

"Why not? For me now, everything's at an end! I've made a mess of my
life. But this I've said, and I say still, that if my share had been
given me when I needed it, my whole life would have been different."

Konstantin made haste to change the conversation.

"Do you know your little Vania's with me- a clerk in the
countinghouse at Pokrovskoe?"

Nikolai jerked his neck, and sank into thought.

"Yes, tell me what's going on at Pokrovskoe. Is the house still
standing, and the birch trees, and our schoolroom? And Philip the
gardener- is he living? How I remember the summerhouse and the sofa!
Now mind and don't alter anything in the house, but make haste and get
married, and make everything as it used to be again. Then I'll come
and see you, if your wife is a fine woman."

"Why, come to me now," said Levin. "How snugly we could settle
down!"

"I'd come and see you if I were sure I shouldn't find Sergei
Ivanovich."

"You wouldn't find him there. I live quite independently of him."

"Yes, but say what you like, you have to choose between me and him,"
he said, looking timidly into his brother's face.

This timidity touched Konstantin.

"If you want to hear my confession of faith on the subject, I tell
you that in your quarrel with Sergei Ivanovich I take neither side.
You're both wrong. You're rather wrong outwardly, and he, rather
inwardly."

"Ah, ah! You see that, you see that!" Nikolai shouted joyfully.

"But I personally value friendly relations with you more because..."

"Why, why?"

Konstantin could not say that he valued it more because Nikolai
was unhappy, and needed affection. But Nikolai knew that this was just
what he meant to say, and scowling he took to the vodka again.

"Enough, Nikolai Dmitrich!" said Marya Nikolaevna, stretching out
her plump, bare arm toward the decanter.

"Let it be! Don't annoy me! I'll beat you!" he shouted.

Marya Nikolaevna smiled a sweet and good-humored smile, which was at
once reflected on Nikolai's face, and whisked the decanter off.

"And do you suppose she understands nothing?" said Nikolai. "She
understands everything better than all of us. Tell the truth- isn't
there something good and sweet about her?"

"Were you never before in Moscow?" Konstantin said to her, for the
sake of saying something.

"Only you mustn't be formal with her. It frightens her. No one
ever spoke to her so but the justice of the peace who tried her for
trying to get out of a house of ill fame. My God, what senselessness
there is in this world!" he cried suddenly. "These new institutions,
these justices of the peace, these Zemstvo- what hideousness it all
is!"

And he began to enlarge on his encounters with the new institutions.

Konstantin Levin listened to him, and that disbelief in the sense of
all public institutions, which he shared with him, and often
expressed, was now distasteful to him, coming from his brother's lips.

"In the other world we shall understand it all," he said lightly.

"In the other world? Ah, I don't like that other world! I don't like
it," he said, letting his scared wild eyes rest on his brother's face.
"Here one would think that to get out of all the baseness and the
mess, one's own and other people's, would be a good thing, and yet I'm
afraid of death, awfully afraid of death." He shuddered. "But do drink
something. Would you like some champagne? Or shall we go somewhere?
Let's go to the gypsies! Do you know, I've gotten very fond of the
gypsies, and of Russian songs."

His speech had begun to falter, and he skipped at random from one
subject to another. Konstantin, with the help of Masha, persuaded
him not to go out anywhere, and got him to bed hopelessly drunk.

Masha promised to write to Konstantin in case of need, and to
persuade Nikolai to go and stay with his brother.

                           XXVI.


In the morning Konstantin Levin left Moscow, and toward evening he
reached home. On the journey in the train he talked to his fellow
travelers about politics and the new railways, and, just as in Moscow,
he was overcome by a sense of confusion of ideas, by dissatisfaction
with himself, and shame of something or other. But when he got out
at his own station, when he saw his one-eyed coachman Ignat, with
the collar of his coat turned up; when, in the dim light falling
through the station windows, he saw his own carpeted sledge, his own
horses with their tails up, in their harness trimmed with rings and
tassels; when the coachman Ignat, as he put in his luggage, told him
the village news- that the contractor had arrived, and that Pava had
calved- he felt that little by little the confusion was clearing up,
and the shame and self-dissatisfaction were passing away. He felt this
at the mere sight of Ignat and the horses; but he began to see what
had happened to him in quite a different light, when he had put on the
sheepskin coat brought for him, and, all muffled up, had taken his
seat in the sleigh and started off, pondering on the work that lay
before him in the village, and staring at the off horse, that had been
formerly his saddle horse, overridden, but a spirited animal from
the Don. He felt himself, and did not want to be anyone else. All he
wanted now was to be better than before. In the first place, he
resolved that from that day on he would give up hoping for the
extraordinary happiness which the marriage was to afford him, and
consequently he would not disdain the present so. In the second place,
he would never again let himself give way to low passion, the memory
of which had so tortured him when he had been making up his mind to
propose. Then, remembering his brother Nikolai, he resolved that he
would never allow himself to forget him, that he would watch him,
and not lose sight of him, so as to be ready to help should things
go ill with him. And that would be soon, he felt. Then, too, his
brother's talk of communism, which he had treated so lightly at the
time, now made him reflect. He considered an alteration in economic
conditions nonsense; yet he had always felt the injustice of his own
abundance in comparison with the poverty of the common folk, and he
now determined that, in order to feel quite in the right, though he
had worked hard and lived by no means luxuriously before, he would now
work still harder, and would allow himself even less luxury. And all
this seemed to him so easy a conquest over himself that he spent the
whole drive in most pleasant reveries. With a lively feeling of hope
in a new, better life, he drove up to his house about nine o'clock
at night.

The snow of the little quadrangle before the house was lit up by
light falling from the windows in the room of his old nurse, Agathya
Mikhailovna, who performed the duties of housekeeper in his house. She
was not yet asleep. Kouzma, awakened by her, sleepy and barefooted,
ran out onto the steps. A setter bitch, Laska, leaped out too,
almost upsetting Kouzma, and whining, rubbed against Levin's knees,
jumping up and longing, yet not daring, to put her forepaws on his
chest.

"You're soon returned, my dear," said Agathya Mikhailovna.

"I grew homesick, Agathya Mikhailovna. East or West, home is
best," he answered, and went into his study.

The study was gradually lit up as the candle was brought in. The
familiar details came out: the stag's horns; the bookshelves; the
plain stove with its warm-hole, which had long wanted mending; his
father's sofa, a large table, and, on the table, an open book, a
broken ash tray, a notebook with his handwriting. As he saw all
this, there came over him for an instant a doubt of the possibility of
arranging the new life, of which he had been dreaming on the road. All
these traces of his life seemed to clutch him, and to say to him: "No,
you're not going to get away from us, and you're not going to be
different- but you're going to be the same as you've always been: with
doubts, everlasting dissatisfaction with yourself, vain efforts to
amend, and lapses, and everlasting expectation of a happiness which
you won't get, and which isn't possible for you."

But it was his things that said this to him, while another voice
in his heart was telling him that he must not fall under the sway of
the past, and that one can do anything with oneself. And hearing
that voice, he went into the corner where stood his two dumbbells,
of one pood each, and began jerking and pushing them up, trying to
induce a state of well-being. There was a creak of steps at the
door. He hastily put down the dumbbells.

The bailiff came in, and said that everything, thank God, was
well, but also informed him that the buckwheat in the new drying
machine had been a little scorched. This piece of news irritated
Levin. The new drying machine had been constructed and partly invented
by Levin. The bailiff had always been against this drying machine, and
now it was with suppressed triumph that he announced that the
buckwheat had been scorched. Levin was firmly convinced that if the
buckwheat had been scorched it was only because precautions had not
been taken, for which he had hundreds of times given orders. He was
annoyed, and reprimanded the bailiff. But there had been an
important and joyful event: Pava, his best cow, an expensive beast,
bought at a show, had calved.

"Kouzma, give me my sheepskin coat. And you, do tell them to fetch a
lantern- I'm going to have a look at her," he said to the bailiff.

The cowhouse for the more valuable cows was just behind the house.
Walking across the yard, passing a snowdrift by the lilac tree, he
went into the cowhouse. There came a warm, steamy smell of dung when
the frozen door was opened, and the cows, astonished at the unfamiliar
light of the lantern, stirred on their fresh straw. He caught a
glimpse of the broad, smooth, black and piebald back of a Dutch cow.
Berkoot, the bull, was lying down with his ring in his lip, and seemed
about to get up, but thought better of it, and only gave two snorts as
they passed by him. Pava, the reddish beauty, huge as a
hippopotamus, with her back turned to them, screened her calf from the
arrivals and sniffed it all over.

Levin went into the stall, looked Pava over, and hefted the
reddish and red-dappled calf up on its unsteady, spindly legs. Pava,
uneasy, began lowing, but when Levin put the calf close to her she was
soothed, and, sighing heavily, began licking her with her rough
tongue. The calf fumbling, poked its nose under its mother's groin,
and twirled its tiny tail.

"Bring the light here, Fiodor- bring the lantern here," said
Levin, examining the heifer. "Like the dam! though the color takes
after the sire. A perfect beauty! Long, and broad in the haunch. Isn't
she a beauty now, Vassilii Fiodorovich?" he addressed the bailiff,
quite forgiving him for the buckwheat under the influence of his
delight in the heifer.

"What bad blood could she take after?- Semion the contractor came
the day after you left. You must settle with him, Konstantin
Dmitrich," said the bailiff. "And I have already told you about the
machine."

This matter alone was enough to bring Levin back to all the
details of his estate, which was on a large scale, and complicated. He
went straight from the cowhouse to the countinghouse, and, after a
short talk with the bailiff and Semion the contractor, he went back to
the house and straight upstairs to the drawing room.

                           XXVII.


The house was big and old-fashioned, and Levin, though he lived
alone, heated and used the whole house. He knew that this was
stupid, he knew that it was even wrong, and contrary to his present
new plans, but this house was a whole world to Levin. It was the world
in which his father and mother had lived and died. They had lived just
the life that to Levin seemed the ideal of perfection, and that he had
dreamed of renewing with his wife, with his family.

Levin scarcely remembered his mother. His conception of her was
for him a sacred memory, and his future wife was bound to be, in his
imagination, a repetition of that exquisite, holy ideal of a woman
that his mother had been.

He was so far from conceiving of love for woman apart from
marriage that he positively pictured to himself first the family,
and only secondarily the woman who would give him a family. His
ideas of marriage were, consequently, quite unlike those of the
great majority of his acquaintances, for whom getting married was
merely one of the many affairs of everyday life. For Levin it was
the chief affair of life, on which its whole happiness turned. And now
he had to give up that!

When he had gone into the second drawing room, where he always had
tea, and had settled himself in his armchair with a book, and
Agathya Mikhailovna had brought him tea, and with her usual, "Well,
I'll stay a while, my dear," had taken a chair at the window, he
felt that, however strange it might be, he had not parted from his
daydreams, and that he could not live without them. Whether with
her, or with another- it was still bound to be. He was reading his
book, pondering on what he was reading, and pausing to listen to
Agathya Mikhailovna, who gossiped away without flagging, and yet, with
all that, all sorts of pictures of his work and a future family life
rose disconnectedly before his imagination. He felt that in the
depth of his soul something was steadying, settling down, and abating.

He heard Agathya Mikhailovna talking of how Prokhor had forgotten
his duty to God, and, with the money Levin had given him to buy a
horse, had been drinking without a letup, and had beaten his wife till
he'd half-killed her. He listened, and read his book, and recalled the
whole train of ideas suggested by his reading. It was Tyndall's
Treatise on Heat. He recalled his own criticisms of Tyndall for his
self-complacency in the cleverness of his experiments, and for his
lack of philosophic insight. And suddenly there floated into his
mind the joyful thought: "In two years' time I shall have two Dutch
cows in my herd; Pava herself will perhaps still be alive; a dozen
young daughters of Berkoot, and these three added for show- it would
be marvelous!" He took up his book again. "Now well, electricity and
heat are the same thing; but is it possible to substitute one quantity
for the other in an equation for the solution of any problem? No.
Well, then what of it? The connection between all the forces of nature
is felt instinctively, anyway.... It'll be particularly pleasant
when Pava's daughter will be a red-dappled cow like all the herd, to
which the other three should be added! Splendid! I'll go out with my
wife and visitors to meet the herd.... My wife says, 'Kostia and I
looked after that heifer like a child.' 'How can it interest you so
much?' says a visitor. 'Everything that interests him, interests
me.' But who will she be?" And he remembered what had happened at
Moscow.... "Well, there's nothing to be done.... It's not my fault.
But now everything shall go on in a new way. It's nonsense to
pretend that life won't let one, that the past won't let one. One must
struggle to live better- far better...." He raised his head, and
sank into thought. Old Laska, who had not yet fully digested her
delight at his return, and had run out into the yard to bark, came
back wagging her tail, and crept up to him, bringing in the scent of
the fresh air, put her head under his hand, and yelped plaintively,
asking to be stroked.

"If she could but speak," said Agathya Mikhailovna. "Even though
it's a dog... Yet she understands that her master's come home, and
that he's low-spirited."

"Why low-spirited?"

"Do you suppose I don't see it, my dear? It's high time I should
know the gentlefolk. Why, I've grown up from a little thing with them.
Never mind, sir, so long as one has health and a clear conscience."

Levin looked intently at her, surprised at how well she had fathomed
his thoughts.

"Shall I fetch you another cup?" she asked and, taking his cup, went
out.

Laska kept poking her head under his hand. He stroked her, and she
promptly curled up at his feet, laying her head on a protruding
hand-paw. And in token of all now being well and satisfactory, she
opened her mouth a little, smacked her lips, and settling her sticky
lips more comfortably about her old teeth, she sank into blissful
respose. Levin watched her last movements attentively.

"That's what I'll do," he said to himself; "that's what I'll do!
Never mind.... All's well."

                           XXVIII.


After the ball, early next morning, Anna Arkadyevna sent her husband
a telegram that she was leaving Moscow the same day.

"No, I must go, I must go"; she explained the change in her plans to
her sister-in-law, in a tone that suggested that she had to remember
so many things that there was no enumerating them: "no, really, it had
better be today!"

Stepan Arkadyevich was not dining at home, but he promised to come
and see his sister off at seven o'clock.

Kitty, too, did not come, sending a note that she had a headache.
Dolly and Anna dined alone with the children and the English
governess. Whether it was because children are fickle, or because they
have acute senses, and they felt that Anna was quite different that
day from what she had been when they had taken such a fancy to her,
that she was not now interested in them- they had abruptly dropped
their play with their aunt, and their love for her, and were quite
indifferent to her leaving. Anna was absorbed the whole morning in
preparations for her departure. She wrote notes to her Moscow
acquaintances, jotted down her accounts, and packed. Altogether
Dolly fancied she was not in a placid state of mind, but in that
worried mood which Dolly knew so well in her own case, and which
does not come without cause, and for the most part covers
dissatisfaction with oneself. After dinner, Anna went up to her room
to dress, and Dolly followed her.

"How queer you are today!" Dolly said to her.

"I? Do you think so? I'm not queer, but I'm nasty. I am like that
sometimes. I keep feeling as if I could cry. It's very stupid, but
it'll pass off," said Anna quickly, and she bent her flushed face over
a tiny bag in which she was packing a nightcap and some cambric
handkerchiefs. Her eyes were particularly bright, and were continually
dimmed with tears. "In the same way I didn't want to leave
Peterburg- and now I don't want to go away from here."

"You came here and did a good deed," said Dolly, looking intently at
her.

Anna's eyes were wet with tears as she looked at her.

"Don't say that, Dolly. I've done nothing, and could do nothing. I
often wonder why people are all in league to spoil me. What have I
done, and what could I do? In your heart there was found love enough
to forgive...."

If it had not been for you, God knows what would have happened!
How happy you are, Anna!" said Dolly. "Everything is clear and good in
your heart."

"Every heart has its own skeleton, as the English say."

"You have no sort of skeleton, have you? Everything is so clear in
you."

"I have!" said Anna suddenly, and, unexpectedly after her tears, a
sly, mocking smile puckered her lips.

"Come, he's amusing, anyway, your skeleton, and not depressing,"
said Dolly, smiling.

"No, he is depressing. Do you know why I'm going today instead of
tomorrow? This is a confession that weighs on me; I want to make you
its recipient," said Anna resolutely letting herself drop into an
armchair, and looking straight into Dolly's face.

And to her surprise Dolly saw that Anna was blushing up to her ears,
up to the curly black ringlets on her neck.

"Yes," Anna went on. "Do you know why Kitty didn't come to dinner?
She's jealous of me. I have spoiled... I've been the cause of that
ball being a torture to her instead of a pleasure. But truly, truly,
it's not my fault, or only my fault a little bit," she said,
daintily drawling the words "a little bit."

"Oh, how like Stiva you said that!" said Dolly, laughing.

Anna was hurt.

"Oh no, oh no! I'm not Stiva," she said, knitting her brows. "That's
why I'm telling you, just because I do not even for an instant
permit myself to doubt about myself," said Anna.

But at the very moment she was uttering the words, she felt that
they were not true. She was not merely doubting about herself- she
felt emotion at the thought of Vronsky, and was going away sooner than
she had meant, solely to avoid meeting him.

"Yes, Stiva told me you danced the mazurka with him, and that he..."

"You can't imagine how absurdly it all came about. I only meant to
be matchmaking, and all at once it turned out quite differently.
Possibly against my own will..."

She flushed and stopped.

"Oh, they feel it immediately!" said Dolly.

"But I should be in despair if there were anything serious in it
on his side," Anna interrupted her. "And I'm certain it will all be
forgotten, and Kitty will leave off hating me."

"All the same, Anna, to tell you the truth, I'm not very anxious for
this marriage for Kitty. And it's better it should come to nothing, if
he, Vronsky, is capable of falling in love with you in a single day."

"Oh, heavens, that would be too silly!" said Anna, and again a
deep flush of pleasure appeared on her face, as she heard the idea
that absorbed her put into words. "And so here I am, going away,
having made an enemy of Kitty, whom I liked so much! Ah, how sweet she
is! But you'll make it right, Dolly? Eh?"

Dolly could scarcely suppress a smile. She loved Anna, but she was
pleased to see that she, too, had her weaknesses.

"An enemy? That can't be."

"I did so want you all to care for me, as I do for you, and now I
care for you more than ever," said Anna, with tears in her eyes.
"Ah, how silly I am today!"

She passed her handkerchief over her face and began dressing.

At the very moment of starting Stepan Arkadyevich arrived, late,
rosy and good-humored, smelling of wine and cigars.

Anna's emotionalism infected Dolly, and when she embraced her
sister-in-law for the last time, she whispered:

"Remember, Anna, what you've done for me- I shall never forget.
And remember that I love you, and shall always love you as my
dearest friend!"

"I don't know why," said Anna, kissing her and hiding her tears.

"You understand me, and still understand. Good-by, my darling!"

                           XXIX.


"Now, it's all over- God be praised!" was the first thought that
came to Anna Arkadyevna, when she had said good-by for the last time
to her brother, who had stood blocking up the entrance to the carriage
till the third bell rang. She sat down on her lounge beside
Annushka, and looked about her in the twilight of the sleeping
carriage. "Thank God! tomorrow I shall see Seriozha and Alexei
Alexandrovich, and my life, good and familiar, will go on in the old
way."

Still in the same anxious frame of mind in which she had been all
that day, Anna took a meticulous pleasure in making herself
comfortable for the journey. With her tiny, deft hands she opened
and shut her little red bag, took out a cushion, laid it on her knees,
and, carefully wrapping up her feet, settled herself comfortably. An
invalid lady had already lain down to sleep. Two other ladies began
talking to Anna, and a stout elderly lady tucked up her feet, and made
observations about the heating of the train. Anna answered the
ladies in a few words, but not foreseeing any entertainment from the
conversation, she asked Annushka to get a small lantern, hooked it
on the arm of her seat, and took from her bag a paper knife and an
English novel. At first she could not get interested in her reading.
The fuss and stir were disturbing; then, when the train had started,
she could not help listening to the noises; then the snow beating on
the left window and sticking to the pane, and the sight of the muffled
guard passing by, covered with snow on one side, and the conversations
about the terrible blizzard raging outside, distracted her
attention. And after that everything was the same and the same: the
same jouncing and rattling, the same snow lashing the window, the same
rapid transitions from steaming heat to cold, and back again to
heat, the same flitting of the same faces in the half-murk, and the
same voices; and then Anna began to read, and to grasp what she
read. Annushka was already dozing, the red bag on her lap, clutched by
her broad hands, in gloves, of which one was torn. Anna Arkadyevna
read and grasped the sense, yet it was annoying to her to read- that
is, to follow the reflection of other people's lives. She had too
great a desire to live herself. If she read that the heroine of the
novel were nursing a sick man, she longed to move with noiseless steps
about his sickroom; if she read of a member of Parliament delivering a
speech, she longed to deliver it; if she read of how Lady Mary had
ridden after the hounds, and had provoked her sister-in-law, and had
surprised everyone by her daring- she, too, longed to be doing the
same. But there was no chance of doing anything; and, her little hands
toying with the smooth paper knife, she forced herself to read.

The hero of the novel was already beginning to attain his English
happiness, a baronetcy, and an estate, and Anna was feeling a desire
to go with him to his estate, when she suddenly felt that he ought
to feel ashamed, and that she was ashamed of the same thing. But
what was it he was ashamed of? "What have I to be ashamed of?" she
asked herself in injured surprise. She abandoned the book and sank
against the back of her chair, tightly gripping the paper knife in
both hands. There was nothing to be ashamed of. She went over all
her Moscow recollections. All were fine, pleasant. She recalled the
ball, recalled Vronsky and his enamored, submissive face; she recalled
all her conduct with him- there was nothing shameful. Yet, with all
that, at this very point in her reminiscences, the feeling of shame
was intensified, as though some inner voice, precisely here, when
she recalled Vronsky, were saying to her: "Warm, very warm- hot!"
"Well, what is it?" she said to herself resolutely, shifting on her
seat. "What does it mean? Am I afraid to look at this without
blinking? Well, what is it? Can it be that between me and this
boy-officer there exist, or can exist, any other relations than such
as are common with every acquaintance?" She laughed contemptuously and
took up her book again; but now she was absolutely unable to make
sense of what she read. She passed the paper knife over the
windowpane, then laid its smooth, cool surface to her cheek, and
almost laughed aloud at the unreasoning joy that all at once possessed
her. She felt that her nerves, like strings, were being tautened
more and more upon some kind of tightening peg. She felt her eyes
opening wider and wider, her fingers and toes twitching nervously,
something within stopping her breathing, while all images and sounds
seemed in the swaying half-murk to strike her with extraordinary
vividness. Moments of doubt were continually besetting her: was the
car going forward, or back, or was it standing absolutely still? Was
it really Annushka at her side, or a stranger? "What's that on the arm
of the chair- a fur cloak or some beast? And what am I myself: is it
I, or some other woman?" She was afraid of yielding to this trance-
but something was drawing her into it, and, at will, she could yield
to it or resist it. She got up to rouse herself, and slipped off her
plaid and the cape of warm dress. For a moment she regained her
self-possession, and realized that the thin peasant who had come in
wearing a long nankeen overcoat, with a button missing from it, was
the fireman, that he was looking at the thermometer, that the wind and
snow had burst in after him through the door; but then everything grew
confused again.... That peasant with the long waist took to gnawing
something within the wall; the little crone started stretching her
legs the whole length of the car and filled it with a black cloud;
then there was a dreadful screeching and banging, as though someone
were being rent into pieces; then a red blaze blinded her eyes, and,
at last, everything was screened by a wall. Anna felt that she had
plunged downward. Yet all this was not terrible, but joyful. The voice
of a man muffled up and covered with snow shouted something in her
very ear. She arose and came to, realizing that they had come to a
station, and that this was the conductor. She requested Annushka to
hand her the cape she had taken off, and her shawl, put them on, and
went toward the door.

"Do you wish to get out?" asked Annushka.

"Yes, I want to get a breath of air. It's very hot in here."

And she opened the door. The blizzard and the wind rushed to meet
her and began to contend with her for the door. And even this seemed
joyful to her. She opened the door and stepped out. This seemed to
be all that the wind had been lying in wait for; it set up a gleeful
whistle and was about to snatch her up and whirl her away, but she
clutched the cold doorpost and, holding on to her shawl, descended
to the platform and the shelter of the car. The wind had been mighty
on the steps, but on the platform, in the lee of the train, there
was a lull. With enjoyment she drew deep breaths of the snowy,
frosty air and, standing near the car, looked about the platform and
the lighted station.

                           XXX.


The frightful storm raged and whistled between the wheels of the
cars, along the posts, around the corner of the station. The cars,
posts, people- everything in sight- were covered with snow on one
side, and were getting more and more snowed under. For a moment
there would come a lull in the storm, but then it would again swoop
down with such gusts that it seemed impossible to withstand it.
Meanwhile some men or other were dashing about, gaily talking to one
another, making the boards of the platform creak and ceaselessly
opening and shutting the big doors. A stooping human shadow glided
by at her feet, and she heard a hammer tapping upon iron. "Let's
have the telegram!" came an angry voice out of the stormy murk on
the other side. "This way! No. 28!" other voices were also shouting,
and muffled figures scurried by, plastered with snow. Two gentlemen
passed by her, cigarettes glowing in their mouths. She drew in one
more deep breath, and had just taken her hand out of her muff to grasp
the doorpost and enter the car, when still another man in a military
overcoat, quite close beside her, stepped between her and the
flickering light of a lantern. She looked round, and the same
instant recognized Vronsky's face. Putting his hand to the peak of his
cap, he bowed to her and asked if there weren't anything she wanted,
whether he could not be of some service to her? She gazed rather
long at him, without any answer, and, in spite of the shadow in
which he was standing, she saw (or fancied she saw) the expression
both of his face and his eyes. It was again that expression of
reverent rapture which had affected her so yesterday. More than once
she had told herself during the past few days, and only just now, that
Vronsky was for her only one of the hundreds of young men, forever
exactly the same, that one meets everywhere; that she would never
permit herself even to think of him; yet now at the first flush of
meeting him, she was seized by an emotion of joyous pride. She had
no need to ask why he was here. She knew, as surely as if he had
told her, that he was here only to be where she was.

"I didn't know you were going. And why are you going?" she said,
letting fall the hand which had grasped the doorpost. And
irrepressible joy and animation shone in her face.

"Why am I going?" he repeated, looking straight into her eyes.
"You know that I am going to be where you are," he said; "I cannot
do otherwise."

And at this very point, as though it had overcome all obstacles, the
wind scattered the snow from the car roofs, and began to flutter
some sheet of iron it had torn off, while the low-pitched whistle of
the engine set up a roar in front, dismal and lamenting. All the
awesomeness of the blizzard now seemed still more splendid to her.
He had uttered precisely what her soul yearned for, but which her
reason dreaded. She made no answer, and in her face he beheld a
struggle.

"Forgive me, if what I have said displeases you," he said humbly.

He had spoken courteously, deferentially, yet so firmly, so
obdurately that, for long, she could find no answer.

"What you say is wrong, and I beg of you, if you are a good man,
to forget what you have said, even as I shall forget it," she said
at last.

"Not a single word of yours, nor a single gesture, shall I ever
forget- nor could I forget...."

"Enough, enough!" she cried, vainly attempting to give a stern
expression to her face, which he was avidly scrutinizing. Clutching at
the cold doorpost, she clambered up the steps and quickly entered
the corridor of the car. But in this little corridor she paused,
reviewing in her imagination all that had occurred. Without
recalling her own words or his, she realized instinctively that that
conversation had brought them fearfully closer; and she was both
frightened and made happy thereby. After standing thus a few
seconds, she went into the car and sat down in her place. That
tensed state which had tormented her at first was not only renewed,
but grew greater and reached such a pitch that she was afraid that, at
any moment, something would snap within her from the excessive
tension. She did not sleep all night. But in that nervous tension, and
in the reveries that filled her imagination, there was nothing
unpleasant or gloomy; on the contrary, there was something joyous,
glowing and exhilarating. Toward morning Anna dozed off as she sat,
and when she awoke it was already light, and the train was nearing
Peterburg. At once thoughts of home, of her husband and son, and the
details of the day ahead, and days to follow, came thronging upon her.

At Peterburg, as soon as the train stopped and she got out, the
first face that attracted her attention was that of her husband.
"Oh, my God! What has happened to his ears?" she thought looking at
his frigid and imposing figure, and especially the ears, that struck
her so now, as they propped up the brim of his round hat. Catching
sight of her he went to meet her, pursing his lips into their habitual
mocking smile, and fixing her with his big, tired eyes. Some
unpleasant sensation contracted her heart as she met his obdurate
and tired glance, as though she had expected to see him a different
man. She was particularly struck by that feeling of dissatisfaction
with herself which she experienced on meeting him. This was an
intimate, familiar feeling, like that state of dissimulation which she
experienced in her relations with her husband; but hitherto she had
not taken note of the feeling; now she was clearly and painfully aware
of it.

"Yes, as you see, your tender spouse, as devoted as he was during
the second year after marriage, was consumed by the desire of seeing
you," he said in his dilatory, high-pitched voice, and in that tone
which he almost always used to her- a tone of bantering at anyone
who should speak thus in earnest.

"Is Seriozha quite well?" she asked.

"And is this all the reward," said he, "for my ardor? He's well-
quite well...."

                           XXXI.


Vronsky had not even attempted to fall asleep all that night. He sat
in his armchair, his eyes fixed before him or scanning the people
who got in and out, and if he had indeed, on previous occasions,
struck and aroused people who did not know him by his air of
unshakable calmness, he now seemed prouder and more self-sufficient
than ever. He regarded people as if they were things. A nervous
young man, a clerk in a law court, who had the seat opposite his,
conceived a hatred for him because of this air. The young man asked
him for a light, and entered into conversation with him, and even
jostled him, to make him feel that he was not a thing, but a man.
But Vronsky kept on regarding him as if he were a lamppost, and the
young man grimaced, feeling that he was losing his self-possession
under the oppressiveness of this refusal to recognize him as a human
being.

Vronsky saw nothing and no one. He felt himself a king, not
because he believed that he had made any impression on Anna- he did
not yet believe that- but because the impression she had made on him
afforded him happiness and pride.

What would come of it all he did not know, or even think. He felt
that all his forces, hitherto dissolute, scattered, were centered on
one thing, and bent with fearful energy toward one blissful goal.
And therein lay his happiness. He did but know that he had told her
the truth, that he had come where she was, that all the happiness of
life, the sole meaning in life for him, now lay in seeing her and
hearing her voice. And when he got out of his car at Bologovo to get
some seltzer water, and had caught sight of Anna, his very first
word had involuntarily told her his very thoughts. And he was glad
he had told her, that she knew now, and was thinking of it. He did not
sleep all night. Back in his compartment, he incessantly kept
ruminating upon every posture in which he had seen her, every word she
had uttered; and, in his imagination, making his heart swoon,
floated pictures of a possible future.

When he got out of the train at Peterburg, he felt after his
sleepless night as lively and fresh as after a cold bath. He paused
near his car, waiting for her to emerge. "Once more," he said to
himself, smiling unconsciously, "once more I shall see her walk, her
face; she may say something, turn her head, glance, smile, perhaps."
But before he caught sight of her, he saw her husband, whom the
stationmaster was deferentially escorting through the crowd. "Ah, yes.
The husband." Only now, for the first time, did Vronsky realize
clearly the fact that there was someone attached to her- a husband. He
had known that she had a husband, but had hardly believed in his
existence, and only now, when he saw him, did he fully believe in him,
with his head, and shoulders, and his black-trousered legs; especially
when he saw this husband placidly take her arm, with a consciousness
of proprietorship.

Seeing Alexei Alexandrovich with his spick-and-span Peterburg face
and austerely self-confident figure, in his round hat, with his rather
prominent spine, he believed in him, and was aware of a disagreeable
sensation, such as might be felt by a man who, tortured by thirst,
finds, on reaching a spring, a dog, a sheep or a pig therein that
has not only drunk of it, but also muddied the water. Alexei
Alexandrovich's manner of walking, gyrating his whole pelvis and his
flat feet, was especially offensive to Vronsky. He could recognize
in no one but himself an indubitable right to love her. But she was
still the same, and the sight of her affected him the same way,
physically reviving him, stirring him, and filling his soul with
happiness. He told his German valet, who ran up to him from the second
class, to take his things and go on, he himself went up to her. He saw
the first meeting between the husband and wife, and noted, with a
lover's insight, the sign of the slight embarrassment with which she
spoke to her husband. "No, she does not love him, and cannot love
him," he decided to himself.

At the very moment that he was approaching Anna Arkadyevna from
the back, he noticed with joy that she was conscious of his drawing
near, and that she looked round; after which, seeing him, she turned
again to her husband.

"Have you had a good night?" he said, bowing both to her and to
her husband, and leaving it to Alexei Alexandrovich to accept the
bow on his own account, and to return it or not, as he might see fit.

"Thank you- a very good one," she answered.

Her face seemed tired, and lacking in that play of animation which
usually hovered between her smile and her eyes; but for a single
instant, as she glanced at him, something flashed in her eyes, and
although this flash died away at once, he was made happy by that
moment. She glanced at her husband, to find out whether he knew
Vronsky. Alexei Alexandrovich was regarding Vronsky with
displeasure, absent-mindedly trying to recall who he was. Vronsky's
calmness and self-confidence had here run up, like a scythe against
a stone, on the frigid self-confidence of Alexei Alexandrovich.

"Count Vronsky," said Anna.

"Ah! We are acquainted, I believe," said Alexei Alexandrovich
apathetically, proffering his hand. "You set out with the mother and
return with the son," he said to Anna, articulating distinctly, as
though each word were a coin of high value bestowed by him on his
hearers.- "You're back from leave, I suppose?" he said, and without
waiting for a reply, he addressed his wife in his bantering tone:
"Well, were a great many tears shed in Moscow at parting?"

By addressing his wife thus he meant Vronsky to perceive that he
wished to be left alone, and, turning slightly toward him, he
touched his hat; but Vronsky turned to Anna Arkadyevna:

"I hope to have the honor of calling on you," he said.

Alexei Alexandrovich glanced with his weary eyes at Vronsky.

"Delighted," he said coldly. "We're at home Mondays." Then,
dismissing Vronsky entirely, he said to his wife: "I am rather lucky
to have just half an hour to meet you, so that I can prove to you my
fondness," he went on, in the same bantering tone.

"You lay too great a stress on your fondness for me to value it very
much," she responded in the same bantering tone, involuntarily
listening to the sound of Vronsky's steps behind them. "But what
have I to do with that?" she said to herself, and began questioning
her husband as to how Seriozha had got on without her.

"Oh, capitally! Mariette says he has been a very darling boy, and...
I must disappoint you... But he has not languished for you as your
husband has. But once more merci, my dear, for bestowing a whole day
upon me. Our dear Samovar will be enraptured." (He called the Countess
Lidia Ivanovna, well known in society, a samovar, because she was
bubbling over with excitement on any and every occasion.) "She has
been asking for you. And, d'you know, if I may venture to advise
you, you ought to go to see her today. You know how she takes
everything to heart. Just now, with all her own cares, she's anxious
about the reconciliation of the Oblonskys."

The Countess Lidia Ivanovna was a friend of her husband's, and the
center of that one of the coteries of the Peterburg beau monde with
which Anna was, through her husband, in the closest rapport.

"But I wrote to her."

"Yes, but she must have full details. Go to see her, if you're not
too tired, my dear. Well, Kondratii will take you in the carriage,
while I go to my committee. Once more I shall not be alone at dinner,"
Alexei Alexandrovich continued, but no longer in a jesting tone.
"You wouldn't believe how I've grown used to you...."

And, with a prolonged pressure of her hand, and a particular
smile, he helped her into her carriage.

                           XXXII.


The first person to meet Anna at home was her son. He dashed down
the stairs to her, in spite of the governess's call, and with frenzied
rapture shrieked: "Mother! mother!" Running up to her, he hung on
her neck.

"I told you it was mother!" he shouted to the governess. "I knew
it!"

And her son, like her husband, aroused in Anna a feeling akin to
disappointment. In her imagination he had been better than he was in
reality. She had to descend to reality to enjoy him as he was. But,
even so, he was charming, with his fair curls, his blue eyes and his
chubby, graceful little legs in tightly pulled-up stockings. Anna
experienced an almost physical delight in the sensation of his
nearness, and his caresses; and a moral reassurance, when she met
his ingenuous, trusting and loving glance, and heard his naive
questions. Anna took out the presents Dolly's children had sent him,
and told her son about Tania, a little girl in Moscow, and how Tania
could read, and even taught the other children.

"Why, am I not as good as she?" asked Seriozha.

"To me you're better than anyone else in the whole world."

"I know that," said Seriozha, smiling.

Anna had scarcely drunk her coffee when the Countess Lidia
Ivanovna was announced. The Countess Lidia Ivanovna was a tall, fleshy
woman, with an unwholesomely yellow complexion and beautiful,
pensive black eyes. Anna liked her, but today she seemed, for the
first time, to see her with all her shortcomings.

"Well, my friend, were you the bearer of the olive branch?" asked
Countess Lidia Ivanovna, the minute she entered the room.

"Yes, it's all over, but it was not at all as serious as we
thought," answered Anna. "My belle-soeur is, in general, much too
categorical."

But Countess Lidia Ivanovna, who was interested in everything that
did not concern her, had a habit of never listening to what interested
her; she interrupted Anna:

"Yes, there's plenty of sorrow and evil in the world- and I am so
fatigued today!"

"Oh, why?" asked Anna, trying to repress a smile.

"I'm beginning to weary of vainly breaking lances for the truth, and
at times I'm altogether unstrung. The affair with our Dear Sisters
[this was a religiously patriotic, philanthropic institution]
started off splendidly, but it's impossible to do anything with such
people," added Countess Lidia Ivanovna, with a mocking
submissiveness to fate. "They pounced on the idea, and mangled it, and
afterward they thrash it out so pettily and trivially. Two or three
people, your husband among them, grasp all the significance of this
affair but the others merely degrade it. Yesterday Pravdin wrote to
me..."

Pravdin was a well-known Pan-Slavist abroad, and Countess Lidia
Ivanovna told the gist of his letter.

Next the Countess spoke of other unpleasantnesses and intrigues
against the work of the unification of the churches, and departed in
haste, since that day she had to attend the meeting of another
society, and also a Slavonic committee.

"All this is as it has always been; but how is it I didn't notice it
before?" Anna asked herself. "Or has she been very much irritated
today? It's really ludicrous: her object is to do good; she's a
Christian; yet she's forever angry, and forever having enemies- and
always enemies in the name of Christianity and doing good."

After Countess Lidia Ivanovna another friend came, the wife of a
director of the Department, who told her all the news of the town.
At three o'clock she too went away, promising to come to dinner.
Alexei Alexandrovich was at the Ministry. Anna, left alone, spent
the time till dinner in lending her presence to her son's dinner (he
dined apart from his parents), in putting her things in order, and
in reading and answering the notes and letters which had accumulated
on her escritoire.

The feeling of unreasoning shame, which she had felt during the
journey, and her agitation, had completely vanished. In the accustomed
conditions of her life she again felt herself firm and irreproachable.

She recalled with wonder her state of mind only yesterday. "What was
it? Nothing. Vronsky said something silly, which it was easy to put an
end to, and I answered just as I should have. To speak of it to my
husband would be unnecessary and impermissible. To speak of it would
be to attach importance to that which has none." She remembered how
she had told her husband of what was almost declaration made her in
Peterburg by a young man, a subordinate of her husband's, and how
Alexei Alexandrovich had answered that every woman of the world was
exposed to this sort of thing, but that he had the fullest
confidence in her tact, and would never permit himself to degrade
her and himself by jealousy. "So then, there's no reason to say
anything? And, thank God, there isn't anything to say," she told
herself.

                           XXXIII.


Alexei Alexandrovich came back from the Ministry at four o'clock,
but as often happened, had no chance to drop in at her room. He went
into his study to see the people waiting for him with petitions, and
to sign certain papers brought him by his head clerk. At dinnertime
(there were always at least three people dining with the Karenins)
there arrived an old lady, a cousin of Alexei Alexandrovich; the
director of the Department and his wife; and a young man who had
been recommended to Alexei Alexandrovich for a post. Anna went into
the drawing room to entertain these guests. Precisely at five o'clock,
before the bronze Peter the First clock had finished the fifth stroke,
Alexei Alexandrovich made his entry, in white tie and evening coat
with two stars, as he had to go out directly after dinner. Every
minute of Alexei Alexandrovich's life was taken up and apportioned.
And in order to accomplish all that each day held for him, he
adhered to the strictest orderliness. "Nor haste nor rest," was his
device. He entered the dining hall, bowed to all, and hurriedly sat
down, smiling to his wife:

"Yes, my solitude is over. You wouldn't believe how uncomfortable
[he laid stress on the word uncomfortable] it is to dine alone."

At dinner he chatted with his wife about things at Moscow, and
asked, with his mocking smile, about Stepan Arkadyevich; but the
conversation was for the most part general, dealing with the
official and public news of Peterburg. After dinner he spent half an
hour with his guests, and, again with a smile, pressed his wife's
hand, withdrew, and drove off to the Council. Anna went that evening
neither to the Princess Betsy Tverskaia, who, hearing of her return,
had invited her, nor to the theater, where she had a box for that
evening. Her principal reason for not going out was because the
dress she had expected to wear was not ready. All in all, Anna was
exceedingly annoyed when she started to dress for the evening after
the departure of her guests. Before her departure for Moscow she,
who was generally a mistress of the art of dressing well yet
inexpensively, had given her dressmaker three dresses to make over.
The dresses were to be made over so that their old selves would be
unrecognizable, and they should have been ready three days ago. It
turned out that two dresses were nowhere near ready, while the other
one had not been made over to Anna's liking. The dressmaker came to
explain, asserting that her way was best, and Anna had become so
heated that she blushed at the recollection. To regain her composure
fully she went into the nursery and spent the whole evening with her
son, putting him to bed herself, making the sign of the cross over
him, and tucking him in. She was glad she had not gone out anywhere,
and had spent the evening so well. She felt so lighthearted and
calm, she saw so clearly that all that had seemed to her so
significant on her railway journey was merely one of the ordinary
trivial incidents of fashionable life, and that she had no cause to
feel ashamed before anyone else or before herself. Anna sat down
near the fireplace with an English novel and waited for her husband.
Exactly at half-past nine she heard his ring, and he entered the room.

"Here you are at last!" she observed, extending her hand to him.

He kissed her hand and sat down beside her.

"All in all, I can see your trip was a success," he said to her.

"Yes, very much so," said she, and she began telling him
everything from the beginning: her journey with Countess Vronskaia,
her arrival, the accident at the station. Then she described the
pity she had felt, first for her brother, and, afterward, for Dolly.

"I do not suppose there is any excuse for such a man, even though he
is your brother," said Alexei Alexandrovich sternly.

Anna smiled. She knew that he said this precisely to show that
family considerations could not prevent him from expressing his
sincere opinion. She knew this trait in her husband and liked it.

"I am glad everything has ended so well, and that you have
returned," he went on. "Well, and what do they say there about the new
bill I have got passed in the Council?"

Anna had heard nothing of this bill, and she felt
conscience-stricken that she could so readily forget what was to him
of such importance.

"Here, on the other hand, this has created a great deal of talk,"
said he, with a self-satisfied smile.

She saw that Alexei Alexandrovich wanted to tell her something
that pleased him about it, and she brought him by questions to telling
it. With the same self-satisfied smile he told her of the ovations
he had received as a consequence of the bill he had passed.

"I was very, very happy. It shows that at last an intelligent and
firm view of the matter is forming among us."

After his second cup of tea, with cream and bread, Alexei
Alexandrovich got up, and went toward his study.

"And you went nowhere this evening? Weren't You really bored?" he
said.

"Oh, no!" she answered, getting up after him and accompanying him
across the room to his study. "What are you reading now?" she asked.

"Just now I'm reading Duc de Lille- Poisie des enfers," he answered.
"A most remarkable book."

Anna smiled, as people smile at the weaknesses of those they love,
and, putting her hand in his, she kept him company to the door of
his study. She knew his habit, now become a necessity, of reading in
the evening. She knew, too, that in spite of his official duties,
which engrossed almost all his time, he deemed it his duty to keep
up with everything of note that appeared in the intellectual sphere.
She knew, too, that his actual interest lay in books dealing with
politics, philosophy and theology, that art was utterly foreign to his
nature; but, in spite of this- or rather, in consequence of it- Alexei
Alexandrovich never missed anything which created a sensation in the
world of art, but made it his duty to read everything. She knew that
in politics, in philosophy, in theology, Alexei Alexandrovich was a
doubter and a seeker; yet in matters of art and poetry- and, above
all, of music, of which he was totally devoid of understanding- he had
the most definite and decided opinions. He was fond of discoursing
on Shakespeare, Raphael, Beethoven, on the significance of new schools
of poetry and music, all of which were classified by him with most
obvious consistency.

"Well, God be with you," she said at the door of the study, where
a shaded candle and a decanter of water were already placed near his
armchair. "As for me, I'm going to write to Moscow."

He squeezed her hand, and again kissed it.

"Still, he's a good man; truthful, kindhearted, and remarkable in
his own sphere," Anna said to herself, back in her room, as though
defending him before someone who accused him, saying that one could
not love him. "But why is it his ears stick out so queerly? Or has
he had his hair cut?..."

Exactly at twelve, as Anna was still sitting at her desk finishing a
letter to Dolly, she heard the sound of measured, slippered steps, and
Alexei Alexandrovich, washed and combed, a book under his arm,
approached her.

"Come, come," said he, with a particular smile, and passed on into
their bedroom.

"And what right had he to look at him like that?" reflected Anna,
recalling how Vronsky had looked at Alexei Alexandrovich.

Having disrobed, she went into the bedroom; but her face had none of
the animation which, during her stay at Moscow, had fairly spurted
from her eyes and her smile; on the contrary, now the fire seemed
extinct in her, or hidden somewhere far away.

                           XXXIV.


Upon his departure from Peterburg Vronsky had left his large
apartments on Morskaia to his friend and favorite comrade Petritsky.

Petritsky was a young lieutenant, not particularly well-connected,
and not merely not wealthy, but in debt all around. Toward evening
he was always drunk, and he had often found himself in the
guardhouse because of sorts of ludicrous and disgraceful scrapes,
but he was a favorite both of his comrades and his superior
officers. At twelve o'clock, as Vronsky was driving up from the
station to his quarters, he saw, near the entrance of the house, a
hired carriage familiar to him. Even as he rang he heard, beyond the
door, masculine laughter, the twitter of a feminine voice, and
Petritsky's shout: "If that's one of the villains, don't let him
in!" Vronsky told the servant not to announce him, and slipped
noiselessly into the first room. Baroness Shilton, a friend of
Petritsky's, with a rosy little face and flaxen-fair, resplendent in a
lilac satin gown, and filling the whole room, like a canary, with
her Parisian accents, sat at a round table, brewing coffee. Petritsky,
in his overcoat, and the cavalry captain Kamerovsky, in full
uniform, probably just come from duty, were sitting near her.

"Bravo! Vronsky!" shouted Petritsky, jumping up, scraping his chair.
"Our host himself! Baroness, some coffee for him out of the new
coffeepot. There, we didn't expect you! I Hope you're satisfied with
the adornment of your study," he said, indicating the Baroness. "You
know each other, of course?"

"I should say so!" said Vronsky, with a bright smile, squeezing
the Baroness's little hand. "Why, we're old friends."

"You've just returned after traveling," said the Baroness, "so
I'll run along. Oh, I'll be off this minute, if I'm in the way!"

"You're home, wherever you are, Baroness," said Vronsky. "How do you
do, Kamerovsky?" he added, coldly shaking hands with Kamerovsky.

"There, you can never say such charming things," said the
Baroness, turning to Petritsky.

"No- why not? After dinner even I can say things quite as good."

"After dinner there's no merit in them! Well, then, I'll give you
some coffee; go wash and tidy up," said the Baroness, sitting down
again, and anxiously turning a gadget in the new coffee urn.
"Pierre, give me the coffee," she said, addressing Petritsky, whom she
called Pierre, playing on his surname, making no secret of her
relations with him. "I want to put some more in."

"You'll spoil it!"

"No, I won't spoil it! Well, and how is your wife?" said the
Baroness suddenly, interrupting Vronsky's conversation with his
comrade. "We've been marrying you off here. Have you brought your wife
along?"

"No, Baroness. I was born a gypsy, and a gypsy I'll die."

"So much the better- so much the better. Shake hands on it."

And the Baroness, detaining Vronsky, began telling him,
interspersing her story with many jokes, about her latest plans of
life, and seeking his counsel.

"He persists in refusing to give me a divorce! Well, what am I to
do?" (He was her husband.) "Now I want to begin a suit against him.
What would you advise? Kamerovsky, look after the coffee- it's
boiled out; you can see I'm taken up with business! I want a
lawsuit, because I must have my property. You can understand the
stupidity of his saying that I am unfaithful to him," she said
contemptuously, "yet through it he wants to get the benefit of my
fortune."

Vronsky heard with pleasure this lighthearted prattle of a pretty
woman, said yes to everything, gave her half-joking counsel, and
altogether dropped at once into the tone habitual to him in talking to
such women. In his Peterburg world all people were divided into two
utterly opposed kinds. One, the lower, consisted of vulgar, stupid
and, above all, ridiculous people, who believe that one husband
ought to live with the one wife whom he has lawfully wedded; that a
girl should be innocent, a woman modest, and a man manly,
self-controlled, and strong; that one ought to bring up one's
children, earn one's bread and pay one's debts; and various similar
absurdities. Those people were of an old-fashioned and ridiculous
kind. But there was another kind of people- real people, to which they
all belonged, and here the chief thing was to be elegant, magnanimous,
daring, gay, and to abandon oneself without a blush to every
passion, and to laugh at everything else.

For the first moment only, Vronsky was startled, after the
impressions of a quite different world that he had brought with him
from Moscow; but immediately, as though he had thrust his feet into
old slippers, he stepped into his former lighthearted, pleasant world.

The coffee was really never made, but spluttered over everyone and
boiled away, doing just what was required of it- that is, providing
cause for much noise and laughter, and spoiling a costly rug and the
Baroness's gown.

"Well, good-by now- or else you'll never get washed, and I shall
have on my conscience the worst offense any decent person can
commit- uncleanliness. So you would advise a knife at his throat?"

"Absolutely- and in such a way that your little hand may not be
far from his lips. He'll kiss it, and all will end well," answered
Vronsky.

"So, the Francais tonight!" and, with a rustle of her skirts, she
vanished.

Kamerovsky got up too, and Vronsky, without waiting for him to go,
shook hands and went off to his dressing room. While he was washing,
Petritsky briefly outlined to him his position, as far as it had
changed since Vronsky's departure from Peterburg. No money whatsoever.
His father said he wouldn't give him any, nor pay his debts. His
tailor was trying to get him locked up, and another fellow, too, was
threatening to do so without fail. The colonel of his regiment had
announced that if these scandals did not cease a resignation would
be inevitable. As for the Baroness, he was fed up with her,
particularly because she was forever wanting to give him money. But
there was another girl- he intended showing her to Vronsky- a
marvel, exquisite, in the strict Oriental style, "genre of the slave
Rebecca, you see." He had had a row, too, with Berkoshev, and the
latter intended sending seconds, but, of course, it would all come
to nothing. Altogether everything was going splendidly and was most
jolly. And, without letting his comrade enter into further details
of his position, Petritsky proceeded to tell him all the interesting
news. As he listened to Petritsky's familiar stories, in the
familiar setting of the rooms he had spent the last three years in,
Vronsky felt the delightful sensation of coming back to the insouciant
and customary life of Peterburg.

"Impossible!" he cried, releasing the pedal of the wash basin in
which he had been sousing his stalwart red neck. "Impossible!" he
cried, at the news that Laura had dropped Fertinghof and had tied up
with Mileev. "And is he as stupid and satisfied as ever? Well, and
what's Buzulukov doing?"

"Oh, Buzulukov got into a scrape- simply lovely!" cried Petritsky.
"You know his passion for balls- and he never misses a single one at
court. He went to a big ball in a new casque. Have you seen the new
casques? Very good, and lighter. Well, he's standing... No- do
listen."

"I am listening," answered Vronsky, rubbing himself with a rough
towel.

"The Grand Duchess passes by with some ambassador or other, and,
as ill luck would have it, their talk veers to the new casques. And so
the Grand Duchess wanted to show the new casque to the
ambassador.... Just then they catch sight of our dear boy standing
there." (Petritsky mimicked him, standing with his casque.) "The Grand
Duchess requested him to give her the casque- he doesn't do so. What's
up? Well, they all wink at him, and nod and frown- give it to her, do!
He still doesn't. Just stands there, stock-still. You can picture it
to yourself!... Well, this... what's his name... tries to take the
casque from him... He won't give it up!... This chap tore it from him,
and hands it to the Grand Duchess. "This is the new casque," says
the Grand Duchess. She turned the casque over, and- just picture
it!- bang went a pear and candy out of it- two pounds of candy!...
He'd collected all that- our dear boy!"

Vronsky rolled with laughter. And, long afterward, even when he
was talking of other things, he would go off into peals of his
hearty laughter baring his strong, closely set teeth, whenever he
thought of the casque.

Having learned all the news, Vronsky, with the assistance of his
valet, got into his uniform, and went off to report himself. He
intended, afterward, to go to his brother and to Betsy, and to pay
several visits, as an entering wedge into that society where he
might meet Madame Karenina. As always in Peterburg, he left home
without any intention of returning before very late at night.

                        PART TWO


                           I.


Toward the end of winter, in the house of the Shcherbatskys, a
consultation was being held, which was to determine the state of
Kitty's health, and what was to be done to restore her failing
strength. She had been ill, and, as spring came on, she grew worse.
The family doctor gave her cod-liver oil, then iron, then lunar
caustic; but since neither the first, nor the second, nor the third
availed, and since his advice was to go abroad before the beginning of
the spring, a celebrated doctor was called in. The celebrated
doctor, not yet old and a very handsome man, demanded an examination
of the patient. He maintained, with special satisfaction, it seemed,
that maiden modesty is merely a relic of barbarism, and that nothing
could be more natural than for a man who was not yet old to handle a
young girl in the nude. He deemed this natural, because he did it
every day, and neither felt nor thought, as it seemed to him, anything
evil as he did it and, consequently, he considered girlish modesty not
merely as a relic of barbarism, but, as well, an insult to himself.

It was necessary to submit, for, although all the doctors studied in
the same school, all using the same textbooks, and all learned in
the same science, and though some people said this celebrated doctor
was but a poor doctor, in the Princess's household and circle it was
for some reason held that this celebrated doctor alone had some
peculiar knowledge, and that he alone could save Kitty. After thorough
examination and tapping of the patient, distraught and dazed with
shame, the celebrated doctor, having painstakingly washed his hands,
was standing in the drawing room talking to the Prince. The Prince
frowned and coughed as he listened to the doctor. As a man who had
seen something of life, and neither a fool nor an invalid, he had no
faith in medicine, and at soul was wrought up with all this comedy,
especially as he was probably the only one who fully understood the
cause of Kitty's illness. "You're barking up the wrong tree," he
mentally applied this phrase from the hunter's vocabulary to the
celebrated doctor, as he listened to the latter's patter about the
symptoms of his daughter's complaint. The doctor, for his part,
found difficulty in restraining the expression of his contempt for
this old grandee, as well as in condescending to the low level of
his comprehension. He perceived that it was useless to talk to the old
man, and that the head of this house was the mother- and she it was
before whom he intended to scatter his pearls. It was at this point
that the Princess entered the drawing room with the family doctor. The
Prince retreated, doing his best not to betray how ridiculous he
regarded the whole comedy. The Princess was distraught, and did not
know what to do. She felt herself at fault before Kitty.

"Well, doctor, decide our fate," said the Princess. "Tell me
everything."- "Is there any hope?" was what she had wanted to say, but
her lips quivered, and she could not utter this question. "Well,
doctor?"

"Immediately, Princess- I will discuss the matter with my colleague,
and then have the honor of laying my opinion before you."

"Then we had better leave you?"

"As you please."

The Princess, with a sigh, stepped outside.

When the doctors were left alone, the family doctor began timidly
explaining his opinion, that there was an incipient tubercular
process, but... and so on. The celebrated doctor listened to him,
and in the middle of the other's speech looked at his big gold watch.

"That is so," said he. "But..."

The family doctor respectfully ceased in the middle of his speech.

"As you know, we cannot determine the incipience of the tubercular
process; until the appearance of vomicae there is nothing determinate.
But we may suspect it. And there are indications: malnutrition,
nervous excitability, and so on. The question stands thus: if we
suspect a tubercular process, what must we do to maintain nutrition?"

"But then, you know, there are always moral, spiritual causes at the
back of these cases," the family doctor permitted himself to
interpolate with a subtle smile.

"Yes, that's to be taken for granted," retorted the celebrated
doctor, again glancing at his watch. "Beg pardon- but is the Iauzsky
bridge finished yet, or must one still make a detour?" he asked.
"Ah! It is finished. Well, in that case I can make it in twenty
minutes. As we were saying, the question may be posited thus: the
nutrition must be maintained and the nerves improved. The one is bound
with the other; one must work upon both sides of this circle."

"But what about the trip abroad?" asked the family doctor.

"I am a foe to trips abroad. And take notice: if there is any
incipient tubercular process, which we cannot know, a trip abroad will
not help. We must have a remedy that would improve nutrition, and do
no harm."

And the celebrated doctor expounded his plan of treatment with Soden
waters, in designating which his main end was evidently their
harmlessness.

The family doctor heard him out attentively and respectfully.

"But in favor of foreign travel I would urge the change of habits,
the removal from conditions which evoke memories. And then- the mother
wishes it," he added.

"Ah! Well, in that case, one might go; well, let them go; but
those German charlatans may do harm.... Our instructions ought to be
followed.... Well, let them go then."

He again glanced at his watch.

"Oh! it's time to go," and he went to the door.

The celebrated doctor informed the Princess (prompted by a feeling
of propriety) that he must see the patient once more.

"What! Another examination!" the mother exclaimed in horror.

"Oh, no- I merely need certain details, Princess."

"Come this way."

And the mother, followed by the doctor, went into the drawing room
to Kitty. Wasted and blushing, with a peculiar glitter in her eyes-
a consequence of the shame she had gone through, Kitty was standing in
the middle of the room. When the doctor came in she turned crimson,
and her eyes filled with tears. All her illness and its treatment
seemed to her a thing so stupid- even funny! Treatment seemed to her
as funny as reconstructing the pieces of a broken vase. It was her
heart that was broken. Why, then, did they want to cure her with pills
and powders? But she could not hurt her mother- all the more so
since her mother considered herself to blame.

"May I trouble you to sit down, Princess?" the celebrated doctor
said to her.

Smiling, he, sat down facing her, felt her pulse, and again
started in with his tiresome questions. She answered him, and
suddenly, becoming angry, got up.

"You must pardon me, doctor- but really, this will lead us
nowhere. You ask me the same things, three times running."

The celebrated doctor did not take umbrage.

"Sickly irritability," said he to the Princess, when Kitty had
left the room. "However, I had finished...."

And the doctor scientifically defined to the Princess, as to an
exceptionally clever woman, the condition of the young Princess, and
concluded by explaining the mode of drinking the unnecessary waters.
When the question of going abroad came up, the doctor was plunged into
profound considerations, as though deciding a weighty problem. Finally
his decision was given: they might go abroad, but must put no faith in
charlatans, but turn to him in everything.

It seemed as though some cheerful influence had sprung up after
the doctor's departure. The mother grew more cheerful when she
returned to her daughter, while Kitty too pretended to be more
cheerful. She had frequent, almost constant, occasions to be
pretending now.

"Really, I'm quite well, maman. But if you want to go abroad,
let's!" she said, and, trying to show that she was interested in the
proposed trip, she began talking of the preparations for the
departure.

                           II.


Right after the doctor Dolly arrived. She knew that the consultation
was scheduled for that day, and, despite the fact that she had only
recently gotten up from her lying-in (she had had another little
girl at the end of the winter), despite her having enough trouble
and cares of her own, she had left her breast baby and an ailing
girl to come and learn Kitty's fate, which was being decided that day.

"Well, what's what?" said she, entering into the drawing room,
without taking off her hat. "You're all in good spirits. That means
good news, then?"

An attempt was made to tell her what the doctor had said, but it
proved that, even though the doctor had talked coherently and long, it
was utterly impossible to convey what he had said. The only point of
interest was that going abroad was definitely decided upon.

Dolly could not help sighing. Her dearest friend, her sister, was
going away. And her life was far from gay. Her relations with Stepan
Arkadyevich after their reconciliation had become humiliating. The
welding Anna had made proved not at all solid, and family concord
had broken down again at the same point. There was nothing definite,
but Stepan Arkadyevich was hardly ever at home; also, there was hardly
ever any money, and Dolly was constantly being tortured by
suspicions of infidelities, and by now she drove them away from her,
dreading the agony of jealousy she had already experienced. The
first explosion of jealousy, once lived through, could never return,
and even the discovery of infidelities could never affect her now as
it had the first time. Such a discovery now would only mean breaking
up her family habits, and she permitted him to deceive her,
despising him- and still more herself- for this weakness. Besides
this, the cares of her large family were a constant torment to her:
now the nursing of her breast baby did not go well; now the nurse
would leave, now (as at the present time) one of the children would
fall ill.

"Well, how's everybody in your family?" asked her mother.

"Ah, maman, we have enough trouble of our own. Lili has taken ill,
and I'm afraid it's scarlatina. I have come here now to find out about
Kitty, and then I shall shut myself up entirely, if- God forbid- it
really be scarlatina."

The old Prince too had come in from his study after the doctor's
departure, and, after offering his cheek to Dolly, and chatting awhile
with her, he turned to his wife:

"What have you decided- are you going? Well, and what do you want to
do with me?"

"I think you had better stay here, Alexandre," said his wife.

"Just as you wish."

"Maman, why shouldn't father come with us?" said Kitty. "He'll
feel better, and so will we."

The old Prince got up and stroked Kitty's hair. She lifted her
head and looked at him with a forced smile. It always seemed to her
that he understood her better than anyone else in the family did,
though he spoke but little with her. Being the youngest, she was her
father's favorite, and she fancied that his love for her gave him
insight. When now her gaze met his blue, kindly eyes, scrutinizing her
intently, it seemed to her that he saw right through her, and
understood all the evil things that were at work within her.
Reddening, she was drawn toward him, expecting a kiss; but he merely
patted her hair and said:

"These silly chignons! One can't as much as get near one's real
daughter, but simply stroke the hair of defunct females. Well
Dolinka," he turned to his elder daughter, "what's your ace up to
now?"

"Nothing, papa," answered Dolly, who knew that this referred to
her husband. "He's always out; I hardly ever see him," she could not
resist adding with a mocking smile.

"Why, hasn't he gone into the country yet- about the sale of the
forest?"

"No; he's still getting ready."

"Oh, that's it!" said the Prince. "And so I'm to be getting ready,
too? At your service," he said to his wife, sitting down. "And as
for you, Katia," he went on, addressing his younger daughter, "you
must wake up one fine day and say to yourself: Why, I'm quite well,
and merry, and I'm going out again with papa for an early morning
stroll in the frost. Eh?"

What her father said seemed simple enough, yet at these words
Kitty grew confused and upset, like a criminal caught red-handed.
"Yes, he knows all, he understands all, and in these words he's
telling me that though I'm ashamed, I must live through my shame." She
could not pluck up spirit enough to make any answer. She made an
attempt but suddenly burst into tears, and ran out of the room.

"See what comes of your jokes!" the Princess pounced on her husband.
"You're always..." she launched into her reproachful speech.

The Prince listened to the Princess's reproaches rather a long while
and kept silent, but his face grew more and more glowering.

"She's so much to be pitied, poor thing, so much to be pitied, yet
you don't feel how it pains her to hear the least hint as to the cause
of it all. Ah! to be so mistaken in people!" said the Princess, and by
the change in her tone both Dolly and the Prince knew she meant
Vronsky. "I don't know why there aren't laws against such vile,
dishonorable people."

"Ah, I oughtn't to listen to you!" said the Prince glumly, getting
up from his chair, as if to go, yet pausing in the doorway. "There are
laws, my dear, and since you've challenged me to it, I'll tell you
who's to blame for it all: you- you, you alone. Laws against such
young gallants have always existed, and still exist! Yes, if there
weren't anything that ought not to have been, I, old as I am, would
have called him out to the barrier, this swell. Yes, and now go
ahead and physic her, and call in these charlatans."

The Prince, it seemed, had plenty more to say, but no sooner had the
Princess caught his tone than she subsided at once, and became
penitent, as was always the case in serious matters.

"Alexandre, Alexandre," she whispered, approaching him and
bursting into tears.

As soon as she began to weep the Prince, too, calmed down. He went
up to her.

"There, that's enough, that's enough! You feel badly too, I know.
Nothing can be done about it! It's not so very bad. God is merciful...
thanks..." he said, without knowing himself what he was saying now,
responding to the moist kiss of the Princess that he felt on his hand.
And the Prince went out of the room.

No sooner had Kitty gone out of the room, in tears, than Dolly, with
her motherly, domestic habit, had promptly perceived that here a
woman's work lay before her, and got ready for it. She took off her
hat, and, morally speaking, tucked up her sleeves and got ready for
action. While her mother was attacking her father, she tried to
restrain her mother, so far as daughterly reverence would allow.
During the Prince's outburst she was silent; she felt ashamed for
her mother and tender toward her father for so quickly being kind
again. But when her father left, she made ready for what was most
necessary- to go to Kitty and compose her.

"I've intended long since to tell you something, maman: did you know
that Levin meant to propose to Kitty when he was here last? He told
Stiva so."

"Well, what of it? I don't understand..."

"Why, perhaps Kitty refused him?... Did she say nothing to you?"

"No, she said nothing to me either of the one or the other; she's
too proud. But I know it's all on account of this..."

"Yes, but suppose she has refused Levin- and she wouldn't have
refused him if it hadn't been for the other, I know. And then, this
fellow has deceived her so horribly."

It was too frightful for the Princess to think how much at fault she
was before her daughter, and she grew angry.

"Oh, now I really understand nothing! Nowadays everybody thinks to
live after his own way; a mother isn't told a thing, and then you
have..."

"Maman, I'll go to her."

"Do. Am I forbidding you?"

                           III.


When she went into Kitty's little sanctum, a pretty, rosy little
room, full of knickknacks in vieux saxe, as youthful and rosy and
gay as Kitty herself had been only two months ago, Dolly recalled
how they had together decorated the room the year before, with what
gaiety and love. Her heart turned cold when she beheld Kitty sitting
on the low chair nearest the door, her eyes fixed immovably on a
corner of the rug. Kitty glanced at her sister, and the cold, rather
austere expression of her face did not change.

"I'm going now, and shall entrench myself at home, and you won't
be able to come to see me," said Darya Alexandrovna sitting down
beside her. "I want to talk to you."

"What about?" Kitty asked swiftly, lifting her head in fright.

"What should it be, save what's grieving you?"

"I have no grief."

"Come, Kitty. Do you possibly think I cannot know? I know all.
And, believe me, this is so insignificant... We've all been through
it."

Kitty did not speak, and her face had a stern expression.

"He's not worth your suffering on his account," pursued Darya
Alexandrovna, coming straight to the point.

"Yes- because he has disdained me," said Kitty, in a jarring
voice. "Don't say anything! Please, don't say anything!"

"But whoever told you that? No one has said that. I'm certain he was
in love with you, and remained in love with you, but..."

"Oh, the most awful thing of all for me are these condolences!"
cried out Kitty, in a sudden fit of anger. She turned round on her
chair, turned red, and her fingers moved quickly, as she pinched the
buckle of the belt she held, now with one hand, now with the other.
Dolly knew this trick her sister had of grasping something in turn
with each of her hands, when in excitement; she knew that, in a moment
of excitement Kitty was capable of forgetting herself and saying a
great deal too much and much that was unpleasant, and Dolly would have
calmed her; but it was already too late.

"What- what is it you want to make me feel, eh?" said Kitty quickly.
"That I've been in love with a man who didn't even care to know me,
and that I'm dying for love of him? And this is said to me by my own
sister, who imagines that... that... that she's sympathizing with
me!... I don't want these condolences and hypocrisies!"

"Kitty, you're unjust."

"Why do you torment me?"

"But I... On the contrary... I can see you're hurt...."

But Kitty in her heat did not hear her.

"I've nothing to despair over and be comforted about. I'm
sufficiently proud never to allow myself to care for a man who does
not love me."

"Why, I don't say anything of the kind... Only, tell me the
truth," said Darya Alexandrovna, taking her by the hand, "tell me- did
Levin speak to you?..."

The mention of Levin seemed to deprive Kitty of the last vestige
of self-control. She leaped up from her chair, and, flinging the
buckle to the ground, gesticulating rapidly with her hands, she said:

"Why bring Levin in too? I can't understand- what you want to
torture me for? I've told you, and I repeat it- I have some pride, and
never, never would I do what you're doing- going back to a man who's
deceived you, who has come to love another woman. I can't understand
this! You may- but I can't do it!"

And, having said these words, she glanced at her sister, and
seeing that Dolly sat silent, her head mournfully bowed, Kitty,
instead of leaving the room, as she had intended, sat down near the
door, and, hiding her face in her shawl, let her head drop.

The silence lasted for two minutes. Dolly's thoughts were of
herself. That humiliation of which she was always conscious came
back to her with special pain when her sister reminded her of it.
She had not expected such cruelty from her sister, and was
resentful. But suddenly she heard the rustle of a skirt, and,
simultaneously, an outburst of smothered sobbing, and felt arms
clasping her neck from below. Kitty was on her knees before her.

"Dolinka, I am so, so unhappy!" she whispered penitently.

And the endearing face, covered with tears, hid itself in Darya
Alexandrovna's skirt.

It was as if tears were the indispensable oil without which the
machinery of mutual communion could not run smoothly between the two
sisters; the sisters, after their tears, discussed everything but that
which engrossed them; but, even in talking of outside matters, they
understood one another. Kitty knew that what she had uttered in
anger about her husband's infidelity and her humiliating position
had struck her poor sister to the very depths of her heart, but she
also knew that the latter had forgiven her. Dolly for her part had
comprehended all she had wanted to find out. She had become
convinced that her surmises were correct; that Kitty's misery, her
incurable misery, was due precisely to the fact that Levin had
proposed to her and she had refused him, while Vronsky had deceived
her, and that she stood ready to love Levin and to hate Vronsky. Kitty
said no word of this; she spoke of nothing save her own spiritual
state.

"I have nothing to grieve over," she said, calming down, "but you
could understand that everything has become loathsome, hateful, coarse
to me- and I myself most of all. You can't imagine what loathsome
thoughts I have about everything."

"Why, whatever loathsome thoughts can you have?" asked Dolly,
smiling.

"Most, most loathsome and coarse: I couldn't tell you. This is not
melancholy, nor boredom, but far worse. As if everything of good
that I had were gone out of sight, while only that which was most
loathsome were left. Well, how shall I put it to you?" she went on,
seeing incomprehension in her sister's eyes. "Papa began saying
something to me just now... It seems to me he thinks all I need is
to marry. If mamma takes me to a ball- it seems to me she takes me
only to marry me off as fast as possible, and get me off her hands.
I know this isn't so, but I can't drive away such thoughts. These
suitors so called- I can't bear the sight of them. It seems to me as
if they're always taking stock of me. Formerly, to go anywhere in a
ball dress was a downright joy to me; I used to admire myself; now I
feel ashamed, in at ease. Well, take any example you like... This
doctor... Now..."

Kitty hesitated; she wanted to say further that ever since this
change had taken place in her, Stepan Arkadyevich had become
unbearably repulsive to her, and that she could not see him without
imagining the grossest and most hideous things.

"Well now, everything appears to me, in the coarsest, most loathsome
aspect," she went on. "That is my ailment. Perhaps all this will
pass..."

"Try not to think of such things..."

"I can't help it. I feel well only when I am with the children, at
your house."

"What a pity you can't visit me!"

"Oh, yes, I'll come.- I've had scarlatina, and I'll persuade maman
to let me come."

Kitty insisted on having her way, and went to stay at her sister's
and nursed the children all through the scarlatina- for it really
proved to be scarlatina. The two sisters brought all the six
children successfully through it; Kitty's health, however, did not
improve, and in Lent the Shcherbatskys went abroad.

                           IV.


There is really only one circle of Peterburg upper society: everyone
knows everyone else, even visits each other. But this great circle has
subdivisions of its own. Anna Arkadyevna Karenina had friends and
close ties in three different circles. One circle was her husband's
set of civil servants and officials, consisting of his colleagues
and subordinates, brought together in a most diversified and
capricious manner, yet separated by social conditions. Anna could
now recall only with difficulty the feeling of almost pious
reverence which she had at first borne for these persons. Now she knew
all of them, as people know one another in a provincial town; she knew
their habits and weaknesses, and where the shoe pinched each one of
them. She knew their attitudes toward one another and to the chief
center; knew who backed whom, and how and wherewithal each one
maintained his position, and who agreed or disagreed with whom; but
this circle of political, masculine interests could not interest
her, and, in spite of Countess Lidia Ivanovna's suggestions, she
avoided it.

Another small circle, with which Anna was intimate, was the one by
means of which Alexei Alexandrovich had made his career. The center of
this circle was the Countess Lidia Ivanovna. This was a circle of
elderly, homely, virtuous and pious women, and clever, learned and
ambitious men. One of the clever people belonging to this small circle
had called it "the conscience of Peterburg society." Alexei
Alexandrovich appreciated this circle very much, and Anna, who knew so
well how to get on with all, had in the early days of her life in
Peterburg found friends even in this circle. But now, upon her
return from Moscow, this set had become unbearable to her. It seemed
to her that both she and all of them were dissimulating, and she
experienced such boredom and lack of ease in their society that she
tried to visit the Countess Lidia Ivanovna as infrequently as
possible.

And, finally, the third circle with which Anna had ties was the
really fashionable world- the world of balls, of dinners, of sumptuous
dresses; the world that hung on to the court with one hand, in order
not to sink to the level of the demimonde, which the members of the
fashionable world believed they despised- yet the tastes of both
were not only similar, but precisely the same. Her connection with
this circle was maintained through Princess Betsy Tverskaia, her
cousin's wife, who had an income of a hundred and twenty thousand
roubles, and who had taken a great liking to Anna ever since she first
came out, looking after her and drawing her into her own circle,
poking fun at that of Countess Lidia Ivanovna.

"When I'm old and shall have lost my looks, I'll be the same," Betsy
used to say; "but for a young and pretty woman like you it's much
too early to join that Old Ladies' Home."

Anna had at first avoided, as much as she could, Princess
Tverskaia's world, because it necessitated expenditures above her
means- and, besides, at soul she preferred the first circle; but after
her trip to Moscow, things fell out quite the other way. She avoided
her moral friends, and went out into the fashionable world. There
she would meet Vronsky, and experienced an agitating joy at such
meetings. Especially often did she meet Vronsky at Betsy's, for
Betsy was a Vronsky by birth, and his cousin. Vronsky went
everywhere where he might meet Anna, and, at every chance he had,
spoke to her of his love. She offered him no encouragement, yet
every time she met him there was kindled in her soul that same feeling
of animation which had come upon her that day in the railway
carriage when she had seen him for the first time. She felt herself
that her delight shone in her eyes and puckered her lips into a smile-
and she could not quench the expression of this delight.

At first Anna had sincerely believed that she was displeased with
him for daring to pursue her; but not long after her return from
Moscow, on arriving at a soiree where she had anticipated meeting him,
yet not finding him there, she realized clearly, from the feeling of
sadness which overcame her, that she had been deceiving herself, and
that this pursuit was not merely not distasteful to her, but that it
constituted all the interest of her life.


It was the second performance of a celebrated cantatrice, and all
the fashionable world was in the theater. Vronsky, seeing his cousin
from his seat in the front row, did not wait till the entr'acte, but
went to her box.

"Why didn't you come to dinner?" she said to him. "I marvel at
this clairvoyance of lovers," she added with a smile, so that no one
but he could hear, "she wasn't there. But do come after the opera."

Vronsky looked inquiringly at her. She nodded. He thanked her by a
smile, and sat down beside her.

"But how I remember your jeers!" continued Princess Betsy, who
took special delight in following up the progress of this passion.
"What's become of all that? You're caught, my dear fellow."

"That's my one desire- to be caught," answered Vronsky, with his
calm, good-natured smile. "If I complain at all, it's only that I'm
not caught enough, if the truth were told. I begin to lose hope."

"Why, whatever hope can you expect?" said Betsy, offended on
behalf of her friend. "Entendons nous...." But in her eyes flitted
gleams of light, which proclaimed that she understood very well,
even as much as he did, what hope he might entertain.

"None whatever," said Vronsky, laughing and showing his closely
set teeth. "Excuse me," he added, taking the binoculars out of her
hand, and proceeding to scrutinize, over her bare shoulder, the row of
boxes opposite them. "I'm afraid I'm becoming ridiculous."

He was very well aware that he ran no risk of being ridiculous in
the eyes of Betsy and all other fashionable people. He was very well
aware that in the eyes of these people the role of the hapless lover
of a girl, or in general, of any woman free to marry, might be
ridiculous; but the role of a man pursuing a married woman, and,
regardless of everything, staking his life on drawing her into
adultery- that role has something beautiful and majestic about it, and
can never be ridiculous, and so it was with a proud and gay smile
under his mustaches that he lowered the binoculars and looked at his
cousin.

"But why didn't you come to dinner?" she said, admiring him.

"I must tell you about that. I was busy- and with what, do you
suppose? I'll give you a hundred guesses, a thousand... you'd never
guess. I've been reconciling a husband with a man who'd insulted his
wife. Yes, really!"

"Well, did you reconcile them?"

"Almost."

"You really must tell me about it," she said, getting up. "Come to
me in the next entr'acte."

"I can't; I'm going to the French theater."

"Leaving Nilsson?" Betsy queried in horror, though she could not
herself have distinguished Nilsson from any chorus girl.

"What can I do? I've an appointment there, all because of my mission
of peace."

"'Blessed are the peacemakers;' 'they shall be saved'," said
Betsy, recalling something of that sort she had heard from somebody or
other. "Very well, then, sit down, and tell me what it's all about."

And she resumed her seat.

                           V.


"This is rather indiscreet, but it's so charming that one is awfully
tempted to tell the story," said Vronsky, looking at her with laughing
eyes. "I don't intend to mention any names."

"But I shall guess them- so much the better."

"Listen, then: two festive young men were driving along..."

"Officers of your regiment, of course?"

"I didn't say they were officers- just two young men who had been
lunching."

"In other words, drinking."

"Possibly. They were driving on their way to dinner with a friend in
the gayest of moods. And they catch sight of a pretty woman in a hired
sleigh, who overtakes them, looks back at them, and- so it seemed to
them, at any rate- nods to them and laughs. They, of course, follow
her- galloping at full speed. To their amazement, the fair one alights
at the entrance of the very house to which they were going. The fair
one darts upstairs to the top floor. All they got was a glimpse of
rosebud lips under a short veil, and of exquisite little feet."

"You tell this with such feeling that it seems to me you yourself
must have been one of the two."

"But what did you tell me just now?... Well, the young men enter
their comrade's apartment- he was giving a farewell dinner. There they
certainly did take a drop too much, as is always the case at
farewell dinners. And at dinner they inquire who lives at the top in
that house. No one knows; only their host's valet, in answer to
their inquiry whether any 'young ladies' are living on the top
floor, answered that there were a great many of them. After dinner the
two young men go into their host's study, and write a letter to the
fair unknown. They composed a passionate epistle, really a
declaration, and then carry the letter upstairs themselves, so as to
explain whatever might prove not altogether clear in the letter."

"Why do you tell me such nasty things? And then?"

"They ring. A maidservant opens the door, they hand her the
letter, and assure her that they're both so enamored that they'll
die on the spot at the door. The maid, stupefied, carries on the
negotiations. Suddenly a gentleman appears- with side whiskers like
country sausages, he is as red as a lobster and, informing them that
there is no one living in that flat except his wife, he sends them
both packing."

"How do you know he had side whiskers like sausages, as you put it?"

"Ah, do but listen. Recently I went to make peace between them."

"Well, and what was the upshot?"

"That's the most interesting part. This couple turned out to be a
most happy one- a government clerk and his lady. The government
clerk lodges a complaint, whereupon I become a mediator- and what a
mediator!... I assure you Talleyrand was a nobody compared to me."

"Just what was the difficulty?"

"Ah, do but listen.... We make fitting apologies: 'We are in
despair; we entreat forgiveness for the unfortunate misunderstanding.'
The government clerk with the country sausages begins to melt, and he,
too, desires to express his sentiments, but no sooner does he begin to
express them than he gets heated and says nasty things, and again
I'm obliged to trot out all my diplomatic talents. 'I agree that their
action was bad, but I beg of you to take into consideration the
misunderstanding, and their youth; besides, the young men had just
come from their lunch. You understand. Their repentance is heartfelt
and they beg you to forgive their misbehavior.' The government clerk
was softened once more. 'I consent, Count, and am ready to forgive but
you must understand that my wife- my wife!- a respectable woman is
subjected to annoyances, and insults, and impertinences by certain
milksops, scou-...' Yet, you understand, the milksop is present, and
it is up to me to make peace between them. Again I trot out all my
diplomacy, and again, just as the matter is about to be concluded, our
friend the government clerk gets heated and turns red while his
country sausages bristle up, and I once more exert diplomatic
finesse."

"Ah, you must hear this story!" said Betsy, laughing, to a lady
who was entering the box. "He has made me laugh so much... Well, bonne
chance!" she added, giving Vronsky the one finger free from holding
her fan, and with a shrug of her shoulders letting down the bodice
of her gown, that had worked up, so as to be fittingly and fully
nude as she moved forward, toward the footlights, into the lights of
the gas, and within the ken of all.

Vronsky drove to the French theater, where he really had to see
the colonel of his regiment, who never missed a single performance
there; he wanted to talk over his peacemaking, which had been
occupying and amusing him for the last three days. Petritsky, whom
he liked, was implicated in the affair, as well as another fine fellow
and excellent comrade, who had lately joined the regiment- the young
Prince Kedrov. But, mainly, the interests of the regiment were
involved as well.

Both culprits were in Vronsky's squadron. The colonel of the
regiment had received a call from the government clerk, Venden, with a
complaint against his officers, who had insulted his wife. His young
wife, as Venden told the story- he had been married half a year- had
been at church with her mother, and, suddenly feeling indisposed,
due to her interesting condition, found that she could not remain
standing and drove home in the first sleigh with the mettlesome
coachman she came across. It was then that the officers set off in
pursuit of her; she was alarmed, and, feeling still worse, ran home up
the staircase. Venden himself, on returning from his office, had heard
a ring at their bell and voices, had stepped out, and seeing the
intoxicated officers with a letter, he had pushed them out. He was
asking that the culprits be severely punished.

"You may say what you will," said the colonel to Vronsky, whom he
had invited to come and see him. "Petritsky is becoming impossible.
Not a week goes by without some scrape. This clerk chap won't let
matters drop- he'll go on with the thing."

Vronsky saw all the thanklessness of the business, and that a duel
was out of the question here; that everything must be done to soften
this government clerk, and hush the matter up. The colonel had
called in Vronsky precisely because he knew him to be an honorable and
intelligent man, but, above all, one to whom the honor of the regiment
was dear. They talked it over, and decided that Petritsky and Kedrov
must go with Vronsky to this government clerk and apologize. The
colonel and Vronsky were both fully aware that Vronsky's name and
insignia of aide-de-camp were bound to go a long way toward
softening the government clerk. And these two influences proved in
fact not without effect; though the result of the mediation
remained, as Vronsky had described, uncertain.

On reaching the French theater, Vronsky retired to the foyer with
the colonel, and reported to him his success- or lack of it. The
colonel, thinking it all over, decided not to go on with the matter;
but then, for his own delectation, proceeded to question Vronsky about
the details of his interview and for a long while could not restrain
his laughter as he listened to Vronsky's story of how the government
clerk, after subsiding for a while, would suddenly flare up again,
as he recalled the details, and how Vronsky, at the last half-word
of conciliation, had skillfully maneuvered a retreat, shoving
Petritsky out before him.

"It's a disgraceful scrape, but a killing one. Kedrov really can't
fight this gentleman! So he was awfully wrought up?" he asked again,
laughing. "But what do you think of Claire today? She's a wonder!"
he went on, speaking of a new French actress. "No matter how often you
see her, she's different each time. It's only the French who can do
that."

                           VI.


Princess Betsy drove home from the theater without waiting for the
end of the last act. She had just time enough to go into her
dressing room, sprinkle her long, pale face with powder, rub it off,
set her dress to rights, and order tea in the big drawing room, when
one after another carriages drove up to her huge house on the Bolshaia
Morskaia. Her guests dismounted at the wide entrance, and the stout
porter, who used to read newspapers mornings behind the glass door, to
the edification of the passers-by, noiselessly opened the immense
door, letting the visitors pass by him into the house.

Almost at the same instant that the hostess, with freshly arranged
coiffure and freshened face, entered at one door, her guests entered
at the other, into the drawing room, a large room with dark walls,
downy rugs and a brightly lighted table, gleaming with the light of
candles, the whiteness of napery, the silver of the samovar and the
tea service of transparent porcelain.

The hostess sat down at the samovar and took off her gloves.
Chairs were set with the aid of footmen, moving almost imperceptibly
about the room; the party settled itself, divided into two groups: one
round the samovar near the hostess, the other at the opposite end of
the drawing room, round the handsome wife of an ambassador, in black
velvet, with sharply defined black eyebrows. In both groups
conversation wavered, as it always does, for the first few minutes,
broken up by meetings, salutations, offers of tea, and, as it were,
seeking for some point in common.

"She's exceptionally fine as an actress; one can see she's studied
Kaulbach," said a diplomatist in the circle of the ambassador's
wife. "Did you notice how she fell down?..."

"Oh, please, don't let us talk about Nilsson! No one can possibly
say anything new about her," said a fat, red-faced, flaxen-headed
lady, without eyebrows and without chignon, wearing an old silk dress.
This was Princess Miaghkaia, noted for her simplicity and the
roughness of her manners, and nicknamed enfant terrible. Princess
Miaghkaia was seated halfway between the two groups, and, listening to
both, took part in the conversation first of one and then of the
other. "Three people have used that very phrase about Kaulbach to me
today, just as though they had conspired. And I don't know why that
phrase should be so much to their liking."

The conversation was cut short by this observation, and again a
new subject had to be thought of.

"Do tell us something amusing, yet not spiteful," said the
ambassador's wife, a great proficient in the art of that elegant
conversation called by the English small talk. She addressed the
diplomatist, who was now at a loss just what to begin upon.

"That is said to be a difficult task- only that which is spiteful is
supposed to be amusing," he began with a smile. "However, I'll make
the attempt. Give me a theme. it's all a matter of the theme. If the
theme be but given, it's easy enough to embroider it. I often think
that the celebrated conversationalists of the last century would
find it difficult to talk cleverly now. Everything clever has become
such a bore...."

"That has been said long ago," the ambassador's wife interrupted
him, laughing.

The conversation had begun amiably, but just because it was too
amiable, it came to a stop again. They had to have recourse to the
sure, never-failing remedy- malicious gossip.

"Don't you think there's something Louis Quinze about Tushkevich?"
he said, glancing toward a handsome, fair-haired young man, standing
at the table.

"Oh, yes! He's in the same style as the drawing room, and that's why
it is he's so often here."

This conversation was kept up, since it depended on allusions to
what could not be talked of in that room- that is to say, of the
relations of Tushkevich with their hostess.

Round the samovar and the hostess the conversation having, in the
meanwhile, vacillated in precisely the same way between the three
inevitable topics- the latest piece of public news, the theater, and
censuring the fellow creature- had finally come to rest on the last
topic- that is, malicious gossip.

"Have you heard that even the Maltishcheva- the mother, not the
daughter- has ordered a costume in diable rose color?"

"Impossible! No, that's just charming!"

"I wonder that with her sense- for after all she's no fool- she
doesn't see how funny she is."

Every one had something to say in censure or ridicule of the hapless
Maltishcheva, and the conversation crackled merrily, like a blazing
bonfire.

The husband of Princess Betsy, a good-natured corpulent man, an
ardent collector of engravings, hearing that his wife had visitors,
had come into the drawing room before leaving for his club. Stepping
noiselessly over the thick rugs, he approached Princess Miaghkaia.

"How did you like Nilsson?" he asked.

"Oh, how can you steal up on anyone like that! How you startled me!"
she responded. "Please don't talk to me about the opera; you know
nothing about music. I'd rather come down to your own level, and
discuss with you your majolica and engravings. Come, now, what
treasure have you been buying lately at the rag fair?"

"Would you like me to show you? But you don't understand such
things."

"Yes, show me. I've been learning about them at those- what's
their names?... those bankers... They have some splendid engravings.
They showed them to us."

"Why, have you been at the Schutzburgs?" asked the hostess from
behind the samovar.

"Yes, ma chere. They asked my husband and myself to dinner, and I
was told that the sauce at that dinner cost a thousand roubles,"
Princess Miaghkaia said, speaking loudly, conscious that all were
listening; "and very nasty sauce it was- some green mess. We had to
ask them, and I made a sauce for eighty-five kopecks, and everybody
was very much pleased with it. I can't afford thousand-rouble sauces."

"She's unique!" said the lady of the house.

"Amazing!" somebody else added.

The effect produced by Princess Miaghkaia's speeches was always
the same, and the secret of the effect she produced lay in the fact
that though she spoke not always appropriately, as now, she said
homely truths, not devoid of sense. In the society in which she
lived such utterances had the same result as the most pungent wit.
Princess Miaghkaia could never see why it had that result, but she
knew it had, and took advantage of it.

Since everyone had been listening while Princess Miaghkaia spoke,
and the conversation around the ambassador's wife had dropped,
Princess Betsy tried to bring the whole party together, and she
addressed the ambassador's wife.

"Really won't you have tea? Do come and join us."

"No, we're very comfortable here," the ambassador's wife responded
with a smile, and went on with the interrupted conversation.

It was a most agreeable conversation. They were censuring the
Karenins, husband and wife.

"Anna is quite changed since her stay in Moscow. There's something
strange about her," said one of her feminine friends.

"The great change is that she has brought back with her the shadow
of Alexei Vronsky," said the ambassador's wife.

"Well, what of it? There's a fable of Grimm's about a man without
a shadow- a man deprived of his shadow. As a punishment for
something or other. I never could understand just how this was a
punishment. Yet a woman must probably feel uncomfortable without a
shadow."

"Yes, but women followed by a shadow usually come to a bad end,"
said Anna's friend.

"Bite your tongue!" said Princess Miaghkaia suddenly. "Karenina is a
splendid woman. I don't like her husband- but her I like very much."

"Why don't you like her husband? He's such a remarkable man," said
the ambassador's wife. "My husband says there are few statesmen like
him in Europe."

"And my husband tells me just the same, but I don't believe it,"
said Princess Miaghkaia. "If our husbands didn't talk to us, we should
see the facts as they are. Alexei Alexandrovich, to my thinking, is
simply a fool. I say it in a whisper.... But doesn't it really make
everything clear? Before, when I was told to consider him clever, I
kept looking for his ability, and thought myself a fool for not seeing
it; but directly I said, he's a fool, though only in a whisper,
everything became clear- isn't that so?"

"How spiteful you are today!"

"Not a bit. I'd no other way out of it. One of us two had to be
the fool. And, as you know, one could never say that of oneself."

"No one is satisfied with his fortune, and everyone is satisfied
with his wit," the diplomatist repeated the French saying.

"That's it- that's just it," Princess Miaghkaia turned to him
promptly. "But the point is that I won't abandon Anna to your mercies.
She's such a dear, so charming. How can she help it if they're all
in love with her, and follow her about like shadows?"

"Oh, I had no idea of censuring her," Anna's friend said in
self-defense.

"If we have no shadows following us, it does not prove that we've
any right to blame her."

And, having duly disposed of Anna's friend, the Princess Miaghkaia
got up, and, together with the ambassador's wife, joined the group
at the table, where the general conversation had to do with the king
of Prussia.

"What were you gossiping so maliciously about?" asked Betsy.

"About the Karenins. The Princess gave us a character sketch of
Alexei Alexandrovich," said the ambassador's wife with a smile, as she
sat down at the table.

"Pity we didn't hear it!" said Princess Betsy, glancing toward the
door. "Ah, here you are at last!" she said, turning with a smile to
Vronsky who was entering.

Vronsky was not merely acquainted with all the persons whom he was
meeting here; he saw them all every day; and so he came in with the
quiet manner with which one enters a room full of people whom one
had left only a short while ago.

"Where do I come from?" he repeated the question of the ambassador's
wife. "Well, there's no help for it- I must confess. From the opera
bouffe. I do believe I've seen it a hundred times, and always with
fresh enjoyment. It's exquisite! I know it's disgraceful, but I go
to sleep at the opera, yet I sit out the opera bouffe to the last
minute, and enjoy it. This evening..."

He mentioned a French actress, and was about to tell something about
her; but the ambassador's wife, with playful trepidation, cut him
short.

"Please, don't tell us about that horror."

"Very well, I won't- especially as everyone knows those horrors."

"And we should all go to see them if it were accepted as the correct
thing, like the opera," chimed in Princess Miaghkaia.

                           VII.


Steps were heard at the door, and Princess Betsy, knowing it was
Madame Karenina, glanced at Vronsky. He was looking toward the door,
and his face wore a strange new expression. Joyfully, intently, and at
the same time timidly, he gazed at the approaching figure, and
slowly he rose to his feet. Anna walked into the drawing room. Holding
herself extremely erect, as always, looking straight before her, and
moving with her swift, resolute and light step, that distinguished her
walk from that of other society women, she crossed the few paces
that separated her from her hostess, shook hands with her, smiled, and
with the same smile looked around at Vronsky. Vronsky bowed low and
pushed a chair up for her.

She acknowledged this only by a slight nod, flushed, and frowned.
But immediately, while rapidly greeting her acquaintances, and shaking
the hands proffered to her, she addressed Princess Betsy:

"I have been at Countess Lidia's, and meant to have come here
earlier, but I stayed on. Sir John was there. A most interesting man."

"Oh, that's this missionary?"

"Yes; he told us about life in India, most interestingly."

The conversation, interrupted by her coming in, flickered up again
like the light of a lamp being blown out.

"Sir John! Yes, Sir John. I've seen him. He speaks well. Vlassieva
is altogether in love with him."

"And is it true that the younger Vlassieva is to marry Topov?"

"Yes- they say it's quite settled."

"I wonder at the parents! They say it's a marriage of passion."

"Of passion? What antediluvian notions you have! Whoever talks of
passion nowadays?" said the ambassador's wife.

"What would you do? This silly old fashion is still far from
dead," said Vronsky.

"So much the worse for those who keep up the fashion. The only happy
marriages I know are marriages of prudence."

"Yes,- but then, how often the happiness of these prudent
marriages is scattered like dust, precisely because that passion to
which recognition has been denied appears on the scene," said Vronsky.

"But by marriages of prudence we mean those in which both parties
have sown their wild oats already. That's like scarlatina- one has
to go through with it and get it over with."

"In that case we must learn how to vaccinate for love, like
small-pox."

"I was in love in my young days- with a church clerk," said the
Princess Miaghkaia. "I don't know that it did me any good."

"No; I think- all jokes aside- that to know love, one must first
make a fault, and then mend it," said Princess Betsy.

"Even after marriage?" said the ambassador's wife playfully.

"It's never too late to mend," the diplomatist repeated the
English proverb.

"Just so," Betsy agreed; "one must make a mistake and rectify it.
What do you think about it?" She turned to Anna, who, with a barely
perceptible resolute smile on her lips, was listening to the
conversation.

"I think" said Anna, playing with the glove she had taken off, "I
think... if there are as many minds as there are heads, then surely
there must be as many kinds of love as there are hearts."

Vronsky was gazing at Anna, and with a heart sinking was waiting for
what she would say. He sighed as after a danger escaped when she had
uttered these words.

Anna suddenly turned to him.

"Oh, I have had a letter from Moscow. They write me that Kitty
Shcherbatskaia's very ill."

"Really?" said Vronsky, knitting his brows.

Anna looked sternly at him.

"That doesn't interest you?"

"On the contrary, it does- very much. What is it, exactly, that they
write you, if may know?" he asked.

Anna got up and went to Betsy.

"Give me a cup of tea," she said, pausing behind her chair.

While Betsy was pouring out the tea, Vronsky walked up to Anna.

"What is it they write you?" he repeated.

"I often think men have no understanding of what is dishonorable,
though they're forever talking of it," said Anna, without answering
him. "I've wanted to tell you something for a long while," she
added, and, moving a few steps away, she sat down at a corner table
which held albums.

"I don't quite understand the significance of your words," he
said, handing her the cup.

She glanced towards the sofa beside her, and he instantly sat down.

"Yes, I've wanted to tell you," she said, without looking at him.
"Your action was wrong- wrong, very wrong."

"Do you suppose I don't know that I've acted wrongly? But who was
the cause of my doing so?"

"Why do you say that to me?" she said looking at him sternly.

"You know why," he answered, boldly and joyously, meeting her glance
and without dropping his eyes.

It was not he, but she, who became confused.

"That merely proves you have no heart," she said. But her eyes
said that she knew he had a heart, and that was why she was afraid
of him.

"What you spoke of just now was a mistake, and not love."

"Remember that I have forbidden you to utter that word, that
detestable word," said Anna, with a shudder. But at once she felt that
by that very word "forbidden" she had shown that she acknowledged
certain rights over him, and by that very fact was encouraging him
to speak of love. "I have long meant to tell you this," she went on,
looking resolutely into his eyes, and all aflame from the burning
flush on her cheeks. "I've come here purposely this evening, knowing I
should meet you. I have come to tell you that this must end. I have
never blushed before anyone, and you force me to feel guilty of
something."

He looked at her and was struck by a new spiritual beauty in her
face.

"What do you wish of me?" he said, simply and gravely.

"I want you to go to Moscow and ask for Kitty's forgiveness," she
said.

"That is not your wish," he said.

He saw she was saying what she was forcing herself to say, not
what she wanted to say.

"If you love me, as you say," she whispered, "you will do this, so
that I may be at peace."

His face grew radiant.

"Don't you know that you're all my life to me? But I know no
peace, and I can't give it to you; all of myself, and love- yes. I
can't think of you and myself apart. You and I are one to me. And I
see no possibility before us of peace- either for me or for you. I see
a possibility of despair, of wretchedness.... Or else I see a
possibility of happiness- and what a happiness!... Can it be
impossible?" he added, his lips barely moving- yet she heard.

She strained every effort of her mind to say what ought to be
said. But instead of that she let her eyes rest on him, full of
love, and made no answer.

"It's come!" he thought in ecstasy. "When I was beginning to
despair, and it seemed there would be no end- it's come! She loves me!
She owns it!"

"Then do this for me: never say such things to me, and let us be
friends," she said in words; but her eyes spoke quite differently.

"Friends we shall never be- that you know yourself. Whether we shall
be the happiest or the most wretched of people- that lies within
your power."

She would have said something, but he interrupted her.

"For I ask but one thing: I ask for the right to hope, to suffer-
even as I am doing now. But if even that cannot be, command me to
disappear, and I disappear. You shall not see me if my presence is
painful to you."

"I don't want to drive you away."

"Only don't change anything- leave everything as it is," said he, in
a shaky voice. "Here's your husband."

At that instant Alexei Alexandrovich did in fact walk into the
room with his calm, ungainly gait.

Glancing at his wife and Vronsky, he went up to the lady of the
house, and, sitting down for a cup of tea, began talking in his
unhasty, always audible voice, in his habitual tone of banter, as if
he were teasing someone.

"Your Rambouillet is in full conclave," he said looking round at all
the party; "the graces and the muses."

But Princess Betsy could not endure that tone of his- sneering, as
she called it, using the English word, and like a clever hostess she
at once brought him around to a serious conversation on the subject of
universal conscription. Alexei Alexandrovich was immediately carried
away by the subject, and began seriously defending the new imperial
decree before Princess Betsy, who had attacked it.

Vronsky and Anna still sat at the little table.

"This is getting indecorous," whispered one lady, with an expressive
glance at Madame Karenina, her husband and Vronsky.

"What did I tell you?" said Anna's friend.

But it was not only these ladies who watched them- almost everyone
in the room, even the Princess Miaghkaia and Betsy herself, looked
several times in the direction of the two who had withdrawn from the
general circle, as though they found it a hindrance. Alexei
Alexandrovich was the only person who did not once look in their
direction, and was not diverted from the interesting discussion he had
entered upon.

Noticing the disagreeable impression that was being made on
everyone, Princess Betsy slipped someone else into her place to listen
to Alexei Alexandrovich, and walked over to Anna.

"I'm always amazed at the clearness and precision of your
husband's language," she said. "The most transcendent ideas seem to be
within my grasp when he's speaking."

"Oh, yes!" said Anna, radiant with a smile of happiness, and not
understanding a word of what Betsy had said. She crossed over to the
big table and took part in the general conversation.

Alexei Alexandrovich, after staying half an hour, walked up to his
wife and suggested that they go home together. But she answered,
without looking at him, that she was staying to supper. Alexei
Alexandrovich bowed himself out.


The fat old Tatar, Madame Karenina's coachman, in a glistening
leather coat, was with difficulty bridling the left of her pair of
grays, chilled with the cold and rearing at the entrance. A footman
stood by the carriage door he had opened. The hall porter stood
holding open the great door of the house. Anna Arkadyevna, with her
quick little hand, was unfastening the lace of her sleeve, caught in
the hook of her fur cloak, and with bent head was listening
rapturously to the words Vronsky murmured as he saw her down to her
carriage.

"You've said nothing, of course, and I ask nothing," he was
saying; "but you know that friendship is not what I want: that there's
only one happiness in life for me- that word you dislike so... yes,
love!..."

"Love..." she repeated slowly, in an inner voice, and suddenly, at
the very instant she unhooked the lace, she added, "I don't like the
word precisely because it means too much to me, far more than you
can understand," and she glanced into his face. "Good-by."

She gave him her hand, and with her rapid, springy step she passed
by the porter and vanished into the carriage.

Her glance, the touch of her hand, had seared him. He kissed the
palm of his hand where she had touched it, and went home, happy in the
realization that he had got nearer to the attainment of his aims
that evening than during the two last months.

                           VIII.


Alexei Alexandrovich had seen nothing striking or improper in the
fact that his wife was sitting with Vronsky at a table apart, in eager
conversation with him about something. But he noticed that to the rest
of the party this appeared as something striking and improper, and for
that reason it seemed to him, too, to be improper. He made up his mind
that he must speak of it to his wife.

On reaching home Alexei Alexandrovich went to his study, as he
usually did, seated himself in his low chair, opened a book on the
Papacy at the place he had marked by inserting the paper knife, read
till one o'clock, just as he usually did. But from time to time he
would rub his high forehead and shake his head, as though to drive
away something. At his usual time he got up and made his toilet for
the night. Anna Arkadyevna had not yet come in. With a book under
his arm he went upstairs. But this evening, instead of his usual
thoughts and meditations upon official details, his thoughts were
absorbed by his wife and something disagreeable connected with her.
Contrary to his usual habit, he did not get into bed, but fell to
walking up and down the rooms with his hands clasped behind his
back. He could not go to bed, feeling that it was absolutely needful
for him first to think thoroughly over the situation that had just
arisen.

When Alexei Alexandrovich had made up his mind that he must have a
talk with his wife, it had seemed a very easy and simple matter. But
now, when he began to think over the question that had just
presented itself, it seemed to him very complicated and difficult.

Alexei Alexandrovich was not jealous. Jealousy, according to his
notions, was an insult to one's wife, and one ought to have confidence
in one's wife. Why one ought to have that confidence- that is to
say, a complete conviction that his young wife would always love
him- he did not ask himself. But he had never experienced such a
lack of confidence, because he had confidence in her, and told himself
that he ought to have it. Now, though his conviction that jealousy was
a shameful feeling, and that one ought to feel confidence, had not
broken down, he still felt that he was standing face to face with
something illogical and fatuous, and did not know what ought to be
done. Alexei Alexandrovich was standing face to face with life, with
the possibility of his wife's loving someone other than himself, and
this seemed to him very fatuous and incomprehensible, because it was
of the very stuff of life. All his life Alexei Alexandrovich had lived
and worked in official spheres, having to do merely with the
reflections of life. And every time he had stumbled against life
itself he had shrunk away from it. Now he experienced a feeling akin
to that of a man who, while calmly crossing a precipice by a bridge,
should suddenly discover that the bridge is broken, and that there
is a chasm below. That chasm was life itself- the bridge, that
artificial life in which Alexei Alexandrovich had lived. For the first
time the question presented itself to him of the possibility of his
wife's loving someone else, and he was horrified at it.

He did not undress, but walked up and down with his regular tread
over the resounding parquet of the dining room, where one lamp was
burning; over the carpet of the dark drawing room, in which the
light was reflected merely on the big new portrait of himself
hanging over the sofa; and across her boudoir, where two candles
burned, lighting up the portraits of her parents and feminine friends,
and the pretty knickknacks of her writing table, every one of which he
knew so well. He walked across her boudoir to the bedroom door and
turned back again.

At each turn in his walk, especially on the parquet of the
well-lit dining room, he halted and said to himself, "Yes, this I must
decide and put a stop to; I must express my view of it and my
decision." And he turned back again. "But just what shall I express?
And what decision?" he would say to himself in the drawing room- and
found no answer. "But, after all," he asked himself before turning
into the boudoir," what has occurred? Nothing. She was talking a
long while with him. But what of that? Surely women in society can
talk to whom they please. And then, jealousy means debasing both her
and myself," he soliloquized as he entered her boudoir; but this
dictum, which had always had such weight with him before, had now no
weight and no meaning whatsoever. And from the bedroom door he
turned back again; but as he entered the dark drawing room some
inner voice told him that it was not so, and that if others had
noticed, it meant that there was something. And he said to himself
again in the dining room: "Yes, I must decide and put a stop to it,
and express my views...." And again at the turn in the drawing room he
asked himself: "Decide how?" And again he asked inwardly: "What has
occurred?" And answered: "Nothing," and recollected that jealousy
was a feeling insulting to his wife; but again in the drawing room
he was convinced that something had happened. His thoughts, like his
body, were describing a complete circle, without alighting upon
anything new. He noticed this, rubbed his forehead, and sat down in
her boudoir.

There, looking at her table, with the malachite blotting case
lying at the top, and an unfinished letter, his thoughts suddenly
changed. He began to think of her, of what her thoughts and emotions
must be. For the first time he pictured vividly to himself her
personal life, her ideas, her desires, and the thought that she
could and must have a separate life of her own seemed to him so
appalling that he made haste to drive it away. It was the chasm
which he was afraid to peep into. To put himself in thought and
feeling in another person's place was a spiritual action foreign to
Alexei Alexandrovich. He looked on this spiritual action as a
harmful and dangerous abuse of the fancy.

"And the worst of it all," thought he, "is that just now, at the
very moment when my great work is approaching completion" (he was
thinking of the project he was bringing forward at the time), "when
I stand in need of all my mental peace and all my energies- just now
this stupid worry has to come falling about my ears. But what's to
be done? I'm not one of those men who submit to uneasiness and worry
without having the force of character to face them."

"I must think this over, come to a decision, and put it out of my
mind," he said aloud.

"The question of her feelings, of what has passed and may be passing
in her soul- that's not my affair; that's the affair of her
conscience, and falls under the head of religion," he said to himself,
feeling consolation in the sense that he had found to which division
of regulating principles this new circumstance could be properly
referred.

"And so," Alexei Alexandrovich said to himself, "questions as to her
feelings, and so on, are questions for her conscience, with which I
can have nothing to do. My duty is clearly defined. As the head of the
family, I am a person bound in duty to guide her, and, consequently,
in part the person responsible; I am bound to point out the danger I
perceive, to warn her, even to use my authority. I ought to speak
plainly to her."

And everything that he would say tonight to his wife took clear
shape in Alexei Alexandrovich's head. Thinking over what he would say,
he somewhat regretted that he should have to use his time and mental
powers for domestic consumption, with so little to show for it, but,
in spite of that, the form and consistency of the speech before him
shaped itself as clearly and distinctly in his head as a ministerial
report. "I must speak on, and express fully, the following points:
first, an explanation of the value to be attached to public opinion
and to decorum; secondly, an explanation of the religious significance
of marriage; thirdly, if need be, a reference to the calamity possibly
ensuing to our son; fourthly, a reference to the unhappiness likely to
result to herself." And, interlacing his fingers, the palms
downward, Alexei Alexandrovich stretched his hands, and the joints
of the fingers cracked.

This gesture, this bad habit- the joining of his hands cracking
his fingers, always soothed him, and gave precision to his thoughts,
so needful to him now. There was the sound of a carriage driving up to
the front door. Alexei Alexandrovich halted in the middle of the room.

A woman's step was heard mounting the stairs. Alexei
Alexandrovich, ready for his speech, stood squeezing his crossed
fingers, waiting for their crack to come again. One joint cracked.

Already, from the sound of light steps on the stairs, he was aware
that she was close, and though he was satisfied with his speech, he
felt frightened because of the explanation confronting him.

                           IX.


Anna came in with her head bent, playing with the tassels of her
hood. Her face was glowing with a vivid glow; but this glow was not
one of joyousness- it recalled the fearful glow of a conflagration
in the midst of a dark night. On seeing her husband, Anna raised her
head and smiled, as though she had just waked up.

"You're not in bed? What a miracle!" she said throwing off her
hood and, without stopping, she went on into the dressing room.
"It's late, Alexei Alexandrovich," she said, from behind the door.

"Anna, I must have a talk with you."

"With me?" she said, wonderingly. She came out from the door, and
looked at him. "Why, what is it? What about?" she asked, sitting down.
"Well, let's talk, if it's so necessary. But it would be better to
go to sleep."

Anna was saying whatever came to her tongue, and marveled, hearing
herself, at her own capacity for lying. How simple and natural were
her words, and how likely that she was simply sleepy She felt
herself clad in an impenetrable armor of falsehood. She felt that some
unseen force had come to her aid and was supporting her.

"Anna, I must warn you," he began.

"Warn me? she said. "Of what?

She looked at him so simply, so brightly, that anyone who did not
know her as her husband knew her could not have noticed anything
unnatural, either in the sound or the sense of her words. But to
him, knowing her, knowing that whenever he went to bed five minutes
later than usual, she noticed it, and asked him the reason- to him,
knowing that every joy, every pleasure and pain that she felt she
communicated to him at once- to him it meant a great deal to see now
that she did not care to notice his state of mind, that she did not
care to say a word about herself. He saw that the inmost recesses of
her soul, that had always hitherto lain open before him, were now
closed against him. More than that, he saw from her tone that she
was not even perturbed at that, but seemed to be saying
straightforwardly to him: "Yes, it is closed now, which is as it
should be, and will be so in future." Now he experienced a feeling
such as a man might have who, returning home, finds his own house
locked up. "But perhaps the key may yet be found," thought Alexei
Alexandrovich.

"I want to warn you," he said in a low voice, "that through
thoughtlessness and lack of caution you may cause yourself to be
talked about in society. Your too animated conversation this evening
with Count Vronsky" (he enunciated the name firmly and with quiet
intervals) "attracted attention."

He talked and looked at her laughing eyes, which frightened him
now with their impenetrable look, and, as he talked, he felt all the
uselessness and futility of his words.

"You're always like that," she answered as though completely
misapprehending him, and of all he had said only taking in the last
phrase. "One time you don't like my being dull, and another time you
don't like my being lively. I wasn't dull. Does that offend you?"

Alexei Alexandrovich shivered, and bent his hands to make the joints
crack.

"Oh, please, don't do that- I dislike it so," she said.

"Anna, is this you?" said Alexei Alexandrovich quietly, making an
effort over himself, and restraining the motion of his hands.

"But what is it all about?" she said, with such genuine and droll
wonder. "What do you want of me?"

Alexei Alexandrovich paused, and rubbed his forehead and his eyes.
He saw that instead of doing as he had intended- that is to say,
warning his wife against a mistake in the eyes of the world- he had
unconsciously become agitated over what was the affair of her
conscience, and was struggling against some imaginary barrier.

"This is what I meant to say to you," he went on coldly and
composedly, "and I beg you to hear me to the end. I consider jealousy,
as you know, a humiliating and degrading feeling, and I shall never
allow myself to be guided by it; but there are certain rules of
decency which cannot be disregarded with impunity. This evening it was
not I who observed it- but, judging by the impression made on the
company, everyone observed that your conduct and deportment were not
altogether what one would desire."

"I positively don't understand," said Anna, shrugging her shoulders.
"He doesn't care," she thought. "But other people noticed it and
that's what upsets him."- "You're not well, Alexei Alexandrovich," she
added, and, getting up, was about to pass through the door; but he
moved forward as though he would stop her.

His face was gloomy and forbidding, as Anna had never seen it
before. She stopped, and bending her head back and to one side,
began taking out her hairpins with her quick-darting hand.

"Well, I'm listening- what does follow?" she said, calmly and
ironically; "and, indeed, I am listening even with interest, for I
should like to understand what it is all about."

She spoke, and marveled at the confident, calm and natural tone in
which she spoke, and at the choice of the words she used.

"To enter into all the details of your feelings I have no right,
and, besides, I regard that as useless and even harmful," began Alexei
Alexandrovich. "Rummaging in our souls, we often bring up something
that might have otherwise lain there unnoticed. Your feelings are an
affair of your own conscience; but I am in duty bound to you, to
myself and to God, to point out to you your duties. Our life has
been joined, not by man, but by God. That union can only be severed by
a crime, and a crime of that nature brings its own chastisement."

"I don't understand a word. And, oh dear! how sleepy I am,
unluckily," she said, rapidly passing her hand through her hair,
feeling for the remaining hairpins.

"Anna, for God's sake don't speak like that!" he said gently.
"Perhaps I am mistaken, but believe me, that which I am saying I say
as much for myself as for you. I am your husband, and I love you."

For an instant her face fell, and the mocking gleam in her eyes died
away; but the phrase "I love" threw her into revolt again. She
thought: "Love? Can he love? If he hadn't heard there was such a thing
as love, he would never have used the word. He doesn't even know
what love is."

"Alexei Alexandrovich, I really do not understand," she said.
"Define what it is you consider..."

"Pardon, let me say all I have to say. I love you. But I am not
speaking of myself; the most important persons in this matter are
our son and yourself. It may very well be, I repeat, that my words
seem to you utterly unnecessary and out of place; it may be that
they are called forth by my mistaken impression. In that case, I beg
you to forgive me. But if you are conscious yourself of even the
smallest foundation for them, then I beg you to think a little, and if
your heart prompts you, to speak out to me..."

Alexei Alexandrovich was unconsciously saying something utterly
unlike what he had prepared.

"I have nothing to say. And besides she said suddenly, with
difficulty repressing a smile, "it's really time to be in bed."

Alexei Alexandrovich sighed, and, without saying more, went into the
bedroom.

When she came into the bedroom, he was already in bed. His lips were
sternly compressed, and his eyes looked away from her. Anna got into
her bed, and lay expecting every minute that he would begin to speak
to her again. She both feared his speaking and wished for it. But he
was silent. She waited for a long while without moving, and forgot
about him. She thought of that other; she pictured him, and felt how
her heart was flooded with emotion and guilty delight at the thought
of him. Suddenly she heard an even, tranquil snore. For the first
instant Alexei Alexandrovich seemed, as it were, appalled at his own
snoring, and ceased; but after a pause of one or two breaths, the
snore sounded again, with a new tranquil rhythm.

"It's late, it's late," she whispered with a smile. A long while she
lay, without moving, and with open eyes, whose brilliance she almost
fancied she could herself see in the darkness.

                           X.


From that time a new life began for Alexei Alexandrovich and for his
wife. Nothing special happened. Anna went out into society, as she had
always done, was particularly often at Princess Betsy's, and met
Vronsky everywhere. Alexei Alexandrovich saw this, but was powerless
to do anything. All his efforts to draw her into open discussion she
confronted with a barrier which he could not penetrate, made up of a
sort of amused perplexity. Outwardly everything was the same, but
their inner relations were completely changed. Alexei Alexandrovich, a
man of great power in the world of politics, felt himself helpless
in this matter. Like an ox with head bent submissively, he waited
the fall of the poleax which he felt was lifted over him. Every time
he began to think about it, he felt that he must try once more; that
by kindness, tenderness and persuasion there was still hope of
saving her, of bringing her back to herself, and every day he was on
the verge of talking to her. But every time he began he felt that
the spirit of evil and deceit, which had taken possession of her,
had possession of him too, and he talked to her in a tone quite unlike
that which he had meant to use. Involuntarily he talked to her in
his habitual tone of bantering at anyone who should say what he was
saying. And in that tone it was impossible to say to her what the
occasion demanded.

                           XI.


That which to Vronsky had been for almost a whole year the one
absorbing desire of his life, replacing all his old desires; that
which to Anna had been an impossible, terrible, and, for that very
reason, a more entrancing dream of happiness- that desire had been
fulfilled. He stood before her, pale, his lower jaw quivering, and
besought her to be calm, without himself knowing how or why.

"Anna! Anna!" he said with a quivering voice, "Anna, for God's
sake!..."

But the louder he spoke, the lower she cast down her once proud
and gay, but now shame-stricken head, and she bowed down and sank from
the sofa where she was sitting- down on the floor, at his feet; she
would have fallen on the carpet if he had not held her.

"My God!" Forgive me!" she said, sobbing, pressing his hands to
her bosom.

She felt so sinful, so guilty, that nothing was left her but to
humiliate herself and beg forgiveness, and as now there was no one
in her life but him, to him, too, she addressed her prayer for
forgiveness. Looking at him, she had a physical sense of her
humiliation, and she could say nothing more. And he felt as a murderer
must feel when he beholds the body he has robbed of life. That body,
robbed by him of life, was their love, the first stage of their
love. There was something awful and revolting in the memory of what
had been bought at this fearful price of shame. Shame at her spiritual
nakedness crushed her and infected him. But in spite of all the
murderer's horror before the body of his victim, he must hack it to
pieces, hide the body, must use what the murderer had gained by his
murder.

And as the murderer, with fury, and, as it were, with passion, falls
on the body, and drags it, and hacks at it- so he covered her face and
shoulders with kisses. She held his hand, and did not stir. Yes, these
kisses- that is what has been bought by this shame. Yes, and this
one hand, which will always be mine- the hand of my accomplice. She
lifted up that hand and kissed it. He sank on his knees and tried to
see her face; but she hid it, and said nothing. At last, as though
making an effort over herself, she got up and pushed him away. Her
face was still as beautiful, but it was only the more pitiful for
that.

"All is over," she said; "I have nothing but you. Remember that."

"I can never forget what is my whole life. For one instant of this
happiness..."

"Happiness!" she said with horror and loathing and her horror
unconsciously infected him. "For God's sake, not a word, not a word
more."

She rose quickly and moved away from him.

"Not a word more," she repeated, and with a look of chill despair,
incomprehensible to him, she parted from him. She felt that at that
moment she could not put into words the sense of shame, of rapture,
and of horror at this stepping into a new life, and she did not want
to speak of it, to vulgarize this feeling by inappropriate words.
But later too, and the next day, and the day after, she still found no
words in which she could express the complexity of those feelings;
indeed, she could not even find thoughts in which she could clearly
think out all that was in her soul.

She said to herself. "No, just now I can't think of it- later on,
when I am calmer." But this calm for thoughts never came; every time
the thought rose of what she had done and what would happen to her,
and what she ought to do, a horror came over her and she drove those
thoughts away.

"Later, later," she said, "when I am calmer."

But in her dreams, when she had no control over her thoughts, her
position presented itself to her in all its hideous nakedness. One
dream haunted her almost every night. She dreamed that both were
husbands at once, that both were lavishing caresses on her. Alexei
Alexandrovich was weeping, kissing her hands, and saying, "How happy
we are now!" And Alexei Vronsky was there too, and he, too, was her
husband. And she was marveling that it had once seemed impossible to
her, was explaining to them, laughing, that this was ever so much
simpler, and that now both of them were happy and contented. But
this dream weighed on her like a nightmare, and she would awake from
it in terror.

                           XII.


In the early days, after his return from Moscow, whenever Levin
shuddered and grew red, remembering the disgrace of his rejection,
he would say to himself: "This was just how I used to shudder and
blush, thinking everything utterly lost, when I was flunked in physics
and did not get promoted; and this is also how I thought myself
utterly ruined after I had mismanaged that affair of my sister's
with which I had been entrusted. And yet, now that the years have
passed, I recall it and wonder that it could distress me so much. It
will be the same thing with this trouble as well. Time will go by, and
I shall not mind this either."

But three months had passed and he had not left off minding about
it; and it was as painful for him to think of it now as it had been
during those first days. He could not be at peace because, after
dreaming so long of family life, and feeling himself so ripe for it,
he was still not married, and was farther than ever from marriage.
He was painfully conscious himself, as were all about him, that at his
years it is not good that man should be alone. He remembered how
before starting for Moscow he had once said to his cowherd Nicolai,
a simplehearted peasant, to whom he liked to talk: "Well, Nicolai! I
mean to get married," and how Nicolai had promptly answered, as of a
matter on which there could be no possible doubt: "And high time
too, Konstantin Dmitrich." But marriage had now become farther off
than ever. The place was taken, and whenever he tried to imagine any
of the girls he knew in that place, he felt that it was utterly
impossible. Moreover, the recollection of the rejection and the part
he had played in the affair tortured him with shame. However often
he told himself that he was in no wise to blame in it, that
recollection, like other similarly humiliating recollections, made him
wince and blush. There had been in his past, as in every man's,
actions, recognized by him as bad, for which his conscience ought to
have tormented him; but the recollection of these evil actions was far
from causing him as much suffering as these trivial but humiliating
recollections. These wounds never healed. And with these recollections
was now ranged his rejection and the sorry plight in which he must
have appeared to others that evening. Yet time and labor were doing
their work. Bitter recollections were more and more being covered up
by the incidents- inconspicuous ones, but important- of his country
life. Every week he thought less often of Kitty. He was impatiently
looking forward to the news that she was married, or just going to
be married, hoping that such news would, like having a tooth out,
completely cure him.

Meanwhile spring came on, beautiful and kindly, without the delays
and treacheries incident to spring- one of those rare springs in which
plants, beasts and man rejoice alike. This lovely spring roused
Levin still more, and strengthened him in his resolution of renouncing
all his past and building up his lonely life firmly and independently.
Though many of the plans with which he had returned to the country had
not been carried out, his most important resolution- that of purity of
life- had nevertheless been kept by him. He was free from that shame
which had usually harassed him after a fall; and he could look
everyone straight in the face. In February he had received a letter
from Marya Nikolaevna telling him that his brother Nikolai's health
was getting worse, but that he would not take advice, and in
consequence of this letter Levin went to Moscow to his brother's,
and succeeded in persuading him to see a doctor and to go to a
watering place abroad. He succeeded so well in persuading his brother,
and in lending him money for the journey without irritating him,
that he was satisfied with himself on that score. In addition to his
farming, which called for special attention in spring, in addition
to reading Levin had begun that winter a work on agriculture, the plan
of which turned on taking into account the character of the laborer on
the land as one of the unalterable data of the question, like the
climate and the soil, and consequently deducing all the principles
of scientific culture, not simply from the data of soil and climate,
but from the data of soil, climate and a certain unalterable character
of the laborer. Thus, in spite of his solitude, or in consequence of
his solitude, life was exceedingly full, save that, on rare occasions,
he suffered from an unsatisfied desire to communicate his stray
ideas to someone besides Agathya Mikhailovna. With her indeed he not
infrequently fell into discussions upon physics, the theory of
agriculture, and, especially, philosophy: philosophy was Agathya
Mikhailovna's favorite subject.

Spring was slow in unfolding. For the last few weeks of Lent it
had been steadily fine and frosty weather. In the daytime there was
a thaw in the sun, but at night there were as many as seven degrees of
frost. The snow was so packed and frozen that loads could be carried
along anywhere, regardless of roads. Easter came in snow. Then all
of a sudden, on Easter Monday, a warm wind sprang up, storm clouds
swooped down, and for three days and three nights the warm,
tempestuous rain fell in torrents. On Thursday the wind dropped, and a
thick gray fog brooded over the land, as though screening the
mysteries of the transformations that were being wrought in nature.
Behind the fog there was the flowing of water, the cracking and
floating of ice, the swift rush of turbid, foaming torrents; and on
the following Monday, in the evening, the fog parted, the storm clouds
split up into little curling crests of cloud, the sky cleared, and the
real spring had come. In the morning the sun arose brilliant and
quickly wore away the thin layer of ice that covered the water, and
all the warm air was quivering with the steam that rose up from the
quickened earth. The old grass looked greener, and the young grass
thrust up its tiny blades; the buds of the guelder-rose and of the
currant, and the sticky birch buds were swollen with sap, and an
exploring bee was humming about the golden blossoms that studded the
willow. Larks trilled unseen above the velvety green fields and the
ice-covered stubble land; pewits wailed over the lowlands and marshes,
flooded by the pools; cranes and wild geese flew high across the sky
uttering their spring calls. The cattle, bald in patches where the new
hair had not grown yet, lowed in the pastures; bowlegged lambs frisked
round their bleating dams, who were shedding their fleece;
nimble-footed children ran along the drying paths, covered with the
prints of bare feet; there was a merry chatter of peasant women over
their linen at the pond, and the ring of axes in the yard, where the
peasants were repairing plows and harrows. The real spring had come.

                           XIII.


Levin put on his big boots, and, for the first time, a cloth
overcoat instead of his fur cloak, and went out to look after his
farm, stepping over streams of water that flashed in the sunshine
and dazzled his eyes, and stepping one minute on ice and the next into
sticky mud.

Spring is the time of plans and projects. And, as he came out into
the farmyard, Levin, like a tree in spring that knows not what form
will be taken by the young shoots and twigs imprisoned in its swelling
buds, hardly knew what undertakings he was going to launch upon now in
the farmwork that was so dear to him. But he felt that he was full
of the most splendid plans and projects. First of all he went to the
cattle. The cows had been let out into their paddock, and their smooth
sides were already glossy with their new, sleek, spring coats; they
basked in the sunshine and lowed to go to the meadow. Levin gazed
admiringly at the cows he knew so intimately to the minutest detail of
their condition, and gave orders for them to be driven out into the
meadow, and the calves to be let into the paddock. The herdsman ran
gaily to get ready for the meadow. The cowherd girls, picking up their
petticoats, ran splashing through the mud with bare legs, still white,
not yet brown from the sun, waving brushwood in their hands, chasing
the calves that frolicked in the mirth of spring.

After admiring the increase of that year, which were particularly
fine- the early calves were the size of a peasant's cow, and Pava's
daughter, at three months old, was as big as a yearling- Levin gave
orders for a trough to be brought out and hay to be put in the
racks. But it appeared that, since the paddock had not been used
during the winter, the racks made in the autumn were broken. He sent
for the carpenter, who, according to his orders, ought to have been at
work at the threshing machine. But it appeared that the carpenter
was repairing the harrows, which ought to have been repaired before
Lent. This was very annoying to Levin. It was annoying to come upon
that everlasting slovenliness in the farmwork against which he had
been striving with all his might for so many years. The racks, as he
ascertained, being not wanted in winter, had been carried to the
cart horses' stable, and there broken, as they were of light
construction, only meant for foddering calves. Moreover, it was
apparent also that the harrows and all the agricultural implements,
which he had directed to be looked over and repaired in the winter,
for which very purpose he had hired three carpenters, had not been put
into repair, and the harrows were being repaired when they ought to
have been harrowing the field. Levin sent for his bailiff, but
immediately went off himself to look for him. The bailiff, beaming all
over, like everything that day, in a sheepskin bordered with
astrakhan, came out of the barn, twisting a bit of straw in his hands.

"Why isn't the carpenter at the threshing machine?"

"Oh, I meant to tell you yesterday, the harrows want repairing. Here
it's time they got to work in the fields."

"But what were they doing in the winter, then?"

"But what did you want the carpenter for?"

"Where are the racks for the calves' paddock?"

"I ordered them to be got ready. What would you have with those
people!" said the bailiff, with a wave of his hand.

"It's not those people but this bailiff!" said Levin, getting angry.
"Why, what do I keep you for?" he cried. But, bethinking himself
that this would not help matters, he stopped short in the middle of
a sentence, and merely sighed. "Well, what do you say? Can sowing
begin?" he asked, after a pause.

"Behind Turkino, tomorrow or next day, they might begin."

"And the clover?"

"I've sent Vassilii and Mishka; they're sowing it. Only I don't know
if they'll manage to get through; it's so slushy."

"How many dessiatinas?

"Six."

"Why not sow all?" cried Levin.

That they were only sowing the clover on six dessiatinas, not in all
the twenty, was still more annoying to him. Clover, as he knew, both
from books and from his own experience, never did well except when
it was sown as early as possible, almost in the snow. And yet Levin
could never get this done.

"There's no one to send. What would you do with such people? Three
haven't turned up. And there's Semion..."

"Well, you should have taken some men from the chaffcutter."

"And so I have, as it is."

"Where are the peasants, then?"

"Five are making compote" (which meant compost), "and four are
shifting the oats for fear of being touched, Konstantin Dmitrich."

Levin knew very well that "touching" meant that his English seed
oats were already spoiled. Again they had not done as he had ordered.

"Why, but I told you during Lent to put in pipes," he cried.

"Don't be put out; we shall get it all done in time."

Levin made an angry gesture, and went into the granary to glance
at the oats, and then to the stable. The oats were not yet spoiled.
But the laborers were carrying the oats in spades when they might
simply let them slide down into the lower granary; and arranging for
this to be done, and taking two laborers from there for sowing clover,
Levin got over the vexation his bailiff had caused him. Indeed, it was
such a lovely day that one could not be angry.

"Ignat!" he called to the coachman, who, with his sleeves tucked up,
was washing the carriage wheels, "saddle..."

"Which, sir?"

"Well, let it be Kolpik."

"Yes, sir."

While they were saddling his horse, Levin again called the
bailiff, who was hanging about in sight, to make it up with him, and
began talking to him about the spring operations before them, and
his plans for the farming.

The wagons were to begin carting manure earlier, so as to get all
done before the early mowing. And the plowing of the outlying land was
to go on without a break, so as to let it lie black fallow and
furrowed. And the moving to be all done by hired labor, not on
half-profits.

The bailiff listened attentively, and obviously made an effort to
approve of his employer's projects. But still he had that look Levin
knew so well that always irritated him, a look of hopelessness and
despondency. That look said: "That's all very well, but as God wills."

Nothing mortified Levin so much as that tone. But it was the tone
common to all the bailiffs he had ever had. They had all taken that
attitude to his plans, and so now he was not angered by it, but
mortified, and felt all the more roused to struggle against this
apparently elemental force continually ranged against him, for which
he could find no other name than "as God wills."

"If we can manage it, Konstantin Dmitrich," said the bailiff.

"Why shouldn't you manage it?"

"We positively must have fifteen laborers more. And they don't
turn up. There were some here today asking seventy roubles for the
summer."

Levin was silent. Again he was brought face to face with that
opposing force. He knew that however much they tried, they could not
hire more than forty- thirty-seven perhaps or thirty-eight- laborers
for a reasonable sum; some forty had been taken on, and there were
no more. But still he could not help struggling against it.

"Send to Sury, to Chefirovka, if they don't come. We must look for
them."

"I'll send, to be sure," said Vassilii Fiodorovich despondently.
"But then there are the horses- they're not good for much."

"We'll get some more. I know, of course," Levin added laughing, "you
always want to do with as little and as poor a quality as possible;
but this year I'm not going to let you have things your own way.
I'll see to everything myself."

"Why, I don't think you take much rest as it is. It cheers us up
to work under the master's eye...."

"So they're sowing clover behind the Birch Dale? I'll go and have
a look at them," he said, mounting the little bay cob, Kolpik, who was
led up by the coachman.

"You can't get across the stream, Konstantin Dmitrich," the coachman
shouted.

"All right, I'll go by the forest."

And Levin rode through the slush of the farmyard to the gate and out
into the open country, his good little horse, after his long
inactivity, ambling easily, snorting over the pools, and asking, as it
were, for guidance.

If Levin had felt happy before in the cattle pens and farmyard, he
felt happier yet in the open country. Swaying rhythmically with the
ambling paces of his good little cob, drinking in the warm yet fresh
scent of the snow and the air, as he rode through his forest over
the crumbling, wasted snow, still left in parts, and covered with
dissolving tracks, he rejoiced over every tree, with the moss reviving
on its bark and the buds swelling on its shoots. When he came out of
the forest, in the immense plain before him, his winter fields
stretched in an unbroken carpet of green, without one bare place or
swamp, only spotted here and there in the hollows with patches of
melting snow. He was not put out of temper even by the sight of the
peasants' horse and colt trampling down his young grass (he told a
peasant he met to drive them out), nor by the sarcastic and stupid
reply of the peasant Ipat, whom he met on the way, and asked, "Well,
Ipat, shall we soon be sowing?" "We must get the plowing done first,
Konstantin Dmitrich," answered Ipat. The farther he rode, the
happier he became, and plans for the land rose to his mind each better
than the last: to plant all his fields with hedges along the
southern borders, so that the snow should not lie under them; to
divide them up into six fields of tillage and three for pasture and
hay; to build a cattle yard at the further end of the estate, and to
dig a pond and to construct movable pens for the cattle as a means
of manuring the land. And then three hundred dessiatinas of wheat, one
hundred of potatoes, and one hundred and fifty of clover, and not a
dessiatina exhausted.

Absorbed in such dreams, carefully keeping his horse by the hedges
so as not to trample his young winter fields, he rode up to the
laborers who had been sent to sow clover. A telega with the seed in it
was standing, not at the edge, but in the middle of the tillage, and
the winter corn had been torn up by the wheels and trampled by the
horse. Both the laborers were sitting in the hedge, probably smoking a
pipe, turn and turn about. The earth in the telega, with which the
seed was mixed, was not crushed to powder, but crusted together or
adhering in clods. Seeing the master, the laborer, Vassilii, went
toward the telega, while Mishka set to work sowing. This was not as it
should be, but with the laborers Levin seldom lost his temper. When
Vassilii came up, Levin told him to lead the horse to the hedge.

"Never mind, sir, it'll spring up again," responded Vassilii.

"Please don't argue," said Levin, "but do as you're told."

"Yes, sir," answered Vassilii, and he took the horse's head. "What a
sowing, Konstantin Dmitrich!" he said ingratiatingly. "First-rate.
Only it's a work to get about! A fellow drags thirty pounds of earth
at every step."

"Why is it you have earth that's not sifted?" said Levin.

"Well, we crumble it up," answered Vassilii, taking up some seed and
rolling the earth in his palms.

Vassilii was not to blame for their having fired up his telega
with unsifted earth, but still it was annoying.

Levin had already, more than once, tried a way he knew for
stifling his anger, and turning all that seemed dark right again,
and he tried that way now. He watched how Mishka strode along,
swinging the huge clods of earth that clung to each foot; and, getting
off his horse, he took the sieve from Vassilii and started sowing
himself.

"Where did you stop?"

Vassilii pointed to the mark with his foot, and Levin went forward
as best he could, scattering the seed on the land. Walking was as
difficult as on a bog, and by the time Levin had ended the row he
was in a great heat, and, stopping, gave the sieve over to Vassilii.

"Well master, when summer's here, mind you don't scold me for this
row," said Vassilii.

"Eh?" said Levin cheerily, already feeling the effect of his method.

"Why, you'll see in the summertime. It'll look different. Look you
where I sowed last spring. How I did work at it I do my best,
Konstantin Dmitrich, d'ye see, as I would for my own father. I don't
like botchwork myself, nor would I let another man do it. What's
good for the master is good for us too. It does one's heart good,"
said Vassilii, pointing, "to look over yonder."

"It's a lovely spring, Vassilii."

"Why, it's a spring such as even the old men don't remember the like
of. I was up home; my father there has sown wheat too, three osminas
of it. He was saying you couldn't tell it from rye."

"Have you been sowing wheat long?"

"Why, sir, it was you taught us, the year before last. You gave me
two measures. We sold about one chetvert and sowed three osminas."

"Well, mind you crumble up the clods," said Levin, going toward
his horse, "and keep an eye on Mishka. And if there's a good crop
you shall have half a rouble for every dessiatina."

"Thank you, kindly. We are very well content, sir, with your
treatment, as it is."

Levin got on his horse and rode toward the field where last year's
clover was, and the one which was plowed ready for the spring corn.

The crop of clover coming up in the stubble was magnificent. It
had revived already, and stood up vividly green through the broken
stalks of last year's wheat. The horse sank in up to the pasterns, and
he drew each hoof with a sucking sound out of the half-thawed
ground. Over the plowland the riding was utterly impossible; the horse
could only keep a foothold where there was ice, and in the thawing
furrows he sank in deep at each step. The plowland was in splendid
condition; in a couple of days it would be fit for harrowing and
sowing. Everything was capital, everything was cheering. Levin rode
back across the streams, hoping the water would have gone down. And he
did in fact get across, and startled two ducks. "There must be
woodcock here too," he thought, and just as he reached the turning
homewards he met the forest keeper, who confirmed his theory about the
woodcock.

Levin went home at a trot, so as to have time to eat his dinner
and get his gun ready for the evening.

                           XIV.


As he rode up to the house in the happiest frame of mind, Levin
heard the bell ring at the side of the principal entrance of the
house.

"Yes, that's someone from the railway station," he thought, "just
the time to be here from the Moscow train.... Who could it be? What if
it's brother Nikolai? He did say: 'I may go to the waters, or I may
come down to you.'" He felt dismayed and vexed for the first minute
that his brother Nikolai's presence should come to his happy mood of
spring. But he felt ashamed of the feeling, and at once he opened,
as it were, the arms of his soul, and with a softened feeling of joy
and expectation, he now hoped with all his heart that it was his
brother. He spurred on his horse, and as he rode out from behind the
acacias, he saw a hired troika from the railway station, and a
gentleman in a fur coat. It was not his brother. "Oh, if it were
only some pleasant person one could talk to a little!" he thought.

"Ah," cried Levin joyfully, flinging up both his hands. "Here's a
delightful visitor! Ah, how glad I am to see you!" he shouted,
recognizing Stepan Arkadyevich.

"I shall find out for certain whether she's married, or when she's
going to be married," he thought.

And on that delicious spring day he felt that the thought of her did
not hurt him at all.

"Didn't expect me, did you?" said Stepan Arkadyevich, getting out of
the sleigh, splashed with mud on the bridge of his nose, on his cheek,
and on his eyebrows, but radiant with health and good spirits. "I've
come primarily to see you," he said, embracing and kissing him,
"secondly, to have some stand shooting, and thirdly, to sell the
forest at Ergushovo."

"Delightful! What a spring we're having! How ever did you get
along in a sleigh?"

"In a wagon it would have been worse still, Konstantin Dmitrievich,"
answered the driver, who knew him.

"Well, I'm very, very glad to see you," said Levin, with a genuine
smile of childlike delight.

Levin led his friend to the guest room, where Stepan Arkadyevich's
things were also carried- a bag, a gun in a case, a satchel for
cigars. Leaving him there to wash and change his clothes, Levin went
off to the countinghouse to speak about the plowing and the clover.
Agathya Mikhailovna, always very anxious for the credit of the
house, met him in the hall with inquiries about dinner.

"Do just as you like, only let it be as soon as possible," he
said, and went to the bailiff.

When he came back, Stepan Arkadyevich, washed and combed, came out
of his room with a beaming smile, and they went upstairs together.

"Well, I am glad I managed to get away to you! Now I shall
understand what the mysterious business is that you are always
absorbed in here. No, really, I envy you. What a house, how splendid
it all is! So bright, so cheerful!" said Stepan Arkadyevich,
forgetting that it was not always spring and fine weather as on this
day. "And your old nurse is simply charming! A pretty maid in an apron
might be even more agreeable, perhaps; but for your severe monastic
style it does very well."

Stepan Arkadyevich imparted to him many interesting bits of news;
especially interesting to Levin was the news that his brother,
Sergei Ivanovich, was intending to spend the summer with him in the
country.

Not one word did Stepan Arkadyevich say in reference to Kitty and
the Shcherbatskys; he merely gave him greetings from his wife. Levin
was grateful to him for his delicacy, and rejoiced exceedingly over
his guest. As always happened with him during his solitude, a mass
of ideas and feelings had been accumulating within him, which he could
not communicate to those about him. And now he poured out upon
Stepan Arkadyevich his poetic joy over the spring, and his failures
and plans for the land, and his thoughts and criticisms on the books
he had been reading, and the idea of his own book, the basis of
which really was, though he was unaware of it himself, a criticism
of all the old books on agriculture. Stepan Arkadyevich, always
charming, understanding everything at the slightest reference, was
particularly charming on this visit, and Levin noticed in him a
special tenderness, as it were, and a new tone of respect that
flattered him.

The efforts of Agathya Mikhailovna and the cook to have the dinner
particularly good, only ended in the two famished friends attacking
the preliminary course, eating a great deal of bread and butter,
salt goose and salted mushrooms, and in Levin's finally ordering the
soup to be served without the accompaniment of little patties, with
which the cook had particularly meant to impress their visitor. But
though Stepan Arkadyevich was accustomed to very different dinners, he
thought everything excellent: the herb brandy, and the bread, and
the butter, and, above all, the salt goose and the mushrooms, and
the nettle soup, and the chicken in white sauce, and the white Crimean
wine- everything was excellent and marvelous.

"Splendid, splendid!" he said, lighting a fat cigar after the roast.
"I feel as if, coming to you, I had landed on a peaceful shore after
the noise and jolting of a steamer. And so you maintain that the
laborer himself is an element to be studied, and to regulate the
choice of methods in agriculture. Of course, I'm an ignorant outsider;
but I should fancy theory and its application will have its
influence on the laborer too."

"Yes, but wait a bit. I'm not talking of political economy- I'm
talking of the science of agriculture. It ought to be like the natural
sciences, and to observe given phenomena and the laborer in his
economic, ethnographical..."

At that instant Agathya Mikhailovna came in with jam.

"Oh, Agathya Fiodorovna," said Stepan Arkadyevich, kissing the
tips of his plump fingers, "what salt goose, what herb brandy!... What
do you think, isn't it time to start, Kostia?" he added.

Levin looked out of the window at the sun sinking behind the bare
treetops of the forest.

"Yes, it's time," he said. "Kouzma, get ready the wide droshky," and
he ran downstairs.

Stepan Arkadyevich, going down, carefully took the canvas cover
off his varnished gun case with his own hands, and opening it, began
to get ready his expensive, new-fashioned gun. Kouzma, who already
scented a big tip, never left Stepan Arkadyevich's side, and put on
him both his stockings and boots, a task which Stepan Arkadyevich
readily left to him.

"Kostia, give orders that if the merchant Riabinin comes- I told him
to come today- he's to be shown in and asked to wait for me..."

"Why, do you mean to say you're selling the forest to Riabinin?"

"Yes. Do you know him?"

"To be sure I do. I have had to do business with him, 'positively
and definitively.'"

Stepan Arkadyevich laughed. 'Positively and definitively' were the
merchant's favorite words.

"Yes, it's wonderfully funny the way he talks. She knows where her
master's going!" he added, patting Laska, who hung about Levin,
whining and licking his hands, his boots, and his gun.

The droshky was already at the steps when they went out.

"I told them to bring the droshky round, though it's not far to
go; or would you rather walk?"

"No, we'd better drive," said Stepan Arkadyevich, getting into the
droshky. He sat down, tucked the tiger-striped rug round him, and
lighted a cigar. "How is it you don't smoke? A cigar is a sort of
thing, not exactly a pleasure, but the crown and outward sign of
pleasure. Come, this is life! How splendid it is! This is how I should
like to live!"

"Why, who prevents you?" said Levin, smiling.

"No, you're a lucky man! You've got everything you like. You like
horses- and you have them; dogs- you have them; shooting- you have it;
farming- you have it."

"Perhaps because I rejoice in what I have, and don't fret for what I
haven't," said Levin, thinking of Kitty.

Stepan Arkadyevich comprehended, looked at him, but said nothing.

Levin was grateful to Oblonsky, for noticing, with his never-failing
tact, that he dreaded conversation about the Shcherbatskys, and so
saying nothing about them. But now Levin was longing to find out about
that which was tormenting him so, yet had not the courage to begin.

"Come, tell me how things are going with you," said Levin,
bethinking himself that it was not good of him to think only of
himself.

Stepan Arkadyevich's eyes sparkled merrily.

"You don't admit, I know, that one can be fond of new rolls when one
has had one's ration of bread- to your mind it's a crime; but I
don't count life as life without love," he said, taking Levin's
question in his own way. "What am I to do? I'm made that way. And
really, one does so little harm to anyone, and gives oneself so much
pleasure..."

"What! is there something new, then?" queried Levin.

"Yes, my boy, there is! There, do you see, you know the type of
Ossian's women... women, such as one sees in dreams... Well, these
women are sometimes to be met with in reality.... And these women
are terrible. Woman, don't you know, is such a subject that no
matter how much you study it, it's always perfectly new."

"Well, then, it would be better not to study it."

"No. Some mathematician has said that enjoyment lies in the search
for truth, not in the finding of it."

Levin listened in silence, and, in spite of all the efforts he made,
he could not in the least enter into the feelings of his friend and
understand his sentiments and the charm of studying such women.

                           XV.


The place fixed on for the stand shooting was not far above a stream
in a little aspen copse. On reaching the copse, Levin got out of the
droshky and led Oblonsky to a corner of a mossy, swampy glade, already
quite free from snow. He went back himself to a double birch tree on
the other side, and, leaning his gun on the fork of a dead lower
branch, he took off his full overcoat, fastened his belt again, and
worked his arms to see if they were free.

Gray old Laska, who had followed them, sat down warily opposite
him and pricked up her ears. The sun was setting behind a thick
forest, and in the glow of sunset the birch trees, dotted about in the
aspen copse, stood out clearly with their hanging twigs, and their
buds swollen almost to bursting.

From the thickest parts of the copse, where the snow still remained,
came the faint sound of narrow winding streamlets of water running
away. Tiny birds twittered, and now and then fluttered from tree to
tree.

In the pauses of complete stillness there came the rustle of last
year's leaves, stirred by the thawing of the earth and the growth of
grasses.

"Imagine! One can hear and see the grass growing!" Levin said to
himself, noticing a wet, slate-colored aspen leaf moving beside a
blade of young grass. He stood, listened, and gazed sometimes down
at the wet mossy ground, sometimes at Laska listening all alert,
sometimes at the sea of bare treetops that stretched on the slope
below him, sometimes at the darkening sky, covered with white
streaks of cloud. A hawk flew high over a forest far away with a
slow sweep of its wings; another flew with exactly the same motion
in the same direction and vanished. The birds twittered more and
more loudly and busily in the thicket. An owl hooted not far off,
and Laska, starting, stepped cautiously a few steps forward, and,
putting her head on one side, began to listen intently. Beyond the
stream was heard the cuckoo. Twice she uttered her usual call, and
then became hoarse, hurried, and broke down.

"Imagine! The cuckoo already!" said Stepan Arkadyevich, coming out
from behind a bush.

"Yes, I hear it," answered Levin, reluctantly breaking the stillness
with his voice, which sounded disagreeable to himself. "Now it's
coming!"

Stepan Arkadyevich's figure again went behind the bush, and Levin
saw nothing but the bright flash of a match, followed by the red
glow and blue smoke of a cigarette.

Tchk! Tchk! came the snapping sound of Stepan Arkadyevich cocking
his gun.

"What's that cry?" asked Oblonsky, drawing Levin's attention to a
prolonged cry, as though a colt were whinnying in a high voice, in
play.

"Oh, don't you know it? That's a buck hare. But enough talking!
Listen- here it comes!" almost shrieked Levin, cocking his gun.

They heard a shrill whistle in the distance, and in the exact
time, so well known to the sportsman, two seconds later- another, a
third, and, after the third whistle, the hoarse, guttural cry could be
heard.

Levin looked about him to right and to left, and there, just
facing him against the dusky blue sky above the confused mass of
tender shoots of the aspens, he saw the flying bird. It was flying
straight toward him; the guttural cry, like the even tearing of some
strong stuff, sounded close to his ear; the long beak and neck of
the bird could be seen, and at the very instant when Levin was
taking aim, behind the bush where Oblonsky stood, there was a flash of
red lightning: the bird dropped like an arrow, and darted upward
again. Again came the red flash and the sound of a blow, and,
fluttering its wings as though trying to keep up in the air, the
bird paused, stopped still an instant, and fell with a heavy splash to
the slushy ground.

"Can I possibly have missed it?" shouted Stepan Arkadyevich, who
could not see for the smoke.

"Here it is!" said Levin, pointing to Laska, who, with one ear
pricked up, wagging the tip of her shaggy tail, was coming slowly
back, as though she would prolong the pleasure, and seemingly smiling,
was bringing the dead bird to her master. "Well, I'm glad you were
successful," said Levin, who, at the same time, had a sense of envy
that he had not succeeded in shooting the woodcock.

"It was a bad shot from the right barrel," responded Stepan
Arkadyevich, loading his gun. "Sh... Here it comes!"

The shrill whistles rapidly following one another were heard
again. Two woodcocks, playing and chasing one another, and only
whistling, not crying, flew straight at the very heads of the
sportsmen. There was the report of four shots, and like swallows,
the woodcocks turned swift somersaults in the air and vanished from
sight.


The stand shooting was capital. Stepan Arkadyevich shot two more
birds, and Levin two, of which one was not found. It began to get
dark. Venus, bright and silvery, shone with her soft light low down in
the west, behind the birch trees, and high up in the east twinkled the
red fires of somber Arcturus. Over his head Levin made out the stars
of the Great Bear and lost them again. The woodcocks had ceased
flying; but Levin resolved to stay a little longer, till Venus,
which he saw below a branch of birch, should be above it, and the
stars of the Great Bear should be perfectly plain. Venus had risen
above the branch, and the chariot of the Great Bear with its shaft was
now all plainly visible against the dark blue sky, yet still he
waited.

"Isn't it time to go home?" said Stepan Arkadyevich.

It was quite still now in the copse, and not a bird was stirring.

"Let's stay a little while," answered Levin.

"As you like."

They were standing now about fifteen paces from one another.

"Stiva!" said Levin unexpectedly; "how is it you don't tell me
whether your sister-in-law's married yet, or when she's going to be?"

Levin felt so resolute and serene that no answer he fancied could
affect him. But he had never dreamed of the answer which Stepan
Arkadyevich made.

"She's never thought of being married, and isn't thinking of it; but
she's very ill, and the doctors have sent her abroad. They're
positively afraid she may not live."

"What!" cried Levin. "Very ill? What is wrong with her? How is
she?..."

While they were speaking, Laska, with ears pricked up, was looking
upward at the sky, and, reproachfully, at them.

"What a time they have chosen to gab," she was thinking. "There it
comes.... Here it is- yes, sure enough. They'll miss it..." thought
Laska.

But at that very instant both suddenly heard a shrill whistle which,
as it were, smote on their ears, and both suddenly seized their guns
and two flashes gleamed, and two bangs sounded at the very same
instant. The woodcock flying high above instantly folded its wings and
fell into a thicket, bending down the delicate shoots.

"Splendid! Together!" cried Levin, and he ran with Laska into the
thicket to look for the woodcock.

"Oh, yes, what was it that was unpleasant?" he recollected. "Yes,
Kitty's ill... Well, it can't be helped; I'm very sorry," he thought.

"She's found it! Isn't she a clever girl?" he said, taking the
warm bird from Laska's mouth and packing it into the almost full
gamebag. "I've got it, Stiva!" he shouted.

                           XVI.


On the way home Levin asked all the details of Kitty's illness and
of the Shcherbatskys' plans, and though he would have been ashamed
to admit it, he was pleased at what he heard. He was pleased that
there was still hope, and still more pleased that she, who had made
him suffer, should be suffering so much. But when Stepan Arkadyevich
began to speak of the causes of Kitty's illness, and mentioned
Vronsky's name, Levin cut him short.

"I have no right whatever to know family matters, and, to tell the
truth, no interest in them either."

Stepan Arkadyevich smiled a barely perceptible smile, catching the
instantaneous change he knew so well in Levin's face, which had become
as gloomy as it had been bright a minute before.

"Have you quite settled about the forest with Riabinin?" asked
Levin.

"Yes, it's all settled. The price is magnificent- thirty-eight
thousand. Eight straightaway, and the rest in six years. I've been
bothering about it for ever so long. No one would give more."

"Then you've as good as given away your forest for nothing," said
Levin gloomily.

"How do you mean- for nothing?" said Stepan Arkadyevich with a
good-humored smile, knowing that nothing would be right in Levin's
eyes now.

"Because the forest is worth at least five hundred roubles the
dessiatina," answered Levin.

"Oh, these farmers!" said Stepan Arkadyevich playfully. "Your tone
of contempt for us poor townsfolk!... But when it comes to business,
we are better at it than anyone. I assure you I have reckoned it all
out," he said, "and the forest is fetching a very good price- so
much so that I'm afraid of this fellow's crying off, in fact. You know
it's not 'timber forest,'" said Stepan Arkadyevich, hoping by this
distinction to convince Levin completely of the unfairness of his
doubts, "but for the most part firewood. And it won't run to more than
thirty sazhenes of wood per dessiatina, and he's paying me at the rate
of two hundred roubles the dessiatina."

Levin smiled contemptuously. "I know," he thought, "that fashion not
only in him, but in all city people, who, after being twice in ten
years in the country, pick up two or three phrases and use them in
season and out of season, firmly persuaded that they know all about
it. 'Timber, run to thirty sazhenes the dessiatina.' He says those
words without understanding them himself."

"I wouldn't attempt to teach you what you write about in your
office," said he, "and if need arose, I should come to you to ask
about it. But you're so positive you know all the lore of the
forest. It's difficult. Have you counted the trees?"

"How count the trees?" said Stepan Arkadyevich, laughing, still
trying to draw his friend out of his ill temper. "Count sands of seas,
and rays of stars, though could some higher power..."

"Oh, well, the higher power of Riabinin can. Not a single merchant
ever buys a forest without counting the trees, unless they get it
given them for nothing, as you're doing now. I know your forest. I
go there every year shooting, and your forest's worth five hundred a
dessiatina paid down, while he's giving you two hundred by
installments. So that in fact you're making him a present of thirty
thousand."

"Come, don't let your imagination run away with you," said Stepan
Arkadyevich piteously. "Why was it none would give it, then?"

"Why, because he has an understanding with the merchants; he's
bought them off. I've had to do with all of them; I know them. They're
not merchants, you know; they're speculators. He wouldn't look at a
bargain that gave him ten, fifteen per cent profit, but holds back
to buy a rouble's worth for twenty kopecks."

"Well, enough of it! You're out of temper."

"Not in the least," said Levin gloomily, as they drove up to the
house.

At the steps there stood a trap tightly covered with iron and
leather, with a sleek horse tightly harnessed with broad collar
straps. In the trap sat the chubby, tightly belted overseer who served
Riabinin as coachman. Riabinin himself was already in the house, and
met the friends in the hall. Riabinin was a tall, thinnish,
middle-aged man, with mustache and a projecting clean-shaven chin, and
prominent muddy-looking eyes. He was dressed in a long-skirted blue
coat, with buttons below the waist at the back, and wore high boots
wrinkled over the ankles and straight over the calf, with big galoshes
drawn over them. He mopped his face with his handkerchief, and,
wrapping himself in his coat, which sat extremely well as it was, he
greeted them with a smile, holding out his hand to Stepan Arkadyevich,
as though he wanted to catch something.

"So, here you are," said Stepan Arkadyevich, giving him his hand.
"That's capital."

"I did not venture to disregard Your Excellency's commands, though
the road was extremely bad. I positively covered the whole way at a
walk, but I am here on time. Konstantin Dmitrich, my respects"; he
turned to Levin, trying to seize his hand too. But Levin, scowling,
made as though he did not notice his hand, and took out the woodcocks.
"Your honors have been diverting yourselves with the chase? What
kind of bird may it be, pray?" added Riabinin, looking
contemptuously at the woodcocks: "a great delicacy, I suppose." And he
shook his head disapprovingly, as though he had grave doubts whether
this game were worth the candle.

"Would you like to go into my study?" Levin said in French to Stepan
Arkadyevich, scowling morosely. "Go into my study; you can talk
there."

"Quite so, wherever you please," said Riabinin with supercilious
dignity, as though wishing to make it felt that others might be in
difficulties as to how to behave, but that he could never be in any
difficulty about anything.

On entering the study Riabinin looked about, as it was a habit of
his, as though seeking a holy image, but, when he had found it, he did
not cross himself. He scanned the bookcases and bookshelves, and
with the same dubious air with which he had regarded the woodcocks, he
smiled superciliously and shook his head disapprovingly, as though
by no means willing to allow that this game, either, were worth the
candle.

"Well, have you brought the money?" asked Oblonsky. "Sit down."

"Oh, don't trouble about the money. I've come to see you to talk
it over."

"What is there to talk over? But do sit down."

"I don't mind if I do," said Riabinin, sitting down and leaning
his elbows on the back of his armchair in a position of the
intensest discomfort to himself. "You must knock it down a bit,
Prince. It would be a sin otherwise. As for the money, it is ready
definitively, to the last kopeck. As for money down, there'll be no
hitch there."

Levin, who had meanwhile been putting his gun away in the
cupboard, was just going out of the door, but catching the
merchant's words, he stopped.

"Why, you've got the forest for nothing as it is," he said. "He came
to me too late, or I'd have fixed the price for him."

Riabinin got up, and in silence, with a smile, he looked up at
Levin.

"Konstantin Dmitrievich is very close," he said with a smile,
turning to Stepan Arkadyevich; "there's definitively no dealing with
him. I was bargaining for some wheat of him, and a pretty price I
offered too."

"Why should I give you what's mine for nothing? I didn't pick it
up off the ground, nor did I steal it, either."

"Mercy on us! Nowadays there's positively no chance at all of
stealing. With the definitively open courts, and everything done in
style, nowadays there's no question of stealing. We are just talking
things over like gentlemen. His Excellency's asking too much for the
forest. I can't make both ends meet over it. I must ask for a little
concession."

"But is the thing settled between you or isn't it? If it's
settled, it's useless haggling; but if it isn't," said Levin, "I'll
buy the forest."

The smile vanished at once from Riabinin's face. A hawklike, greedy,
cruel expression was left upon it. With rapid, bony fingers he
unbuttoned his coat, revealing a large shirt, bronze waistcoat
buttons, and a watch chain, and quickly pulled out a fat old
pocketbook.

"Here you are, the forest is mine," he said, crossing himself
quickly, and holding out his hand. "Take the money; it's my forest.
That's Riabinin's way of doing business; he doesn't haggle over
every copper," he added, scowling and waving the pocketbook.

"I wouldn't be in a hurry if I were you," said Levin.

"Come, really," said Oblonsky in surprise, "I've given my word,
you know."

Levin went out of the room, slamming the door. Riabinin looked
toward the door and shook his head with a smile.

"It's all youthfulness- definitively nothing but childishness.
Why, I'm buying it, upon my honor, simply, believe me, for the glory
of it, that Riabinin, and no one else, should have bought the copse of
Oblonsky. And as to the profits, why, I must make what God gives.
God's my witness. If you would kindly sign the title deed..."

Within an hour the merchant, carefully stroking his wrapper down,
and hooking up his coat, with the agreement in his pocket, seated
himself in his tightly covered trap, and drove homeward.

"Ugh, these gentlefolk!" he said to the overseer. "They are all made
alike! they're a fine lot!"

"That's so," responded the overseer, handing him the reins and
buttoning the leather apron. "But can I congratulate you on the
purchase, Mikhail Ignatich?"

"Well, well..."

                           XVII.


Stepan Arkadyevich went upstairs with his pocket bulging with
notes which the merchant had paid him for three months in advance. The
business of the forest was over, the money in his pocket; their
shooting had been excellent, and Stepan Arkadyevich was in the
happiest frame of mind, and therefore felt especially anxious to
dissipate the ill-humor that had come upon Levin. He wanted to
finish the day at supper as pleasantly as it had been begun.

Levin certainly was out of humor, and, in spite of all his desire to
be affectionate and cordial to his charming guest, he could not
control his mood. The aftereffects of the intoxication of the news
that Kitty was not married had gradually begun to work upon him.

Kitty was not married, and was ill, and ill from love for a man
who had slighted her. This offense, as it were, rebounded upon him.
Vronsky had slighted her, and she had slighted him, Levin.
Consequently Vronsky had the right to despise Levin, and therefore
he was his enemy. But all this Levin did not think of. He vaguely felt
that there was something in it insulting to him, and he was not
angry now at what had disturbed him, but he fell foul of everything
that presented itself. The stupid sale of the forest, the fraud
practised upon Oblonsky and concluded in his house, exasperated him.

"Well, finished?" he said, meeting Stepan Arkadyevich upstairs.
"Would you like supper?"

"Well, I wouldn't say no to it. What an appetite I get in the
country! Wonderful! Why didn't you offer Riabinin something?"

"Oh, damn him!"

"Still, how you do treat him!" said Oblonsky. "You didn't even shake
hands with him. Why not shake hands with him?"

"Because I don't shake hands with a waiter, and a waiter's a hundred
times better than he is."

"What a reactionist you are, really! What about the amalgamation
of classes?" said Oblonsky.

"Anyone who likes it is welcome to it, but it sickens me."

"You're a downright reactionist, I see."

"Really. I have never considered what I am. I am Konstantin Levin,
and nothing else."

"And Konstantin Levin very much out of temper," said Stepan
Arkadyevich, smiling.

"Yes, I am out of temper, and do you know why? Because- excuse me-
of your stupid sale...."

Stepan Arkadyevich frowned good-humoredly, like one who feels
himself teased and attacked for no fault of his own.

"Come, enough about that!" he said. "When did anybody ever sell
anything without being told immediately after the sale, 'It was
worth much more'? But when one wants to sell, no one will give
anything.... No, I see you've a grudge against that unlucky Riabinin."

"Maybe I have. And do you know why? You'll say again that I'm a
reactionist, or some other terrible word; but all the same it does
annoy and anger me to see on all sides the impoverishing of the
nobility to which I belong, and, in spite of the amalgamation of
classes, I'm glad to belong. And their impoverishment is not due to
living in luxury- that would be nothing; living in good style-
that's the proper thing for noblemen: it's only the nobles who know
how to do it. Now, the peasants about us buy land, and I don't mind
that. The gentleman does nothing, while the peasant works and
supplants the idle man. That's as it should be. And I welcome the
peasant. But I do mind seeing the process of impoverishment from a
sort of- I don't know what to call it- innocence. Here a Polish lessee
bought for half its value a magnificent estate from a lady who lives
in Nice. And there a merchant leases land, worth ten roubles in rent
the dessiatina, for one rouble. Here, for no kind of reason, you've
made that cheat a present of thirty thousand roubles."

"Well, what should I have done? Counted every tree?"

"Of course, they must be counted. You didn't count them, but
Riabinin did. Riabinin's children will have means of livelihood and
education, while yours, like as not, won't!"

"Well, you must excuse me, but there's something mean in this
counting. We have our business and they have theirs, and they must
make their profit. Anyway, the thing's done, and there's an end of it.
And here come some fried eggs, my favorite dish. And Agathya
Mikhailovna will give us that marvelous herb brandy...."

Stepan Arkadyevich sat down at the table and began jollying
Agathya Mikhailovna, assuring her that it was long since he had tasted
such a dinner and such a supper.

"Well, you praise it, at any rate," said Agathya Mikhailovna, "but
Konstantin Dmitrievich, no matter what you give him- even a crust of
bread- will just eat it and walk away."

Though Levin tried to control himself, he was gloomy and silent.
He wanted to put one question to Stepan Arkadyevich, but he could
not bring himself to the point, and could not find the words or the
moment in which to put it. Stepan Arkadyevich had gone down to his
room, undressed, again washed, and, attired in a nightshirt with
goffered frills, had got into bed, but Levin still lingered in his
room, talking of various trifling matters, and not daring to ask
what he wanted to know.

"How wonderfully they make the soap," he said gazing at a piece of
soap he was unwrapping, which Agathya Mikhailovna had placed in
readiness for the guest, but a brand which Oblonsky did not use. "Just
look- why, it's a work of art."

"Yes, everything's brought to such a pitch of perfection
nowadays," said Stepan Arkadyevich, with a moist and blissful yawn.
"The theater, for instance, and the entertainments... A-a-a!" he
yawned. "The electric light everywhere... A-a-a!"

"Yes, the electric light," said Levin. "Yes. Oh, and where's Vronsky
now?" he asked suddenly, laying down the soap.

"Vronsky?" said Stepan Arkadyevich, checking his yawn; "he's in
Peterburg. He left soon after you did, and hasn't been once in
Moscow since. And, do you know, Kostia, I'll tell you the truth," he
went on, leaning his elbow on the table, and, with his hand,
propping up his handsome ruddy face, in which his humid, good-natured,
sleepy eyes shone like stars. "It's your own fault. You took fright at
the sight of your rival. But, as I told you at the time, I couldn't
say which had the better chance. Why didn't you fight it out? I told
you at the time that..." He yawned inwardly, without opening his
mouth.

"Does he know, or doesn't he, that I did propose?" Levin wondered
gazing at him. "Yes, there's something humbugging, something
diplomatic in his face." And, feeling he was blushing, he looked
Stepan Arkadyevich straight in the face without speaking.

"If there was anything on her side at that time, it was nothing
but a superficial attraction," pursued Oblonsky. "His being such a
perfect aristocrat, you know, and his future position in society,
had an influence not with her, but with her mother."

Levin scowled. The humiliation of his rejection stung him to the
heart, as though it were a fresh wound he had only just received.
But he was at home, and the walls of home are a support.

"Wait, wait," he began, interrupting Oblonsky. "You talk of his
being an aristocrat. But allow me to ask what it consists of, that
aristocracy of Vronsky or of anybody else, beside which I can be
looked down upon? You consider Vronsky an aristocrat, but I don't. A
man whose father crawled up from nothing at all by intrigue, and whose
mother- God knows whom she wasn't mixed up with... No, excuse me,
but I consider myself aristocratic, and people like me, who can
point back in the past to three or four honorable generations of their
family, of the highest degree of breeding (talent and intellect, of
course, are another matter), and have never curried favor with anyone,
never depended on anyone for anything, like my father and my
grandfather. And I know many such. You think it mean of me to count
the trees in my forest, while you make Riabinin a present of thirty
thousand; but you get from the government your liferent, and I don't
know what, while I shall not, and so I prize what's come to me from my
ancestors, or has been won by hard work... We are aristocrats, and not
those who can only exist by favor of the powerful ones of this
earth, and who can be bought for twenty kopecks."

"Well, but whom are you attacking? I agree with you," said Stepan
Arkadyevich, sincerely and genially; though he was aware that in the
class of those who could be bought for twenty kopecks Levin was
reckoning him as well. Levin's animation gave him genuine pleasure.
"Whom are you attacking? A good deal of what you say is not true about
Vronsky, of course, but I won't talk about that. I tell you straight
out, if I were you, I should go back with me to Moscow, and..."

"No; I don't know whether you know it or not, but I don't care.
And I tell you- I did propose, and was rejected, and Katerina
Alexandrovna is nothing now to me but a painful and humiliating
reminiscence."

"Why? What nonsense!"

"But we won't talk about it. Please forgive me, if I've been nasty,"
said Levin. Now that he had opened his heart, he became as he had been
in the morning. "You're not angry with me, Stiva? Please don't be
angry," he said, and, smiling, he took his hand.

"Of course not; not a bit- nor is there any reason to be. I'm glad
we've spoken openly. And, do you know, stand shooting in the morning
is usually good- why not go? I might go, without sleeping, straight
from shooting to the station."

"Capital."

                           XVIII.


Although all Vronsky's inner life was absorbed in his passion, his
external life unalterably and inevitably followed along the old
accustomed lines of his social and regimental ties and interests.
The interests of his regiment took an important place in Vronsky's
life, both because he was fond of the regiment, and still more because
the regiment was fond of him. They were not only fond of Vronsky in
his regiment, they respected him too, and were proud of him; proud
that this man, with his immense wealth, his brilliant education and
abilities, and the path open before him to every kind of success,
distinction and ambition, had disregarded all that, and of all the
interests of life had the interests of his regiment and his comrades
nearest to his heart. Vronsky was aware of his comrades' view of
him, and in addition to his liking for that sort of life, he felt
bound to keep up that reputation.

It need not be said that he did not speak of his love to any of
his comrades, nor did he betray his secret even in the wildest
drinking bouts (though indeed he was never so drunk as to lose all
control of himself). And he closed the mouths of any of his
thoughtless comrades who attempted to allude to his liaison. But, in
spite of that, his love was known to all the town; everyone guessed
with more or less certainty at his relations with Madame Karenina. The
majority of the younger men envied him for just what was the most
irksome factor in his love- the exalted position of Karenin, and the
consequent transparency to society, of their liaison.

The greater number of the young women, who envied Anna and had
long been weary of having her called righteous, rejoiced at the
fulfillment of their predictions, and were only waiting for a decisive
turn in public opinion to fall upon her with all the weight of their
scorn. They were already making ready their handfuls of mud to cast at
her when the right moment arrived. The greater number of the
middle-aged people and certain great personages were displeased at the
prospect of the impending scandal in society.

Vronsky's mother, on hearing of his liaison, was at first pleased by
it, because nothing to her mind gave such a finishing touch to a
brilliant young man as a liaison in the highest society; she was
pleased, too, that Madame Karenina, who had so taken her fancy, and
had talked so much of her son, was, after all, just like all the other
pretty and decent women- according to the Countess Vronskaia's
ideas. But she had heard of late that her son had refused a position
offered him of great importance to his career, simply in order to
remain in the regiment, where could be constantly seeing Madame
Karenina; she heard that great personages were displeased with him
on this account, and she changed her opinion. She was vexed, too, that
from all she could learn of this liaison it was not that brilliant,
graceful, worldly liaison which she would have welcomed, but a sort of
Werther's desperate passion, so she was told, which might well lead
him into follies. She had not seen him since his abrupt departure from
Moscow, and she sent her elder son to bid him to come to her.

This elder brother, too, was displeased with his younger brother. He
did not distinguish what sort of love his might be, big or little,
passionate or passionless, pure or impure (he kept a ballet girl
himself, though he was the father of a family, so he was rather
indulgent), but he knew that this love displeased those whom it was
necessary to please, and therefore he did not approve of his brother's
conduct.

Besides the service and society, Vronsky had another great interest-
horses; he was passionately fond of horses.

That year races and a steeplechase had been arranged for the
officers. Vronsky had put his name down, bought a thoroughbred English
mare, and in spite of his love, he was looking forward to the races
with intense, though reserved, excitement....

These two passions did not interfere with one another. On the
contrary, he needed occupation and distraction quite apart from his
love, so as to recruit and rest himself from the violent emotions that
agitated him.

                           XIX.


On the day of the races at Krasnoe Selo, Vronsky had come earlier
than usual to eat beefsteak in the common messroom of the regiment. He
had no need to be strict with himself, as his weight was exactly the
required one; but still he had to avoid gaining flesh, and so he
eschewed farinaceous and sweet dishes. He sat with his coat unbuttoned
over a white waistcoat, resting both elbows on the table, and, while
waiting for the steak he had ordered, was looking over a French
novel that lay open on his plate. He was only looking at the book to
avoid conversation with the officers coming in and out; he was
thinking.

He was thinking of Anna's promise to see him today after the
races. But he had not seen her for three days, and as her husband
had just returned from abroad, he did not know whether she would be
able to meet him today or not, and he did not know how to find out. He
had had his last interview with her at his cousin Betsy's summer
villa. He visited the summer villa of the Karenins as rarely as
possible. Now he wanted to go there, and he pondered the question of
how to do it.

"Of course I shall say Betsy has sent me to ask whether she's coming
to the races. Of course, I'll go," he decided, lifting his head from
the book. And as he vividly pictured the happiness of seeing her,
his face lighted up.

"Send to my house, and tell them to have out the carriage and
three horses as quickly as they can," he said to the servant, who
handed him the steak on a hot silver dish, and moving the dish up
toward him, he began eating.

From the adjoining billiard room came the sound of balls clicking,
of talk and laughter. Two officers appeared at the entrance door: one,
a young fellow with a weak, delicate face, who had lately joined the
regiment from the Corps of Pages; the other, a plump, elderly officer,
with a bracelet on his wrist, and little eyes, lost in fat.

Vronsky glanced at them, frowned, and looking down at his book as
though he had not noticed them, he proceeded to eat and read at the
same time.

"What? Fortifying yourself for your work?" said the plump officer,
sitting down beside him.

"As you see," responded Vronsky, knitting his brows, wiping his
mouth, and without looking at the officer.

"So you're not afraid of getting fat? said the latter, turning a
chair round for the young officer.

"What?" said Vronsky angrily, making a wry face of disgust and
showing his heavy teeth.

"You're not afraid of getting fat?"

"Waiter, sherry!" said Vronsky, without replying, and moving the
book to the other side of him, he went on reading.

The plump officer took up the list of wines and turned to the
young officer.

"You choose what we're to drink," he said, handing him the card, and
looking at him.

"Rhine wine, please," said the young officer, stealing a timid
glance at Vronsky, and trying to pull his scarcely visible mustache.
Seeing that Vronsky did not turn round, the young officer got up.

"Let's go into the billiard room," he said.

The plump officer rose submissively, and they moved toward the door.

At that moment there walked into the room the tan and well-built
Captain Iashvin. Nodding with an air of lofty contempt to the two
officers, he went up to Vronsky.

"Ah! Here he is!" he cried, bringing his big hand down heavily on
his epaulet. Vronsky looked round angrily, but his face lighted up
immediately with his characteristic expression of calm and firm
friendliness.

"That's it, Aliosha," said the captain, in his loud baritone.
"Have a bite and drink one tiny glass."

"Oh, I'm not very hungry."

"There go the inseparables," Iashvin dropped, glancing sarcastically
at the two officers who were at that instant leaving the room. And
he bent his long legs, swathed in tight riding breeches, and sat
down in the chair, too low for him, so that his knees were cramped
up in a sharp angle. "Why didn't you turn up at Theater at Krasnoe
Selo yesterday? Numerova wasn't at all bad. Where were you?"

"I was late at the Tverskys'," said Vronsky.

"Ah!" responded Iashvin.

Iashvin, a gambler and a rake, a man not merely without any
principles, but of immoral principles- Iashvin was Vronsky's
greatest friend in the regiment. Vronsky liked him both for his
exceptional physical strength, which he showed for the most part by
being able to drink like a fish and to do without sleep without
being in the slightest degree affected by it; and for his great
strength of character, which he showed in his relations with his
comrades and superior officers, commanding both fear and respect,
and also at cards, when he would play for tens of thousands and,
however much he might have drunk, always with such skill and
decision that he was reckoned the best player in the English Club.
Vronsky respected and liked Iashvin particularly because he felt
Iashvin liked him, not for his name and his money, but for himself.
And of all men he was the only one with whom Vronsky would have
liked to speak of his love. He felt that Iashvin, in spite of his
apparent contempt for every sort of feeling, was the only man who
could, so he fancied, comprehend the intense passion which now
filled his whole life. Moreover, he felt certain that Iashvin, as it
was, took no delight in gossip and scandal, and interpreted his
feeling rightly- that is to say, knew and believed that this passion
was not a joke, not a pastime, but something more serious and
important.

Vronsky had never spoken to him of his passion, but he was aware
that he knew all about it, and that he put the right interpretation on
it, and he was glad to see this in his eyes.

"Ah! yes," he said, to the announcement that Vronsky had been at the
Tverskys'; and, his black eyes shining, he plucked at his left
mustache, and began twisting it into his mouth- a bad habit he had.

"Well, and what did you do yesterday? Win anything?" asked Vronsky.

"Eight thousand. But three don't count; the chap will hardly pay
up."

"Oh, then you can afford to lose over me," said Vronsky, laughing.
(Iashvin had betted heavily on Vronsky in the races.)

"No chance of my losing. Makhotin's the only one who's a dangerous
entrant."

And the conversation passed to forecasts of the coming race, the
only thing Vronsky could think of just now.

"Come along, I've finished," said Vronsky, and getting up he went to
the door. Iashvin got up too, stretching his long legs and his long
back.

"It's too early for me to dine, but I must have a drink. I'll come
along directly. Hi, wine!" he shouted, in his rich voice, that was
so famous at drill, and set the windows shaking. "No, I don't need
it!" he shouted again, immediately after. "You're going home, so
I'll go with you."

And he walked out with Vronsky.

                           XX.


Vronsky was staying in a roomy, clean, Finnish hut, divided into two
by a partition. Petritsky lived with him in camp too. Petritsky was
asleep when Vronsky and Iashvin came into the hut.

"Get up, don't go on sleeping," said Iashvin, going behind the
partition and giving Petritsky, who was lying with ruffled hair and
with his nose in the pillow, a prod on the shoulder.

Petritsky jumped up suddenly onto his knees and looked around.

"Your brother's been here," he said to Vronsky. "He waked me up, the
devil take him, and said he'd look in again." And pulling up the rug
he flung himself back on the pillow. "Oh do quit that, Iashvin!" he
said, getting furious with Iashvin, who was pulling the rug off him.
"Quit that!" He turned over and opened his eyes. "You'd better tell me
what to drink; I've such a nasty taste in my mouth that..."

"Vodka's better than anything," boomed Iashvin. "Tereshchenko! Vodka
for your master and cucumbers," he shouted, obviously taking
pleasure in the sound of his own voice.

"Vodka, do you think? Eh?" queried Petritsky, blinking and rubbing
his eyes. "And you'll drink something? All right then, we'll have a
drink together! Vronsky, have a drink?" said Petritsky, getting up and
wrapping the tiger-striped bedcover round him. He went to the door
of the partition wall, raised his hands, and hummed in French: "'There
was a king in Thu-u-le.' Vronsky, will you have a drink?"

"Go along," said Vronsky, putting on the coat his valet handed him.

"Where are you off to?" asked Iashvin. "Oh, here is your troika," he
added, seeing the carriage drive up.

"To the stables, and I've got to see Briansky, too, about the
horses," said Vronsky.

Vronsky had as a fact promised to call at Briansky's, some ten
verstas from Peterhof, and to bring him money owing for some horses;
and he hoped to have time to get that in too. But his comrades were at
once aware that that was not the only place he was going.

Petritsky, still humming, winked and made a pout with his lips, as
though he would say: "Oh, yes, we know your Briansky!"

"Mind you're not late!" was Iashvin's only comment; and, to change
the conversation: "How's my roan? Is he doing all right?" he inquired,
looking out of the window at the shaft horse, which he had sold to
Vronsky.

"Stop!" cried Petritsky to Vronsky, just as he was going out.
"Your brother left a letter and a note for you. Wait a bit; where
are they?"

Vronsky stopped.

"Well, where are they?"

"Where are they? That's just the question!" said Petritsky solemnly,
sliding his forefinger upward along his nose.

"Come, tell me; this is silly!" said Vronsky smiling.

"I haven't lighted the fire. They must be here somewhere."

"Come, enough fooling! Where is the letter?"

"No, I've forgotten, really. Or was it a dream? Wait a bit, wait a
bit! But what's the use of getting in a rage? If you'd drunk four
bottles per man yesterday as I did, you'd forget where you were at.
Wait a bit, I'll remember!"

Petritsky went behind the partition and lay down on his bed.

"Wait a bit! This was how I was lying, and this was how he was
standing. Yes- yes- yes... Here it is!"- and Petritsky pulled a letter
out from under the mattress, where he had hidden it.

Vronsky took the letter and his brother's note. It was the letter he
was expecting- from his mother, reproaching him for not having been to
see her- and the note was from his brother to say that he must have
a little talk with him. Vronsky knew that it was all about the same
thing. "What business is it of theirs!" thought Vronsky, and crumpling
up the letters he thrust them between the buttons of his coat so as to
read them carefully on the road. In the porch of the hut he was met by
two officers; one of his regiment and one of another.

Vronsky's quarters were always a meeting place for all the officers.

"Where are you off to?"

"I must go to Peterhof."

"Has the mare come from Tsarskoe?"

"Yes, but I've not seen her yet."

"They say Makhotin's Gladiator's lame."

"Nonsense! However, are you going to race in this mud?" said the
other.

"Here are my saviors!" cried Petritsky, seeing them come in.
Before him stood the batman with vodka and pickled cucumbers on a
tray. "Here's Iashvin, ordering me to drink a pick-me-up."

"Well, you did make it hot for us yesterday," said one of those
who had come in; "you didn't let us get a wink of sleep all night."

"Oh, didn't we make a pretty finish!" said Petritsky. "Volkov
climbed onto the roof and began telling us how sad he was. I said:
'Let's have music, the funeral march!' He fairly dropped asleep on the
roof over the funeral march."

"Drink it up; you positively must drink the vodka, and then
Seltzer water, and a lot of lemon," said Iashvin, standing over
Petritsky like a mother making a child take medicine, "and then a
little champagne- just a wee bottle."

"Come, there's some sense in that. Stop a bit, Vronsky. We'll all
have a drink."

"No; good-by, all of you. I'm not going to drink today."

"Why, are you gaining weight? All right, then we must have it alone.
Give us the Seltzer water and lemon."

"Vronsky!" shouted someone when he was already outside.

"Well?"

"You'd better get your hair cut, it'll weigh you down- especially at
the bald place."

Vronsky was in fact beginning, prematurely, to get a little bald. He
laughed gaily, showing his heavy teeth, and pulling his cap over the
thin place, went out and got into his carriage.

"To the stables!" he said, and was just pulling out the letters to
read them through, but thought better of it, and put off reading
them so as not to distract his attention before looking at the mare.
"Later on!..."

                           XXI.


The temporary stable, a wooden booth, had been put up close to the
racecourse, and there his mare was to have been taken the previous
day. He had not yet seen her there. During the last few days he had
not ridden her out for exercise himself, but had put her in the charge
of the trainer, and so now he absolutely did not know in what
condition his mare had arrived yesterday or was in today. He had
scarcely got out of his carriage when his stableboy (groom),
recognizing the carriage some way off, called the trainer. A
dry-looking Englishman, in high boots and a short jacket,
clean-shaven, except for a tuft below his chin, came to meet him
walking with the uncouth gait of a jockey, turning his elbows out
and swaying from side to side.

"Well, how's Frou-Frou?" Vronsky asked in English.

"All right, sir," the Englishman's voice responded somewhere far
down in his throat. "Better not go in," he added, touching his hat.
"I've put a muzzle on her, and the mare's fidgety. Better not go in,
it'll excite the mare."

"No, I'm going in. I want to look at her."

"Come along, then," said the Englishman, frowning, and speaking with
his mouth shut, and, with swinging elbows, he went on in front with
his disjointed gait.

They went into the little yard in front of the shed. The stableboy
on duty, spruce and smart in his holiday attire, met them with a broom
in his hand, and followed them. In the shed there were five horses
in their separate stalls, and Vronsky knew that his chief rival,
Makhotin's Gladiator, a very tall chestnut horse, had been brought
there, and must be standing among them. Even more than his mare,
Vronsky longed to see Gladiator, whom he had never seen, but Vronsky
knew that by the etiquette of the racecourse it was not merely
impossible for him to see the horse, but improper even to ask
questions about him. just as he was passing along the passage, the boy
opened the door into the second horsebox on the left, and Vronsky
caught a glimpse of a big chestnut horse with white legs. He knew that
this was Gladiator, but, with the feeling of a man turning away from
the sight of another man's open letter, he turned round and went
into Frou-Frou's stall.

"The stall belonging to Ma-k... Mak... I never can say the name-
is here," said the Englishman over his shoulder, pointing his
dirty-nailed thumb toward Gladiator's stall.

"Makhotin? Yes, he's my most serious rival," said Vronsky.

"If you were riding him," said the Englishman, "I'd bet on you.

"Frou-Frou's more nervous, while the other is more powerful," said
Vronsky, smiling at the compliment to his riding.

"In a steeplechase it all depends on riding and on pluck," said
the Englishman.

Of pluck- that is, energy and courage- Vronsky did not merely feel
that he had enough; what was of far more importance, he was firmly
convinced that no one in the world could have more of this pluck
than he had.

"Don't you think I want more sweating down?"

"Oh, no," answered the Englishman. "Please, don't speak loud. The
mare's fidgety," he added, nodding toward the horse box, before
which they were standing, and from which came the sound of restless
stamping in the straw.

He opened the door, and Vronsky went into the horse box, dimly
lighted by one little window. In the horse box stood a dark bay
mare, with a muzzle on, shifting her feet on the fresh straw.
Looking round him in the twilight of the horse box, Vronsky
unconsciously took in once more in a comprehensive glance all the
points of his favorite mare. Frou-Frou was an animal of medium size,
not altogether free from reproach, from a breeder's point of view. She
was small-boned all over; though her chest was extremely prominent
in front, it was narrow. Her hindquarters were a little drooping,
and in her forelegs, and still more in her hind legs, there was a
noticeable curvature. The muscles of both hind legs and forelegs
were not very thick; but across her shoulders the mare was
exceptionally broad, a peculiarity specially striking now that she was
lean from training. The bones of her legs below the knees looked no
thicker than a finger from in front, but were extraordinarily thick
seen from the side. She looked altogether, except across the
shoulders, apparently pinched in at the sides and pressed out in
depth. But she had in the highest degree the quality that makes all
defects forgotten: that quality was blood, the blood that tells, as
the English expression has it. The muscles stood up sharply under
the network of sinews, covered with the delicate, mobile skin, soft as
satin, and they were hard as bone. Her clean-cut head, with prominent,
bright, spirited eyes, broadened out at the open nostrils, that showed
the red blood in the cartilage within. About all her figure, and
especially her head, there was a certain expression of energy, and, at
the same time, of softness. She was one of those creatures which
seem devoid of speech only because the mechanism of their mouths
does not allow of it.

To Vronsky, at any rate, it seemed that she understood all he felt
at that moment as he looked at her.

Directly Vronsky went toward her, she drew in a deep breath, and,
turning back her prominent eye tin the white looked bloodshot, she
started at the approaching figures from the opposite side, shaking her
muzzle, and shifting lightly from one leg to the other.

"There, you see how fidgety she is," said the Englishman.

"Whoa, darling! Whoa!" said Vronsky, going up to the mare and
speaking soothingly to her.

But the nearer he came, the more excited she grew. Only when he
stood by her head she was suddenly quieter, while the muscles quivered
under her soft, delicate coat. Vronsky patted her strong neck,
straightened over her sharp withers a stray lock of her mane that
had fallen on the other side, and moved his face near her dilated
nostrils, transparent as a bat's wing. She drew a loud breath and
snorted out through her tense nostrils, started, pricked up her
sharp ear, and put out her strong, black lip toward Vronsky, as though
she would nip hold of his sleeve. But remembering the muzzle, she
shook it and again began restlessly stamping her shapely legs one
after the other.

"Calm down, darling, calm down!" he said, patting her again over her
hindquarters; and, with a glad sense that his mare was in the best
possible condition, he went out of the horse box.

The mare's excitement had infected Vronsky. He felt that his heart
was throbbing, and that he, too, like the mare, longed to move, to
bite; it was both fearful and delicious.

"Well, I rely on you, then," he said to the Englishman, "half-past
six on the ground."

"All right," said the Englishman. "Oh, where are you going, my
lord?" he asked suddenly, using the title my lord, which he scarcely
ever used.

Vronsky in amazement raised his head, and stared, as he knew how
to stare, not into the Englishman's eyes, but at his forehead,
astounded at the impertinence of his question. But realizing that in
asking this the Englishman had been looking at him not as an employer,
but as a jockey, he answered:

"I've got to go to Briansky's; I shall be home within an hour."

"How often I'm asked that question today!" he said to himself, and
he blushed, a thing which rarely happened to him. The Englishman
looked gravely at him; and, as though he, too, knew where Vronsky
was going, he added:

"The great thing is to keep quiet before a race," said he; "don't
get out of temper, or upset about anything."

"All right," answered Vronsky, smiling; and, jumping into his
carriage, he told the man to drive to Peterhof.

Before he had driven many paces away, the dark clouds that had
been threatening rain all day broke, and there was a heavy downpour of
rain.

"What a pity!" thought Vronsky, putting up the roof of the carriage.
"It was muddy before, now it will be a perfect swamp." As he sat in
solitude in the closed carriage, he took out his mother's letter and
his brother's note, and read them through.

Yes, it was the same thing over and over again. Everyone- his
mother, his brother- everyone thought fit to interfere in the
affairs of his heart. This interference aroused in him a feeling of
angry hatred- a feeling he had rarely known before. "What business
is it of theirs? Why does everybody feel called upon to concern
himself about me? And why do they worry me so? Just because they see
that this is something they can't understand. If it were a common,
vulgar, worldly intrigue, they would have left me alone. They feel
that this is something different, that this is not a mere pastime,
that this woman is dearer to me than life. And this is
incomprehensible, and that's why it annoys them. Whatever our
destiny is or may be, we have made it ourselves, and we do not
complain of it," he said, in the word we linking himself with Anna.
"No, they must needs teach us how to live. They haven't an idea of
what happiness is; they don't know that without our love there is
for us neither happiness nor unhappiness- no life at all," he thought.

He was angry with all of them for their interference just because he
felt in his soul that they, all these people, were right. He felt that
the love that bound him to Anna was not a momentary impulse, which
would pass, as worldly intrigues do pass, leaving no other traces in
the life of either save pleasant or unpleasant memories. He felt all
the torture of his own position and hers, all the difficulty in
store for them, conspicuous as they were in the eye of all the
world- in concealing their love, in lying and deceiving; and in lying,
deceiving, feigning and continually thinking of others, when the
passion that united them was so intense that they were both
oblivious of everything else save their love.

He vividly recalled all the constantly recurring instances of
inevitable necessity for lying and deceit, which were so against his
natural bent. He recalled particularly vividly the shame he had more
than once detected in her at this necessity for lying and deceit.
And he experienced the strange feeling that had sometimes come upon
him since his relations with Anna. This was a feeling of loathing
for something- whether for Alexei Alexandrovich, or for himself, or
for the whole world, he could not have said. But he always drove
away this strange feeling. Now, too, he shook it off and continued the
thread of his thoughts.

"Yes, she was unhappy before, but proud and at peace; and now she
cannot be at peace and feel secure in her dignity, though she does not
show it. Yes, we must put an end to it," he decided.

And for the first time the idea clearly presented itself that it was
essential to put an end to this false position, and the sooner the
better. "Abandon everything must we- she and I- and hide ourselves
somewhere alone with our love," he said to himself.

                           XXII.


The shower did not last long, and by the time Vronsky arrived, his
shaft horse trotting at full speed, and dragging the off horses
galloping through the mud with their reins hanging loose, the sun
had peeped out again, the roofs of the summer villas and the old
lime trees in the gardens on both sides of the high street sparkled
with wet brilliance, and from the twigs came a pleasant drip, and,
from the roofs, rushing streams of water. He thought no more of shower
spoiling the racecourse, but was now rejoicing because- thanks to
the rain- he would be sure to find her at home and alone, as he knew
that Alexei Alexandrovich, who had lately returned from a watering
place, had not moved from Peterburg.

Hoping to find her alone, Vronsky alighted, as he always did, to
avoid attracting attention, before crossing the bridge, and walked
to the house. He did not go up the steps to the street door, but
went into the court.

"Has your master come?" he asked a gardener.

"No, sir. The mistress is at home. But will you please go to the
front door; there are servants there," the gardener answered. "They'll
open the door."

"No, I'll go in from the garden."

And feeling satisfied that she was alone, and wanting to take her by
surprise, since he had not promised to be there today, and she would
certainly not expect him to come before the races, he walked,
holding his sword and stepping cautiously over the sandy path,
bordered with flowers, to the terrace that looked out upon the garden.
Vronsky forgot now all that he had thought on the way of the hardships
and difficulties of his position. He thought of nothing but that he
would see her directly, not in imagination, but living, all of her, as
she was in reality. He was just going in, stepping on his whole foot
so as not to make a noise, up the worn steps of the terrace, when he
suddenly remembered what he always forgot, and what caused the most
torturing side of his relations with her: her son, with his
questioning, and, as he fancied, hostile eyes.

This boy was more often than anyone else a check upon their freedom.
When he was present, both Vronsky and Anna did not merely avoid
speaking of anything that they could not have repeated before
everyone; they did not even allow themselves to refer by hints to
anything the boy did not understand. They had made no agreement
about this, it had been settled of itself. They would have felt it
as wounding themselves to deceive the child. In his presence they
talked like acquaintances. But, in spite of this caution, Vronsky
often saw the child's intent, bewildered glance fixed upon him, and
a strange shyness, uncertainty- at one time there was friendliness, at
another coldness and reserve, in the boy's manner to him, as though
the child felt that between this man and his mother there existed some
important bond, the significance of which he could not understand.

As a matter of fact the boy did feel that he could not understand
this relation, and he tried painfully, yet was unable, to make clear
to himself what feeling he ought to have for this man. With a
child's keen instinct for every manifestation of feeling he saw
distinctly that his father, his governess, his nurse- all not merely
disliked Vronsky, but looked on him with horror and aversion, though
they never said anything about him; while his mother looked on him
as her greatest friend.

"What does it mean? Who is he? How ought I to love him? If I don't
know, it's my fault; either I'm stupid or a naughty boy," thought
the child. And this was what caused his dubious, inquiring,
sometimes hostile expression, and the shyness and uncertainty which
Vronsky found so irksome. This child's presence always and
infallibly called up in Vronsky that strange feeling of inexplicable
loathing which he had experienced of late. This child's presence
called up both in Vronsky and in Anna a feeling akin to the feeling of
a sailor who sees by the compass that the direction in which he is
swiftly moving is far from the right one, but that to arrest his
motion is not in his power, that every instant is carrying him farther
and farther away, and that to admit to himself his deviation from
the right direction is tantamount to admitting his certain ruin.

This child, with his innocent outlook upon life, was the compass
that showed them the point at which they had departed from what they
knew, yet did not want to know.

This time Seriozha was not at home, and she was completely alone.
She was sitting on the terrace waiting for the return of her son,
who had gone out for a stroll and had been caught in the rain. She had
sent out a manservant and a maid to look for him, and was sitting here
waiting for them. Dressed in a white gown, deeply embroidered, she was
sitting in a corner of the terrace behind some flowers, and did not
hear him. Bending her curly dark head, she pressed her forehead
against a cool watering pot that stood on the parapet, and both her
lovely hands, with the rings he knew so well, clasped the pot. The
beauty of her whole figure, her head, her neck, her hands, struck
Vronsky every time as something new and unexpected. He stood still,
gazing at her in ecstasy. But, directly he would have made a step to
come nearer to her, she was aware of his presence, pushed away the
watering pot, and turned her flushed face toward him.

"What's the matter? Are you unwell," he said to her in French, going
up to her. He would have run to her, but remembering that there
might be outsiders, he looked round toward the balcony door, and
reddened, as he always reddened, feeling that he had to be afraid
and be on his guard.

"No, I'm quite well," she said, getting up and squeezing his
outstretched hand tightly. "I did not expect... thee."

"My God! what cold hands!" he said.

"You startled me," she said. "I'm alone, and expecting Seriozha;
he's out for a walk; they'll come from this direction."

But, in spite of her efforts to be calm, her lips were quivering.

"Forgive me for coming, but I couldn't pass the day without seeing
you," he went on, speaking French, as he always did, to avoid using
the stiff Russian plural form, so impossibly frigid between them,
and the dangerously intimate singular.

"Forgive- for what I'm so glad!"

"But you're ill or worried," he went on, without letting go her
hands and bending over her. "What were you thinking of?"

"Always of the same thing." she said, with a smile.

She spoke the truth. If ever at any moment she had been asked what
she was thinking of, she could have answered truly: Of the same thing,
of her happiness and her unhappiness. She was thinking, just when he
came upon her, of this: Why was it, she wondered, that to others, to
Betsy for instance (she knew of her secret connection with
Tushkevich), all this was so easy, while to her it was such torture?
Today this thought gained special poignancy from certain other
considerations. She asked him about the races. He answered her
questions, and, seeing that she was agitated, trying to calm her, he
began telling her in the simplest tone the details of his preparations
for the races.

"Shall I tell him, or not?" she thought, looking into his calm,
affable eyes. "He is so happy, so absorbed in his races that he
won't understand as he should; he won't understand all the
significance of this event to us."

"But you haven't told me what you were thinking of when I came
in," he said, interrupting his narrative; "pray, tell me!"

She did not answer, and, bending her head a little, she looked
inquiringly at him from under her brows, her eyes shining under
their long lashes. Her hand shook as it played with a leaf she had
picked. He saw it, and his face expressed that utter subjection,
that slavish devotion, which had done so much to win her.

"I see something has happened. Do you suppose I can be at peace,
knowing you have a trouble I am not sharing? Tell me, for God's sake!"
he repeated imploringly.

"Yes, I shan't be able to forgive him if he does not realize all the
significance of it. Better not tell; why put him to the proof?" she
thought, still staring at him in the same way, and feeling that her
hand that held the leaf was trembling more and more.

"For God's sake!" he repeated, taking her hand.

"Shall I tell you?"

"Yes, yes, yes..."

"I am pregnant," she said, softly and slowly.

The leaf in her hand shook more violently, but she did not take
her eyes off him, watching how he would take it. He turned pale, would
have said something, but stopped; he dropped her hand, and his head
sank on his breast. "Yes, he realizes all the significance of the
fact," she thought, and gratefully she pressed his hand.

But she was mistaken in thinking he realized the significance of the
news as she, a woman, realized it. On hearing it, he felt come upon
him with tenfold intensity that strange feeling of loathing of
someone. But, at the same time, he realized that the turning point
he had been longing for had come now; that it was impossible to go
on concealing things from her husband, and it was inevitable in one
way or another that they should soon put an end to their unnatural
position. But, besides that, her emotion physically affected him in
the same way. He looked at her with a look of submissive tenderness,
kissed her hand, got up, and, in silence, paced up and down the
terrace.

"Yes," he said, going up to her resolutely. "Neither you nor I
have looked on our relations as a passing amusement, and now our
fate is sealed. It is absolutely necessary to put an end"- he looked
round as he spoke- "to the deception in which we are living."

"Put an end? Put an end how, Alexei?" she said softly.

She was calmer now, and her face lighted up with a tender smile.

"Leave your husband and make our life one."

"It is one as it is," she answered, scarcely audibly.

"Yes, but completely, completely."

"But how, Alexei- tell me how?" she said in melancholy mockery at
the hopelessness of her own situation. "Is there any way out of such a
situation? Am I not the wife of my husband?"

"There is a way out of every situation. We must take our stand,"
he said. "Anything's better than the situation in which you're living.
Of course, I see how you torture yourself over everything- the
world, and your son, and your husband."

"Oh, not over my husband," she said, with a plain smile. "I don't
know him, I don't think of him. He doesn't exist."

"You're not speaking sincerely. I know you. You worry about him
too."

"Oh, he doesn't even know," she said, and suddenly a hot flush
came over her face; her cheeks, her brow, her neck crimsoned, and
tears of shame came into her eyes. "But let us not even talk of him."

                           XXIII.


Vronsky had several times already, though not so resolutely as
now, tried to bring her to consider her position, and every time he
had been confronted by the same superficiality and frivolity with
which she met his appeal now. It was as though there were something in
this which she could not or would not face, as though directly she
began to speak of this, she, the real Anna, retreated somehow into
herself, and another strange and unaccountable woman came out, whom he
did not love and whom he feared, and who was in opposition to him. But
today he was resolved to have it out.

"Whether he knows or not," said Vronsky, in his usual calm and
firm tone, "whether he knows or not, has nothing to do with us. We
cannot... You cannot stay like this, especially now."

"What's to be done, according to you?" she asked with the same
frivolous irony. She who had so feared he would take her condition too
frivolously, was now vexed with him for deducing from it the necessity
of taking some step.

"Tell him everything, and leave him."

"Very well, let us suppose I do that," she said. "Do you know what
the result of that would be? I can tell you it all beforehand," and
a wicked light gleamed in her eyes, that had been so tender a minute
before. "'Eh, you love another man, and have entered into a criminal
liaison with him?'" (Mimicking her husband, she threw an emphasis on
the word "criminal," as Alexei Alexandrovich did.) "'I warned you of
the results in the religious, the civil, and the domestic aspects. You
have not listened to me. Now I cannot let you disgrace my name'"- "and
my son," she had meant to say, but about her son she could not jest-
"'disgrace my name, and'- and more in the same style," she added.
"In general terms, he'll say in his official manner, and with all
distinctness and precision, that he cannot let me go, but will take
all measures in his power to prevent scandal. And he will calmly and
punctiliously act in accordance with his words. That's what will
happen. He's not a man, but a machine- and a spiteful machine when
he's angry," she added, recalling Alexei Alexandrovich as she spoke,
with all the peculiarities of his figure and manner of speaking, and
reckoning against him every defect she could find in him, forgiving
him nothing for the great wrong she herself was doing him.

"But, Anna," said Vronsky, in a soft and persuasive voice, trying to
soothe her, "we absolutely must tell him, at any rate, and then be
guided by the line he takes."

"What- run away?"

"And why not run away? I don't see how we can keep on like this. And
not for my sake- I see that you suffer."

"Yes, run away, and become your mistress," she said angrily.

"Anna," he said, with reproachful tenderness.

"Yes," she went on, "become your mistress, and complete the ruin
of..."

Again she would have said "my son," but she could not utter that
word.

Vronsky could not understand how she, with her strong and truthful
nature, could endure this state of deceit, and not long to get out
of it. But he did not suspect that the chief cause of it was the
word son, which she could not utter. When she thought of her son,
and his future attitude to his mother, who had abandoned his father,
she felt such terror at what she had done that she no longer reasoned,
but, being a woman, could only try to comfort herself with lying
assurances and words so that everything should remain as it always had
been, and that it was possible to forget the fearful question of how
it would be with her son.

"I beg you, I entreat you," she said suddenly, taking his hand,
and speaking in quite a different tone, sincere and tender, "never
speak to me of that!"

"But, Anna..."

"Never. Leave it to me. I know all the baseness, all the horror of
my position; but it's not so easy to decide as you think. Therefore
leave it to me, and do what I say. Never speak to me of it. Do you
promise me?... No, no, promise!..."

"I promise everything, but I can't be at peace, especially after
what you have told me I can't be at peace, when you can't be at
peace...."

"I?" she repeated. "Yes, I am worried sometimes; but that will pass,
if you will never talk about this. When you talk about it- it's only
then it worries me."

"I don't understand," he said.

"I know," she interrupted him, "how hard it is for your truthful
nature to lie, and I grieve for you. I often think, how could you ruin
your whole life for me."

"I was just thinking the very same thing," he said; "how could you
sacrifice everything for my sake? I can't forgive myself because
you're unhappy."

"I unhappy?" she said, coming closer to him, and looking at him with
an ecstatic smile of love. "I am like a hungry man who has been
given food. He may be cold, and dressed in rags, and ashamed, but he
is not unhappy. I unhappy? No, this is my happiness...."

She could hear the sound of her son's voice coming toward them, and,
glancing swiftly round the terrace, she got up impulsively. Her eyes
glowed with the fire he knew so well; with a rapid movement she raised
her lovely hands, covered with rings, took his head, looked into his
face with a protracted gaze, and, putting up her face with smiling,
parted lips, swiftly kissed his mouth and both eyes, and thrust him
away. She would have gone, but he held her back.

"When?" he murmured in a whisper, gazing in ecstasy at her.

"Tonight, at one o'clock," she whispered, and, with a heavy sigh,
she walked with her light, swift step to meet her son.

Seriozha had been caught by the rain in the big garden, and he and
his nurse had taken shelter in a bower.

"Well, au revoir," she said to Vronsky. "I must soon be getting
ready for the races. Betsy promised to fetch me."

Vronsky, looking at his watch, hurriedly drove off.
