APDL Eductation Resources/APDL Eductation Resources.iso/text/authors/tolstoy/annakareni/ANNA_K_4

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                           XV.


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

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

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

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

Anna read the note and heaved a deep sigh.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"In what way?"

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes, it's very wrong," said Anna, and taking her son by the
shoulder she looked at him, not severely, but with a timid glance that
bewildered and delighted the boy, and she kissed him. "Leave him to
me," she said to the astonished governess, and without letting go of
her son, she sat down at the table, where coffee was set ready for
her.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Standing still, and looking at the tops of the aspen trees waving in
the wind, with their freshly washed, brightly shining leaves in the
cold sunshine, she knew that they would not forgive her, that everyone
and everything would be merciless to her now as was that sky, that
green. And again she felt that everything was doubling in her soul. "I
mustn't, mustn't think," she said to herself. "I must get ready. To go
where? When? Whom to take with me? Yes- to Moscow, by the evening
train. Annushka and Seriozha, and only the most necessary things.
But first I must write to them both." She went quickly indoors into
her boudoir, sat down at the table, and wrote to her husband:

"After what has happened I cannot remain any longer in your house. I
am going away, and taking my son with me. I don't know the law; and so
I don't know with which of the parents the son should remain; but I
take him with me because I cannot live without him. Be generous, leave
him to me."

Up to this point she wrote rapidly and naturally, but the appeal
to his generosity, a quality she did not recognize in him, and the
necessity of winding up the letter with something touching, pulled her
up.

"Of my fault and my remorse I cannot speak, because..."

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

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

                           XVI.


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

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

"The messenger has orders to wait for an answer," he said.

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

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

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

"How was it I didn't guess what he would do? He's doing just
what's natural to his mean character. He'll keep himself in the right,
while he'll drive me, in my ruin, still lower, still to worse ruin..."

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

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

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

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

She sat down at the writing table, but instead of writing she
clasped her hands on the table, and, laying her head on them, burst
into tears, with sobs and heaving breast, like a child crying. She was
weeping because her dream of her position being made clear and
definite had been annihilated forever. She knew beforehand that
everything would go on in the old way, and far worse, indeed, than
in the old way. She felt that her position in the world she enjoyed,
and which had seemed to her of so little consequence in the morning,
was now precious to her, that she would not have the strength to
exchange it for the shameful position of a woman who has abandoned
husband and child to join her lover; that however much she might
struggle, she could not be stronger than herself. She would never know
freedom in love, but would remain forever a guilty wife, with the
menace of detection hanging over her at every instant; deceiving her
husband for the sake of a shameful connection with a man living
apart and away from her, whose life she could never share. She knew
that this was how it would be, and at the same time it was so awful
that she could not even conceive what it would end in. And she cried
without restraint, as children cry when they are punished.

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

"The messenger asks if there's any answer," the footman informed
her.

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

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

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

"Not going at all?"

"No; don't unpack till tomorrow, and let the carriage wait. I'm
going to the Princess."

"Which dress am I to get ready?"

                           XVII.


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

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

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

As she took off her outer garment in the hall, she heard the footman
say, rolling his r's even like a Kammerjunker: "From the Count for the
Princess," as he handed over the note.

She longed to question him as to where his master was. She longed to
turn back and send him a letter to come and see her, or to go
herself to see him. But none of the three courses was possible.
Already she heard bells ringing ahead of her to announce her
arrival, and Princess Tverskaia's footman was standing at the open
door waiting for her to pass into the inner rooms.

"The Princess is in the garden; she will be informed immediately.
Would you be pleased to walk into the garden?" announced another
footman in another room.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Taking the note from him, she read it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I must write to Alexei, though," and Betsy sat down to the table,
scribbled a few lines, and put the note in an envelope. "I'm telling
him to come to dinner. I've one lady extra to dinner with me, and no
man to take her in. Look what I've said- will that persuade him?
Excuse me, I must leave you for a minute. Would you seal it up,
please, and send it off? she said from the door; "I have to give
some directions."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The husband? Liza Merkalova's husband carries her shawl, and is
always ready to be of use. But no one cares to inquire about what is
really going on. You know, in decent society one doesn't talk or think
even of certain details of the toilet. That's how it is in this case."

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

"I don't think so," answered Betsy, and, without looking at her
friend, she began filling the little transparent cups with fragrant
tea. Putting a cup before Anna, she took out a thin cigarette, and,
fitting it into a silver holder, she lighted it. "It's like this,
you see: I'm in a fortunate position," she began, quite serious now,
as she took up her cup. "I understand you, and I understand Liza. Liza
now is one of those naive natures that, like children, don't know
what's good and what's bad. Anyway, she didn't comprehend it when
she was very young. And now she's aware that the lack of comprehension
suits her. Now, perhaps, she doesn't know on purpose," said Betsy,
with a subtle smile. "But, anyway, it suits her. The very same
thing, don't you see, may be looked at tragically, and turned into
misery, or it may be looked at simply, and even humorously. Possibly
you are inclined to look at things too tragically."

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

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

                           XVIII.


They heard the sound of steps and a man's voice, then a woman's
voice and laughter, and immediately thereafter there walked in the
expected guests: Sappho Stoltz, and a young man beaming with excess of
health, the so-called Vaska. It was evident that ample supplies of
beefsteak, truffles, and Burgundy were profitable for his health.
Vaska bowed to the two ladies, and glanced at them, but only for one
second. He walked after Sappho into the drawing room, and followed her
about as though he were chained to her, keeping his sparkling eyes
fixed on her as though he wanted to eat her. Sappho Stoltz was a
blonde beauty with black eyes. She walked with smart little steps in
high-heeled shoes, and shook hands with the ladies vigorously, like
a man.

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

Betsy made haste to introduce her to Anna.

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

Sappho laughed still more festively.

"Not just now," said she.

"It's all one, I'll have it later."

"Very well, very well. Oh, yes," she turned suddenly to Princess
Betsy: "I am a nice person... I positively forgot it.... I've
brought you a visitor. And here he comes."

The unexpected young visitor, whom Sappho had brought with her,
and whom she had forgotten, was, however, a personage of such
consequence that, in spite of his youth, both the ladies rose on his
entrance.

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

Soon after Prince Kaluzhsky arrived, and Liza Merkalova with
Stremov. Liza Merkalova was a thin brunette, with an Oriental, languid
type of face, and charming- as everyone used to say- ineffable eyes.
The tone of her dark dress (Anna immediately observed and
appreciated the fact) was in perfect harmony with her style of beauty.
Liza was as soft and loose as Sappho was tight and shackled.

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

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

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

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

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

"Oh, I like it," said Anna.

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

"How can you be bored? Why, you live among the merriest people in
Peterburg," said Anna.

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

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

"You bored?" said Betsy. "Sappho says they enjoyed themselves
tremendously at your house last night."

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

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

"That's the best way," Stremov put in.

Stremov was a man of fifty, partly gray, but still vigorous in
appearance, very ugly, but with a characteristic and intelligent face.
Liza Merkalova was his wife's niece, and he spent all his leisure
hours with her. On meeting Anna Karenina, since he was Alexei
Alexandrovich's enemy in the government, he tried, like a shrewd man
and a man of the world, to be particularly cordial with her, the
wife of his enemy.

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

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

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

"To sleep well one should work, and to enjoy oneself one should also
work."

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

"You're incorrigible," said Stremov, without looking at her, and
he spoke again to Anna.

As he rarely met Anna, he could say nothing but banalities to her,
but he said those banalities, when was she returning to Peterburg, and
how fond Countess Lidia Ivanovna was of her- with an expression
which suggested that he longed with his whole soul to please her,
and show his regard for her- and even more than that.

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

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

"It's too violent a transition," he said, "to go from such company
to old Madame Vrede. And, besides, you will only give her a chance for
talking scandal, while here you will arouse other feelings, of the
finest and directly opposed to scandal," he said to her.

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

                           XIX.


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

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

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

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

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

                           XX.


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ambition was the old dream of his youth and childhood, a dream which
he did not confess even to himself, though it was so strong that now
this passion was even doing battle with his love. His first steps in
the world and in the service had been successful, but two years before
he had made a great mistake. Anxious to show his independence, and for
the sake of advancement, he had refused a post that had been offered
him, hoping that this refusal would heighten his value; but it
turned out that he had been too bold, and he was passed over. And
having, whether he liked or not, taken up for himself the position
of an independent man, he carried it off with great tact and good
sense, behaving as though he bore no grudge against anyone, nor
regarding himself as injured in any way, and caring for nothing but to
be left alone since he was enjoying himself. In reality he had
ceased to enjoy himself as long ago as the year before, when he had
gone to Moscow. He felt that this independent attitude of a man who
might have done anything, but cared to do nothing, was already
beginning to pall, that many people were beginning to fancy that he
was not really capable of anything but being a straightforward,
good-natured fellow. His connection with Madame Karenina, by
creating so much sensation and attracting general attention, had given
him a fresh distinction, which had soothed his gnawing worm of
ambition for a while; but a week ago that worm had been roused up
again with fresh force. The friend of his childhood, a man of the same
set, of the same coterie, his comrade in the Corps of Pages,
Serpukhovskoy, who had left school with him, and had been his rival in
class, in gymnastics, in their scrapes and their dreams of glory,
had come back a few days before from Central Asia, where he had gained
two steps up in rank, and an order rarely bestowed upon generals so
young.

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

                           XXI.


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

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

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

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

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

"Serpukhovskoy's come."

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

The smile in his eyes gleamed more brightly than ever.

Having once made up his mind that he was happy in his love, that
he sacrificed his ambition to it- at any rate, having taken up this
role- Vronsky was incapable of feeling either envious of
Serpukhovskoy, or vexed at him for not having come to him first upon
coming to the regiment. Serpukhovskoy was a good friend, and he was
delighted he had come.

"Ah, I'm very glad!"

The colonel, Demin, had taken a large country house. The whole party
was on the wide lower balcony. In the courtyard the first objects that
met Vronsky's eyes were a band of singers in short white linen
jackets, standing near a barrel of vodka, and the robust, good-humored
figure of the colonel surrounded by officers. He had gone out as far
as the first step of the balcony and was loudly shouting to drown
out the band playing an Offenbach quadrille, waving his arms and
giving some orders to a few soldiers standing on one side. A group
of soldiers, a quartermaster, and several subalterns came up to the
balcony with Vronsky. The colonel returned to the table, went out
again on the steps with a tumbler in his hand, and proposed the toast,
"To the health of our former comrade, the gallant general, Prince
Serpukhovskoy. Hurrah!"

The colonel was followed by Serpukhovskoy, who came out on the steps
smiling, with a glass in his hand.

"You always get younger, Bondarenko," he said to the rosy-cheeked,
smart-looking sergeant standing just before him, still
youngish-looking though doing his second term of service.

It was three years since Vronsky had seen Serpukhovskoy. He looked
more robust, had let his whiskers grow, but was still the same
graceful creature, whose face and figure were even more striking
from their fineness and nobility than their beauty. The only change
Vronsky detected in him was that subdued, continual beaming which
settles on the faces of men who are successful and are sure of the
recognition of their success by everyone. Vronsky knew that radiant
air, and immediately observed it in Serpukhovskoy.

As Serpukhovskoy came down the steps he saw Vronsky. A smile of
pleasure lighted up his face. He tossed his head upward and waved
the glass in his hand, greeting Vronsky, and showing him by the
gesture that he could not come to him before kissing the sergeant
who stood craning forward his lips ready to be kissed.

"Here he is!" shouted the colonel. "Iashvin told me you were in
one of your gloomy tempers."

Serpukhovskoy kissed the moist, fresh lips of the brave sergeant,
and, wiping his mouth with his handkerchief, walked up to Vronsky.

"How glad I am!" he said, squeezing his hand and drawing him to
one side.

"You look after him," the colonel shouted to Iashvin, pointing to
Vronsky; and he went down below to the soldiers.

"Why weren't you at the races yesterday? I expected to see you
there," said Vronsky, scrutinizing Serpukhovskoy.

"I did go, but late. I beg your pardon," he added, and turned to the
adjutant: "Please have this distributed from me, each man as much as
it comes to."

And he hurriedly took three notes for a hundred roubles each from
his pocketbook, and blushed.

"Vronsky! Have a bite or a drink?" asked Iashvin. "Hi, something for
the Count to eat! There- drink that."

The spree at the colonel's lasted a long while.

There was a great deal of drinking. They swung Serpukhovskoy and
tossed him in the air. Then they did the same to the colonel. Then, to
the accompaniment of the band, the colonel himself danced with
Petritsky. Then the colonel, who began to show signs of weakening, sat
down on a bench in the courtyard and began demonstrating to Iashvin
the superiority of Russia over Prussia, especially in cavalry
attack, and there was a lull in the revelry for a moment.
Serpukhovskoy went into the house to the bathroom to wash his hands
and found Vronsky there- Vronsky was sousing his head with water. He
had taken off his coat and put his red hairy neck under the tap, and
was rubbing it and his head with his hands. When he had finished,
Vronsky sat down by Serpukhovskoy. They both sat down in the
bathroom on a lounge, and a conversation began which was very
interesting to both of them.

"I've always been hearing about you through my wife," said
Serpukhovskoy. "I'm glad you've been seeing her pretty often."

"She's friendly with Varia, and they're the only women in
Peterburg I care about seeing," answered Vronsky, smiling. He smiled
because he foresaw the topic the conversation would turn to, and he
was glad of it.

"The only ones?" Serpukhovskoy queried, smiling.

"Yes; and I heard news of you, but not only through your wife," said
Vronsky, checking Serpukhovskoy's hint by assuming a stern expression.
"I was greatly delighted to hear of your success, but not a bit
surprised. I expected even more."

Serpukhovskoy smiled. Such an opinion of him was obviously agreeable
to him, and he did not think it necessary to conceal it.

"Well, I, on the contrary, expected less- I'll own up frankly. But
I'm glad, very glad. I'm ambitious- that's my weakness, and I
confess to it."

"Perhaps you wouldn't confess to it if you hadn't been
successful," said Vronsky.

"I don't suppose so," said Serpukhovskoy, smiling again. "I won't
say life wouldn't be worth living without it, but it would be dull. Of
course I may be mistaken, but I fancy I have a certain capacity for
the line I've chosen, and that if there is to be power of any sort
in my hands, it will be better than in the hands of a good many people
I know," said Serpukhovskoy, with beaming consciousness of success;
"and so the nearer I get to it, the better pleased I am."

"Perhaps that is true for you, but not for everyone. I used to think
so too, but now I see and think life worth living not only for that."

"There it comes! there it comes!" said Serpukhovskoy laughing. "Ever
since I heard about you, about your refusal, I began... Of course, I
approved of what you did. But there are ways of doing everything.
And I think your action was good in itself, but you didn't do it in
quite the way you should have done."

"What's done can't be undone, and you know I never go back on what
I've done. And, besides, I'm very well off."

"Very well off- for the time. But you're not satisfied with that.
I wouldn't say this to your brother. He's a charming child, like our
host here. There he goes!" he added, listening to the roar of a
"hurrah!"- "and he's happy; that does not satisfy you."

"I didn't say it did."

"Yes, but that's not the only thing. Such men as you are wanted."

"By whom?"

"By whom? By society, by Russia. Russia needs men, she needs a
party, or else everything goes and will go to the dogs."

"How do you mean? Bertenev's party against the Russian communists?"

"No," said Serpukhovskoy, frowning with vexation at being
suspected of such an absurdity. "Tout ca est une blague. That has
always been, and always will be. There are no communists. But
intriguing people have to invent a noxious, dangerous party. It's an
old trick. No, what's wanted is a powerful party of independent men,
like you and me."

"But why so?" Vronsky mentioned a few men who were in power. "Why
aren't they independent men?"

"Simply because they have not, or have not had from birth, an
independent fortune, they've not had a name, they weren't born close
to the sun as we were. They can be bought either by money or by favor.
And they have to find a support for themselves in inventing a trend.
And they bring forward some notion, some trend that they don't believe
in, that does harm; and the whole policy is really only a means to a
house at the expense of the crown and so much income. Cela n'est pas
plus fin que ca, when you get a peep at their cards. I may be inferior
to them, more stupid perhaps, though I don't see why I should be
inferior to them. But you and I have one important, certain
advantage over them, in being more difficult to buy. And such men
are more needed than ever."

Vronsky listened attentively, but he was not so much interested by
the meaning of the words as by the attitude of Serpukhovskoy, who
was already contemplating a struggle with the existing powers, and
already had his likes and dislikes in that world, while his own
interest in his service did not go beyond the interests of his
squadron. Vronsky felt, too, how powerful Serpukhovskoy might become
through his unmistakable faculty for thinking things out and for
taking things in, through his intelligence and gift of eloquence, so
rarely met with in the world in which he moved. And, ashamed as he was
of the feeling, he felt envious.

"Still I haven't the one thing of paramount importance for that," he
answered; "I haven't the desire for power. I had it once, but it's
gone."

"Excuse me, that's not true," said Serpukhovskoy smiling.

"Yes, it's true, it's true- now to be truthful!" Vronsky added.

"Yes, it's true now, that's another thing; but that now won't last
forever."

"Perhaps," answered Vronsky.

"You say perhaps," Serpukhovskoy went on, as though guessing his
thoughts, "but I say for certain. And that's what I wanted to see
you for. Your action was just what it should have been. I see that,
but you ought not to persevere in it. I only ask you to give me
carte blanche. I'm not going to offer you my protection.... Though,
indeed, why shouldn't I protect you?- you've protected me often
enough! I should hope our friendship rises above all that sort of
thing. Yes," he said, smiling to him as tenderly as a woman, "give
me carte blanche, retire from the regiment, and I'll get you in
imperceptibly."

"But you must understand that I want nothing," said Vronsky, "except
to leave things just as they were."

Serpukhovskoy got up and stood facing him.

"You said, leave things just as they were. I understand what that
means. But listen: we're the same age, you've known a greater number
of women perhaps than I have." Serpukhovskoy's smile and gestures told
Vronsky that he mustn't be afraid, that he would be tender and careful
in touching the sore place. "But I'm married, and believe me, in
getting to know one's wife thoroughly, if one loves her, as someone
has said, one gets to know all women better than if one knew thousands
of them."

"We're coming directly!" Vronsky shouted to an officer, who looked
into the room and called them to the colonel.

Vronsky was longing now to hear Serpukhovskoy to the end, and know
what he would say to him.

"And here's my opinion for you. Women are the chief stumbling
block in a man's career. It's hard to love a woman and do anything.
There's only one way of having love conveniently without its being a
hindrance- that's marriage. Now, how am I to tell you what I mean?"
said Serpukhovskoy, who liked similes. "Wait, wait a minute! Yes, just
as you can only carry a fardeau yet do something with your hands
when the fardeau is tied on your back- and that's marriage. And that's
what I felt when I was married. My hands were suddenly set free. But
if you drag that fardeau about with you without marriage, your hands
will always be so full that you can do nothing. Look at Mazankov, at
Krupov. They've ruined their careers for the sake of women."

"What women!" said Vronsky, recalling the Frenchwoman and the
actress with whom the two men he had mentioned were connected.

"The firmer the woman's footing in society, the worse it is.
That's much the same as not merely carrying the fardeau in your
arms, but tearing it away from someone else."

"You have never loved," Vronsky said softly, looking straight before
him and thinking of Anna.

"Perhaps. But you remember what I've said to you. And another thing-
women are all more materialistic than men. We make something immense
out of love, but they are always terre-a-terre."

"Directly, directly!" he cried to a footman who came in. But the
footman had not come to call them again, as he supposed. The footman
brought Vronsky a note.

"A man brought it from Princess Tverskaia."

Vronsky opened the letter, and flushed crimson.

"My head's begun to ache; I'm going home," he said to Serpukhovskoy.

"Oh, good-by then. You give me carte blanche!"

"We'll talk about it later on; I'll look you up in Peterburg."

                           XXII.


It was six o'clock already, and so, in order to be there quickly,
and at the same time not to drive with his own horses, known to
everyone, Vronsky got into Iashvin's hackney coach and told the
coachman to drive as quickly as possible. It was a roomy,
old-fashioned coach, with seats for four. He sat in one corner,
stretched his legs out on the front seat, and sank into deep thought.

A vague sense of the clearness to which his affairs had been
brought, a vague recollection of the friendliness and flattery of
Serpukhovskoy, who had considered him a man who was needed, and,
most of all, the anticipation of the meeting before him- all blended
into a general, joyous sense of life. This feeling was so strong
that he could not help smiling. He dropped his legs, crossed one leg
over the other knee, and, taking it in his hand, felt the springy
muscle of the calf, where it had been grazed the day before by his
fall, and, leaning back he drew several deep breaths.

"I'm happy, very happy!" he said to himself. He had often before had
this sense of physical joy in his own body, but he had never felt so
fond of himself, of his own body, as at that moment. He enjoyed the
slight ache in his strong leg, he enjoyed the muscular sensation of
movement in his chest as he breathed. The bright, cold August day,
which had made Anna feel so hopeless, seemed to him keenly
stimulating, and refreshed his face and neck that still tingled from
the cold water. The scent of brilliantine on his mustaches struck
him as particularly pleasant in the fresh air. Everything he saw
from the carriage window, everything in that cold pure air, in the
pale light of the sunset, was as fresh, and gay, and strong as he
was himself: the roofs of the houses shining in the rays of the
setting sun, the sharp outlines of fences and angles of buildings, the
figures of passers-by and carriages that met him now and then, the
motionless green of the trees and grass, the fields with evenly
drawn furrows of potatoes, and the slanting shadows that fell from the
houses, and trees, and bushes, and even from the rows of potatoes-
everything was bright like a pretty landscape freshly painted and
varnished.

"Get on, get on!" he said to the driver, putting his head out of the
window, and pulling a three-rouble note out of his pocket he handed it
to the man as he looked round. The driver's hand fumbled with
something at the lamp, the whip cracked, and the coach rolled
rapidly along the smooth highroad.

"I want nothing, nothing but this happiness," he thought, staring at
the bone button of the bell in the space between the windows, and
picturing to himself Anna just as he had seen her last time. "And as I
go on, I love her more and more. Here's the garden of the Vrede's
crown villa. Whereabouts will she be? Where? How? Why did she fix on
this place to meet me, and why does she write in Betsy's letter?" he
thought, now for the first time wondering at it. But there was now
no time for wonder. He called to the driver to stop before reaching
the avenue, and opening the door, jumped out of the carriage as it was
moving, and went up the avenue that led to the house. There was no one
in the avenue; but, looking round to the right, he caught sight of
her. Her face was hidden by a veil, but he drank in with glad eyes the
special movement in walking, peculiar to her alone, the slope of her
shoulders, and the setting of her head, and at once a sort of electric
shock ran all over him. With fresh force he felt conscious of himself,
from the springy movements of his legs to the movements of his lungs
as he breathed, and something set his lips twitching.

Joining him, she pressed his hand tightly.

"You're not angry because I sent for you? I absolutely had to see
you," she said; and the serious and set line of her lips, which he saw
under the veil, transformed his mood at once.

"I angry? But how have you come- where?"

"Never mind," she said, laying her hand on his arm, "come along, I
must talk to you."

He saw that something had happened, and that the interview would not
be a joyous one. In her presence he had no will of his own: without
knowing the grounds of her distress, he already felt the same distress
unconsciously passing over him.

"What is it? What?" he asked her, squeezing her hand with his elbow,
and trying to read her thoughts in her face.

She walked on a few steps in silence, gathering up her courage; then
suddenly she stopped.

"I did not tell you yesterday," she began, breathing quickly and
painfully, "that coming home with Alexei Alexandrovich I told him
everything... told him I could not be his wife, that... and told him
everything."

He heard her, unconsciously bending his whole figure down to her
as though hoping in this way to soften the hardness of her position
for her. But directly she had said this he suddenly drew himself up,
and a proud and hard expression came over his face.

"Yes, yes, that's better, a thousand times better! I know how
painful it was," he said. But she was not listening to his words-
she was reading his thoughts from the expression of his face. She
could not guess that that arose from the first idea that presented
itself to Vronsky- that a duel was now inevitable. The idea of a
duel had never crossed her mind, and so she put a different
interpretation on this passing expression of hardness.

When she got her husband's letter, she knew then at the bottom of
her heart that everything would go on in the old way, that she would
not have the strength of will to forego her position, to abandon her
son, and to join her lover. The morning spent at Princess
Tverskaia's had confirmed her still more in this. But this interview
was still of the utmost gravity for her. She hoped that this interview
would transform her position, and save her. If on hearing this news he
were to say to her resolutely, passionately, without an instant's
wavering: "Throw up everything and come with me! she would give up her
son and go away with him. But this news had not produced on him the
effect she had expected; he simply seemed resentful of some affront.

"It was not in the least painful for me. It happened of itself," she
said irritably, "and see..." She pulled her husband's letter out of
her glove.

"I understand, I understand," he interrupted her, taking the letter,
but not reading it, and trying to soothe her. "The one thing I
longed for, the one thing I prayed for, was to cut short this
position, so as to devote my life to your happiness."

"Why do you tell me that?" she said. "Do you suppose I can doubt it?
If I doubted..."

"Who's that coming?" said Vronsky suddenly, pointing to two ladies
walking toward them. "Perhaps they know us!" and he hurriedly turned
off, drawing her after him into a side path.

"Oh, I don't care!" she said. Her lips were quivering. And he
fancied that her eyes looked with strange fury at him from under her
veil. "I tell you that's not the point- I can't doubt that; but see
what he writes me. Read it." She stood still again.

Again, just as at the first moment of hearing of her rupture with
her husband, Vronsky, on reading the letter, was unconsciously carried
away by the natural sensation aroused in him by his own relation to
the injured husband. Now, while he held his letter in his hands, he
could not help picturing the challenge, which he would most likely
find at home today or tomorrow, and the duel itself, in which, with
the same cold and haughty expression that his face was assuming at
this moment, he would await the injured husband's shot, after having
himself fired into the air. And at that instant there flashed across
his mind the thought of what Serpukhovskoy had just said to him, and
what he had himself been thinking in the morning- that it was better
not to bind himself; and he knew that he could not tell her this
thought.

Having read the letter, he raised his eyes to her, and there was
no firmness in them. She saw at once that he had been thinking about
it before by himself. She knew that whatever he might say to her, he
would not say all he thought. And she knew that her last hope had
failed her. This was not what she had been looking for.

"You see the sort of man he is," she said, with a shaking voice;
"he..."

"Forgive me, but I rejoice at it," Vronsky interrupted. "For God's
sake, let me finish!" he added, his eyes imploring her to give him
time to explain his words. "I rejoice, because things cannot, cannot
possibly remain as he supposes."

"Why can't they?" Anna said, restraining her tears, and obviously
attaching no sort of consequence to what he said. She felt that her
fate was sealed.

Vronsky meant that after the duel- inevitable, he thought- things
could not go on as before, but he said something different.

"It can't go on. I hope that now you will leave him. I hope"- he was
confused, and reddened- "that you will let me arrange and plan our
life. Tomorrow..." he was beginning.

She did not let him go on.

"But my child!" she shrieked. "You see what he writes! I should have
to leave him, and I can't and won't do that."

"But, for God's sake, which is better? To leave your child, or
keep up this degrading situation?"

"To whom is it degrading?"

"To all, and most of all to you."

"You say degrading... Don't say that. These words have no meaning
for me," she said in a shaking voice. She did not want him now to
say what was untrue. She had nothing left her but his love, and she
wanted to love him. "Don't you understand that from the day I loved
you everything has changed for me? For me there is one thing, and
one thing only- your love. If that's mine, I feel so exalted, so
strong, that nothing can be degrading to me. I am proud of my
position, because... proud of being... proud..." She could not say
what she was proud of. Tears of shame and despair choked her
utterance. She stood still and sobbed.

He felt, too, something swelling in his throat and twitching in
his nose, and for the first time in his life he felt on the point of
weeping. He could not have said exactly what it was touched him so; he
felt sorry for her, and he felt he could not help her, and with that
he knew  that he was to blame for her wretchedness, and that he had
done something wrong.

"Isn't a divorce possible?" he said feebly. She shook her head,
without answering. "Couldn't you take your son, and still leave him?

"Yes; but it all depends on him. Now I must go to him," she said
shortly. Her presentiment that all would again go on in the old way
had not deceived her.

"On Tuesday I shall be in Peterburg, and everything can be settled."

"Yes," she said. "But don't let us talk any more of it."

Anna's carriage, which she had sent away, and ordered to come back
to the little gate of the Vrede garden, drove up. Anna said good-by to
Vronsky, and drove home.

                           XXIII.


On Monday there was the usual session of the Commission of the 2nd
of June. Alexei Alexandrovich walked into the hall where the session
was held, greeted the members and the president, as usual, and sat
down in his place, putting his hand on the papers laid ready before
him. Among those papers lay the necessary evidence and a rough outline
of the speech he intended to make. But he did not really need these
documents. He remembered every point, and did not think it necessary
to go over in his memory what he would say. He knew that when the time
came, and when he saw his enemy facing him, and studiously endeavoring
to assume an expression of indifference, his speech would flow of
itself better than he could prepare it now. He felt that the import of
his speech was of such magnitude that every word of it would have
weight. Meantime, as he listened to the usual report, he had the
most innocent and inoffensive air. No one, looking at his white hands,
with their swollen veins and long fingers, so softly stroking the
edges of the white paper that lay before him, and at the air of
weariness with which his head drooped on one side, would have
suspected that in a few minutes a torrent of words would flow from his
lips that would arouse a fearful storm, set the members shouting and
attacking one another, and force the president to call for order. When
the report was over, Alexei Alexandrovich announced in his subdued,
delicate voice that he had several points to bring before the
meeting in regard to the organization of the native tribes. All
attention was turned upon him. Alexei Alexandrovich cleared his
throat, and, without looking at his opponent, but selecting, as he
always did while he was delivering his speeches, the first person
sitting opposite him, an inoffensive little old man, who never had
an opinion of any sort in the Commission, began to expound his
views. When he reached the point about the basic and organic law,
his opponent jumped up and began to protest. Stremov, who was also a
member of the Commission, and was also stung to the quick, began
defending himself, and an altogether stormy session followed; but
Alexei Alexandrovich triumphed, and his motion was carried, three
new commissions were appointed, and the next day, in a certain
Peterburg circle, nothing else was talked of but this session.
Alexei Alexandrovich's success had been even greater than he had
anticipated.

Next morning, Tuesday, Alexei Alexandrovich, on awaking, recollected
with pleasure his triumph of the previous day, and he could not help
smiling, though he tried to appear indifferent, when the head clerk,
anxious to flatter him, informed him of the rumors that had reached
him concerning what had happened in the Commission.

Absorbed in business with the head clerk, Alexei Alexandrovich had
completely forgotten that it was Tuesday, the day fixed by him for the
return of Anna Arkadyevna, and he was surprised and received a shock
of annoyance when a servant came in to inform him of her arrival.

Anna had arrived in Peterburg early in the morning; the carriage had
been sent to meet her in accordance with her telegram, and so Alexei
Alexandrovich might have known of her arrival. But, when she
arrived, he did not meet her. She was told that he had not yet gone
out, but was busy with the head clerk. She sent word to her husband
that she had come, went to her own room, and occupied herself in
sorting out her things, expecting he would come to her. But an hour
passed; he did not come. She went into the dining room on the
pretext of giving some directions, and spoke loudly on purpose,
expecting him to come out there; but he did not come, though she heard
him go to the door of his study as he parted from the head clerk.
She knew that he should before long go out to his office as usual, and
she wanted to see him before that, so that their attitude to one
another might be defined.

She walked across the drawing room and went resolutely to him.
When she went into his study he was in official uniform, obviously
ready to go out, sitting at a little table on which he rested his
elbows, looking dejectedly before him. She saw him before he saw
her, and she knew that he was thinking of her.

On seeing her, he would have risen, but changed his mind, then his
face flushed hotly- a thing Anna had never seen before, and he got
up quickly and went to meet her, looking not at her eyes, but above
them, at her forehead and hair. He went up to her, took her by the
hand, and asked her to sit down.

"I am very glad you have come," he said, sitting down beside her,
and, obviously wishing to say something, he stuttered. Several times
he attempted to speak, but stopped. In spite of the fact, that in
preparing herself for meeting him, she had schooled herself to despise
and accuse him, she did not know what to say to him, and she felt pity
for him. And so the silence lasted rather long: "Is Seriozha quite
well?" he said, and, without waiting for an answer, he added: "I
shan't be dining at home today, and I must go out directly."

"I had thought of going to Moscow," she said.

"No, you did quite, quite right to come," he said, and was silent
again.

Seeing that he was powerless to begin the conversation, she began
herself.

"Alexei Alexandrovich," she said, looking at him and without
dropping her eyes under his persistent gaze at her hair, "I'm a guilty
woman, I'm a bad woman, yet I am the same as I was, as I told you
then, and I have come to tell you that I can change nothing."

"I haven't asked you about that," he said, all at once, resolutely
and with hatred looking her straight in the face; "that was as I had
supposed." Under the influence of anger he apparently regained
complete possession of all his faculties. "But as I told you then, and
have written to you," he said in a thin, shrill voice, "I repeat
now, that I am not bound to know this. I ignore it. Not all wives
are so kind as you, to be in such a hurry to communicate such
agreeable news to their husbands." He laid special emphasis on the
word "agreeable." "I shall ignore it so long as the world knows
nothing of it, so long as my name is not disgraced. And so I simply
inform you that our relations must be just as they have always been,
and that only in the event of your compromising yourself I shall be
obliged to take steps to secure my honor."

"But our relations cannot be the same as always," Anna began in a
timid voice, looking at him with dismay.

When she saw once more those composed gestures, heard that shrill,
childlike and sarcastic voice, her aversion for him extinguished her
pity for him, and she felt only afraid; but at all costs she wanted to
make clear her position.

"I cannot be your wife while I..." she began.

He laughed a cold and malignant laugh.

"The manner of life you have chosen is reflected, I suppose, in your
ideas. I have so much of both respect and contempt- I respect your
past and despise your present- that I was far from the
interpretation you put on my words."

Anna sighed and bowed her head.

"Though indeed I fail to comprehend how, with the independence you
show," he went on, getting hot, "announcing your infidelity to your
husband and seeing nothing reprehensible in it, apparently, you can
see anything reprehensible in performing a wife's duties in relation
to your husband."

"Alexei Alexandrovich! What is it you want of me?"

"I want never to meet that man here, and I want you to conduct
yourself so that neither society, nor the servants, could possibly
reproach you.... I want you not to see him. That's not much, I
think. And in return you will enjoy all the privileges of a faithful
wife without fulfilling her duties. That's all I have to say to you.
Now it's time for me to go. I'm not dining at home." He got up and
moved toward the door.

Anna got up too. Bowing in silence, he let her pass before him.

                           XXIV.


The night spent by Levin on the haycock did not pass without an
effect upon him. The way in which he had been managing his land
revolted him and lost all attraction for him. In spite of the
magnificent harvest, never had there been (or, at least, it had
never seemed so to him) so many hindrances and so many quarrels
between him and the peasants as that year, and the origin of these
failures and this hostility was now perfectly comprehensible to him.
The delight he had experienced in the work itself, and the
consequent greater intimacy with the peasants, the envy he felt of
them, of their life, the desire to adopt that life, which had been
to him that night not a dream but an intention, the execution of which
he had thought out in detail- all this had so transformed his view
of the farming of the land as he had managed it, that he could not
take his former interest in it, and could not help seeing that
unpleasant relation between him and the workpeople which was the
foundation of it all. The herd of improved cows such as Pava, the
whole land plowed over and enriched, the nine level fields
surrounded with willow fences, the ninety dessiatinas heavily manured,
drill plows, and all the rest of it- it was all splendid, if only
the work had been done by himself, or by himself and his comrades,
by people in sympathy with him. But he saw clearly now (his work on
a book of agriculture, in which the chief element in husbandry was
to have been the laborer, greatly assisted him in this) that the
sort of farming he was carrying on was nothing but a cruel and
stubborn struggle between him and the laborers, in which there was
on one side- his side- a continual intense effort to change everything
to a pattern he considered better; on the other side, the natural
order of things. And in this struggle he saw that, with immense
expenditure of force on his side, and with no effort or even intention
on the other side, the sole attainment was that the work did not go to
the liking of either side, and that splendid tools, splendid cattle
and land were spoiled with no good to anyone. Worst of all, the energy
expended on this work was not merely wasted. He could not help feeling
now, since the meaning of his system had become clear to him, that the
aim of his energy was a most unworthy one. In reality, what was the
struggle about? He was struggling for every groat (and he could not
help it, for he had only to relax his efforts, and he would not have
had the money to pay his laborers' wages), while they were only
struggling to be able to do their work easily and agreeably- that is
to say, as they were used to doing it. It was for his interests that
every laborer should work as hard as possible, and that while doing so
he should keep his wits about him, so as to try not to break the
winnowing machines, the horse rakes, the threshing machines, that he
should attend to what he was doing. What the laborer wanted was to
work as pleasantly as possible, with rests, and, above all, carelessly
and heedlessly, without thinking. That summer Levin saw this at
every step. He sent the men to mow some clover for hay, picking out
the worst patches where the clover was overgrown with grass and
weeds and of no use for seed; again and again they mowed his best
dessiatinas of seed clover, justifying themselves by the pretext
that the bailiff had told them to, and trying to pacify him with the
assurance that it would make splendid hay; but he knew that it was
because those dessiatinas were so much easier to mow. He sent out a
hay machine for pitching the hay- it was broken at the first row
because it was dull work for a peasant to sit on the seat in front
with the great wings waving above him. And he was told: "Don't
trouble- sure, the womenfolks will pitch it quick enough." The plows
were practically useless, because it never occurred to the laborer
to raise the colter when he turned the plow, and in forcing it
round, he tortured the horse and spoiled the ground- and then begged
Levin not to mind it. The horses were allowed to stray into the
wheat because not a single laborer wanted to be night watchman, and,
in spite of orders to the contrary, the laborers insisted on taking
turns for night duty about the horses; and when Vanka, after working
all day long, fell asleep, he would say, very penitent for his
fault: "Do what you will to me."

Three of the best heifers were allowed to overeat themselves to
death, by letting them into the clover aftermath without care as to
drenching them, and nothing would make the men believe that they had
been blown out by the clover, but they told Levin, by way of
consolation, that one of his neighbors had lost a hundred and twelve
head of cattle in three days. All this happened, not because anyone
felt ill will to Levin or to his farming; on the contrary, he knew
that they liked him, thinking him a simple gentleman (their highest
praise); but it happened simply because all they wanted was to work
merrily and carelessly, and his interests were not only remote and
incomprehensible to them, but fatally opposed to their most just
claims. Long before, Levin had felt dissatisfaction with his own
position in regard to the land. He saw that his boat leaked, but he
did not look for the leak, perhaps purposely deceiving himself. But
now he could deceive himself no longer. The farming of the land, as he
was managing it, had become not merely unattractive but revolting to
him, and he could take no further interest in it.

To this now was joined the presence, only thirty verstas off, of
Kitty Shcherbatskaia, whom he longed to see and could not. Darya
Alexandrovna Oblonskaia had invited him, when he was over there, to
come; to come with the object of renewing his proposal to her
sister, who would, so she gave him to understand, accept it now. Levin
himself had felt on seeing Kitty Shcherbatskaia that he had never
ceased to love her; but he could not go over to the Oblonskys',
knowing she was there. The fact that he had proposed to her, and
that she had refused him, had placed an insuperable barrier between
her and him. "I can't ask her to be my wife merely because she can't
be the wife of the man she wanted to marry," he said to himself. The
thought of this made him cold and hostile to her. "I should not be
able to speak to her without a feeling of reproach; I could not look
at her without resentment; and she will only hate me all the more,
as she's bound to. And besides, how can I now, after what Darya
Alexandrovna told me, go to see them? Can I help showing that I know
what she told me? And I shall come to forgive her magnanimously, and
take pity on her! And go through a performance before her of
forgiving, and deigning to bestow my love on her!... Why did Darya
Alexandrovna tell me that? I might have seen her by chance- then
everything would have happened of itself; but, as it is, it's out of
the question- out of the question!"

Darya Alexandrovna sent him a letter, asking him for a sidesaddle
for Kitty's use. "I'm told you have a sidesaddle," she wrote to him;
"I hope you will bring it over yourself."

This was more than he could stand. How could a woman of any
intelligence, of any delicacy, put her sister in such a humiliating
position! He wrote ten notes, and tore them all up, and then sent
the saddle without any reply. To write that he would come was
impossible, because he could not come; to write that he could not come
because something prevented him, or that he would be away, would be
still worse. He sent the saddle without any answer; and with a sense
of having done something shameful, he handed over all the now
revolting business of the estate to his bailiff, and set off next
day to a remote district to see his friend Sviiazhsky, who had
splendid marshes for double snipes in his neighborhood, and had lately
written, asking him to keep a long-standing promise to visit him.
The snipe marsh, in the Surovsky district, had long tempted Levin, but
he had continually put off this visit on account of his work on the
estate. Now he was glad to get away from the neighborhood of the
Shcherbatskys, and still more from his farmwork, especially on a
shooting expedition, which always served as the best consolation in
trouble.

                           XXV.


In the Surovsky district there was neither railway nor mail coach,
and Levin drove there with his own horses in his tarantass.

He stopped halfway at a well-to-do peasant's to feed his horses. A
bald, well-preserved old man, with a broad, red beard, grizzled on his
cheeks, opened the gate, squeezing against the gatepost to let the
troika pass. Directing the coachman to a place under the shed in the
big, clean, tidy new yard, with charred, wooden plows in it, the old
man asked Levin to come into the room. A cleanly dressed young
housewife, with clogs on her bare feet, was scrubbing the floor in the
new outer room. She was frightened by the dog that ran in after Levin,
and uttered a shriek, but began laughing at her own fright at once
when she was told the dog would not hurt her. Pointing out to Levin
with her bare arm the door into the room, she bent down again,
hiding her handsome face, and went on scrubbing.

"Would you like a samovar?" she asked.

"Yes, please."

The room was a big one, with a tile stove, and a partition
dividing it into two. Under the icons stood a table painted in
patterns, a bench and two chairs. Near the entrance was a dresser full
of crockery. The shutters were closed, there were few flies, and it
was so clean that Levin was anxious that Laska, who had been running
along the road and bathing in puddles, should not muddy the floor, and
ordered her to a place in the corner by the door. After looking
round the room, Levin went out in the back yard. The comely young
housewife in clogs, swinging the empty pails on the yoke, ran on
before him to the well for water.

"Look sharp, my girl!" the old man shouted after her,
good-humoredly, and he walked up to Levin. "Well, sir, are you going
to Nikolai Ivanovich Sviiazhsky? He comes to us too," he began
chatting, leaning his elbows on the railing of the steps. In the
middle of the old man's account of his acquaintance with Sviiazhsky,
the gates creaked again, and laborers came into the yard from the
fields, with wooden plows and harrows. The horses harnessed to the
plows and harrows were sleek and fat. The laborers were obviously of
the household: two were young men in cotton-print shirts and caps, the
two others were hired laborers in homespun shirts, one an old man, the
other a young fellow.

Moving off from the steps, the old man went up to the horses and
began unharnessing them.

"What have they been plowing?" asked Levin.

"Plowing up the potatoes. We rent a bit of land too. Fedot, don't
let out the gelding, but take it to the trough, and we'll put
another in harness."

"Oh, father, about the plowshares I ordered- has he brought them
along?" asked the big, robust fellow, obviously the old man's son.

"There... in the sledge," answered the old man, rolling up the reins
he had taken off, and flinging them on the ground. "You can put them
right, while they have dinner."

The comely young housewife came into the outer room with the full
pails dragging at her shoulders. More women came on the scene from
somewhere, young and handsome, middle-aged, old and ugly, with
children and without children.

The samovar was beginning to sing; the laborers and the family,
having disposed of the horses, came in to dinner. Levin, getting his
provisions out of his carriage, invited the old man to take tea with
him.

"Well, I have had some today already," said the old man, obviously
accepting the invitation with pleasure. "Well, be it so, for company."

Over their tea Levin heard all about the old man's farming. Ten
years before the old man had rented a hundred and twenty dessiatinas
from the lady who owned them, and a year ago he had bought them and
rented another three hundred from a neighboring landowner. A small
part of the land- the worst part- he let out for rent, while some
forty dessiatinas of arable land he cultivated himself, with his
family and two hired laborers. The old man complained that things were
going badly. But Levin saw that he simply did so from a feeling of
propriety, and that his farm was in a flourishing condition. If it had
been unsuccessful he would not have bought land at a hundred and
five roubles the dessiatina, he would not have married off his three
sons and a nephew, he would not have rebuilt twice after fires, and
each time on a larger scale. In spite of the old man's complaints,
it was evident that he was proud, and justly proud, of his prosperity,
proud of his sons, his nephew, his sons' wives, his horses, and his
cows, and especially of the fact that he was keeping all this
farming going. From his conversation with the old man, Levin
realized he was not averse to new methods either. He had planted a
great many potatoes, and his potatoes, as Levin had seen driving past,
were already past flowering and beginning to ripen, whereas Levin's
were only just coming into flower. He plowed the ground for his
potatoes with a modern plow borrowed from a neighboring landowner.
He sowed wheat. The trifling fact that, thinning out his rye, the
old man used the rye he thinned out for his horses, struck Levin
especially. How many times had Levin seen this splendid fodder wasted,
and tried to get it saved; but always it had turned out to be
impossible. This peasant had done so, and he could not say enough in
praise of it as food for the beasts.

"What have the wenches to do? They carry it out in bundles to the
roadside, and the cart brings it away."

"Well, we landowners can't manage well with our laborers," said
Levin, handing him a glass of tea.

"Thanks," said the old man, and he took the glass, but refused
sugar, pointing to a bit he had left. "There's no getting along with
them," said he. "They're simple waste. Look at Sviiazhsky, for
instance. We know what the land's like- first-rate; yet there's not
much of a crop to boast of. It's not looked after enough- that's all
it is!"

"But you work your land with hired laborers?"

"We're all peasants together. We go into everything ourselves. If
a man's no use, he can go, and we can manage by ourselves."

"Father Finogen wants some tar," said the young woman in the
clogs, coming in.

"Yes, yes, that's how it is, sir!" said the old man, getting up,
and, crossing himself lingeringly, he thanked Levin and went out.

When Levin went in the kitchen to call his coachman he saw the whole
family of men at dinner. The women were standing up waiting on them.
The young, robust son was telling something funny, with his mouth full
of buckwheat porridge, and they were all laughing- the woman in the
clogs, who was pouring cabbage soup into a bowl, laughing most merrily
of all.

Very probably the comely face of the young woman in the clogs had
a good deal to do with the impression of well-being this peasant
household made upon Levin, but the impression was so strong that Levin
could never get rid of it. And all the way from the old peasant's to
Sviiazhsky's he kept recalling this peasant farm as though there
were something in this impression demanding his special attention.

                           XXVI.


Sviiazhsky was the marshal of his district. He was five years
older than Levin, and had long been married. His sister-in-law, a
young girl Levin liked very much, lived in his house; and Levin knew
that Sviiazhsky and his wife would have greatly liked to marry the
girl to him. He knew this with certainty, as so-called eligible
young men always know it, though he could never have brought himself
to speak of it to anyone; and he also knew that, although he wanted to
get married, and although by every token this very attractive girl
would make an excellent wife, he could no more have married her,
even if he had not been in love with Kitty Shcherbatskaia, than he
could have flown up to the sky. And this knowledge poisoned the
pleasure he had hoped to find in the visit to Sviiazhsky.

On getting Sviiazhsky's letter with the invitation for shooting,
Levin had immediately thought of this; but, in spite of it, he had
made up his mind that Sviiazhsky's having such views for him was
simply his own groundless supposition, and so he would go,
notwithstanding. Besides, at the bottom of his heart, he had a
desire to try himself, to put himself to the test in regard to this
girl. The Sviiazhskys' home life was exceedingly pleasant, and
Sviiazhsky himself, the best type of Zemstvo man that Levin knew,
was very interesting to him.

Sviiazhsky was one of those people, always a source of wonder to
Levin, whose convictions, very logical though never original, go one
way by themselves, while their life, exceedingly definite and firm
in its course, goes its way quite apart and almost always in direct
contradiction to their convictions. Sviiazhsky was an extremely
advanced man. He despised the nobility, and believed the mass of the
nobility to be secretly in favor of serfdom, and only concealing their
views out of cowardice. He regarded Russia as a ruined country, rather
after the style of Turkey, and the government of Russia as so bad that
he never permitted himself to criticize its doings seriously, and
yet he was a functionary of that government, and a model marshal of
nobility, and when he drove about he always wore his cap with the
cockade and red band. He considered human life only tolerable
abroad, and went abroad to stay at every opportunity, and at the
same time he carried on a complex and improved system of agriculture
in Russia, and with extreme interest followed everything and knew
everything that was being done in Russia. He considered the Russian
peasant as occupying a stage of development intermediate between the
ape and the man, and at the same time in the days of Zemstvo
election no one was readier to shake hands with the peasants and
listen to their opinion. He believed neither in God nor the devil, but
was much concerned about the question of the improvement of the clergy
and the maintenance of their revenues, and took special trouble to
keep up the church in his village.

On the woman question he was on the side of the extreme advocates of
complete liberty for women, and especially their right to labor. But
he lived with his wife on such terms that their affectionate,
childless home life was the admiration of everyone, and arranged his
wife's life so that she did nothing and could do nothing but share her
husband's preoccupations in spending their time as happily and as
agreeably as possible.

If it had not been a characteristic of Levin to put the most
favorable interpretation on people, Sviiazhsky's character would
have presented no doubt or difficulty to him: he would have said to
himself, "a fool or a knave," and everything would have seemed
clear. But he could not say a fool, because Sviiazhsky was
unmistakably clever, and, moreover, a highly cultivated man, who was
exceptionally modest over his culture. There was not a subject he knew
nothing of. But he did not display his knowledge except when he was
compelled to do so. Still less could Levin say that he was a knave, as
Sviiazhsky was unmistakably an honest, goodhearted, sensible man,
who worked good-humoredly, keenly, and perseveringly at his work,
which was held in high honor by everyone about him, and certainly he
had never consciously done, and was indeed incapable of doing,
anything base.

Levin tried to understand him, and could not understand him, and
looked at him and his life as at a living enigma.

Levin and he were very friendly, and so Levin used to venture to
sound Sviiazhsky, to try to get at the very foundation of his view
of life; but it was always in vain. Every time Levin tried to
penetrate beyond the outer chambers of Sviiazhsky's mind, which were
hospitably open to all, he noticed that Sviiazhsky was slightly
disconcerted; faint signs of alarm were visible in his eyes, as though
he were afraid Levin would understand him, and he would give him a
kindly, good-humored rebuff.

Just now, since his disenchantment with farming, Levin was
particularly glad to stay with Sviiazhsky. Apart from the fact that
the sight of this happy and affectionate couple, so pleased with
themselves and everyone else, and their well-ordered home, had
always a cheering effect on Levin, he felt a longing, now that he
was so dissatisfied with his own life, to get at that secret in
Sviiazhsky which gave him such clarity, definiteness, and good courage
in life. Moreover, Levin knew that at Sviiazhsky's he would meet the
landowners of the neighborhood, and it was particularly interesting
for him just now to hear and take part in those rural conversations
concerning crops, laborers' wages, and so on, which, Levin was
aware, are conventionally regarded as something very low, but which
seemed to him just now to constitute the one subject of importance.
"It was not, perhaps, of importance in the days of serfdom, and it may
not be of importance in England. In both cases the conditions of
agriculture are firmly established; but among us now, when
everything has been turned topsy-turvy, and is only just taking shape,
the question what form these conditions will take is the one
question of importance in Russia," thought Levin.

The shooting turned out to be poorer than Levin expected. The
marsh was dry and there were no snipe at all. He walked about the
whole day and only brought back three birds, but to make up for that
he brought back, as he always did from shooting, an excellent
appetite, excellent spirits, and that keen, intellectual mood which
with him always accompanied violent physical exertion. And while out
shooting, when he seemed to be thinking of nothing at all, the old man
and his family would time and again come to mind, and the impression
of them seemed to claim not merely his attention, but the solution
of some question connected with them.

In the evening, at tea, two landowners who had come about some
business connected with a wardship were of the party, and the
interesting conversation Levin had been looking forward to sprang up.

Levin was sitting beside his hostess at the tea table, and was
obliged to keep up a conversation with her and her sister, who was
sitting opposite him. Madame Sviiazhsky was a round-faced,
fair-haired, rather short woman, all smiles and dimples. Levin tried
through her to get at a solution of the weighty enigma her husband
presented to his mind; but he had not complete freedom of ideas,
because he was in an agony of embarrassment. This agony of
embarrassment was due to the fact that the sister-in-law was sitting
opposite to him, in a dress, specially put on, as he fancied, for
his benefit, cut particularly open, in the shape of a trapeze, at
her white bosom. This quadrangular opening, in spite of the bosom's
being very white, or just because it was very white, deprived Levin of
the full use of his faculties. He imagined, probably mistakenly,
that this low-necked bodice had been made on his account, and felt
that he had no right to look at it, and tried not to look at it; but
he felt that he was to blame for the very fact of the low-necked
bodice having been made. It seemed to Levin that he had imposed upon
someone, that he ought to explain something, but that to explain it
was impossible, and for that reason he was continually blushing, was
ill at ease and awkward. His awkwardness infected the pretty
sister-in-law too. But their hostess appeared not to observe this, and
kept purposely drawing her into the conversation.

"You say," she said, pursuing the subject that had been started,
"that my husband cannot be interested in what's Russian. It's quite
the contrary; he is in cheerful spirits abroad, but never in such as
he is here. Here he feels in his proper place. He has so much to do,
and he has the faculty of interesting himself in everything. Oh,
you've not been to see our school, have you?"

"I've seen it.... The little house covered with ivy, isn't it?"

"Yes; that's Nastia's work," she said, indicating her sister.

"You teach in it yourself?" asked Levin, trying to look above the
open neck, but feeling that no matter where he looked in that
direction he should see it.

"Yes; I used to teach in it myself, and do teach still, but we
have a first-rate schoolmistress now. And we've started gymnastic
exercises."

"No, thank you, I won't have any more tea," said Levin, and
conscious of doing a rude thing, but incapable of continuing the
conversation, he got up, blushing. "I hear a very interesting
conversation," he added, and walked to the other end of the table,
where Sviiazhsky was sitting with the two gentlemen of the
neighborhood. Sviiazhsky was sitting sideways, with one elbow on the
table, and a cup in one hand, while with the other hand he gathered up
his beard, held it to his nose and let it drop again, as though he
were smelling it. His brilliant black eyes were looking directly at
the excited country gentleman with gray mustaches, and apparently he
derived amusement from his remarks. The gentleman was complaining of
the peasants. It was evident to Levin that Sviiazhsky knew the
answer to this gentleman's complaints, which would at once demolish
his whole contention, but that in his position he could not give
utterance to this answer, and listened, not without pleasure, to the
landowner's comic talk.

The gentleman with the gray mustaches was obviously an inveterate
adherent of serfdom and a devoted agriculturist, who had lived all his
life in the country. Levin saw proofs of this in his dress, in his
old-fashioned threadbare coat, obviously not his everyday attire, in
his shrewd, deep-set eyes, in his coherent Russian, in the imperious
tone that had become habitual from long use, and in the resolute
gestures of his large, beautiful sunburned hands, with a single old
wedding ring on his fourth finger.

                           XXVII.


"If I'd only the heart to throw up what's been set going... such a
lot of trouble wasted... I'd turn my back on the whole business,
sell out, go off like Nikolai Ivanovich... to hear La Belle Helene,"
said the landowner, a pleasant smile lighting up his shrewd old face.

"But, you see, you don't throw it up," said Nikolai Ivanovich
Sviiazhsky, "so there must be something gained."

"The only gain is that I live in my own house, neither bought nor
hired. Besides, one keeps hoping the people will learn sense.
Though, instead of that, believe it or not, there is such drunkenness,
such immorality!... They keep making partition of their bits of
land; there isn't a horse or a cow. The peasant's dying of hunger, but
just go and take him on as a laborer- he'll do his best to do you a
mischief, and then bring you up before the justice of the peace."

"But then, you make complaints to the justice too," said Sviiazhsky.

"I lodge complaints? Not for anything in the world There's so much
talk springs up that one is sorry ever to have complained. At the
works, for instance, they pocketed the advance money and made off.
What did the justice do? Why, acquitted them. Nothing keeps them in
order but their own communal court and their village elder. He'll flog
them in the good old style! But for that there'd be nothing for it but
to give it all up and run away."

Obviously the landowner was chaffing Sviiazhsky, who, far from
resenting it, was apparently amused by it.

"But, you see, we manage our land without such extreme measures,"
said he, smiling: "Levin, and I, and this gentleman."

He indicated the other landowner.

"Yes, the thing's done at Mikhail Petrovich's, but ask him how
it's done. Do you call that a rational system?" said the landowner,
obviously rather proud of the word "rational".

"My system's very simple," said Mikhail Petrovich, "thank God. All
my management rests on getting the money ready for the autumn
taxes.... The peasants come to me, 'Father, master, help us!' Well,
the peasants are all one's neighbors; one feels for them. So one
advances them a third, but one says: 'Remember, lads, I have helped
you, and you must help me when I need it- whether it's the sowing of
the oats, or the hay cutting, or the harvest'; and well, one agrees,
so much for each taxpayer- though there are dishonest ones among
them too, it's true."

Levin, who had long been familiar with these patriarchal methods,
exchanged glances with Sviiazhsky and interrupted Mikhail Petrovich,
turning again to the gentleman with the gray mustaches.

"Well, what do you think?" he asked. "What system is one to adopt
nowadays?"

"Why, manage like Mikhail Petrovich, or let the land for half the
crop or for rent to the peasants; one can do that- only that's just
how the general prosperity of the country is being ruined. Where the
land with serf labor and good management gave a yield of nine to
one, on the metayage system it yields three to one. Russia has been
ruined by the emancipation!"

Sviiazhsky looked with smiling eyes at Levin, and even made a
faint gesture of irony to him; but Levin did not think the landowner's
words absurd; he understood them better than he did Sviiazhsky. A
great deal more of what the landowner said to show in what way
Russia was ruined by the emancipation struck him indeed as very
true, new to him, and quite incontestable. The landowner
unmistakably spoke his own individual thought- a thing that rarely
happens- and a thought to which he had been brought not by a desire of
finding some exercise for an idle brain, but a thought which had grown
up out of the conditions of his life, which he had brooded over in the
solitude of his village, and had considered in every aspect.

"The point is, don't you see, that progress of every sort is only
made by the use of authority," he said, evidently wishing to show he
was not without culture. "Take the reforms of Peter, of Catherine,
of Alexander. Take European history. And progress in agriculture
more than anything else- the potato, for instance, that was introduced
among us by force. The wooden plow, too, wasn't always used. It was
introduced in the days of appanaged princes, perhaps, but it was
probably brought in by force. Now, in our own day, we landowners in
the serf times used various improvements in our husbandry: drying
machines and threshing machines, and carting manure, and all the
modern implements- all these we brought into use by our authority, and
the peasants opposed it at first, and ended by imitating us. Now, by
the abolition of serfdom, we have been deprived of our authority;
and so our husbandry, where it had been raised to a high level, is
bound to sink to the most savage, primitive condition. That's how I
see it."

"But why so? If it's rational, you'll be able to keep up the same
system with hired labor," said Sviiazhsky.

"We've no power over them. With whom am I going to work the
system, allow me to ask?"

"There it is- the labor force- the chief element in agriculture,"
thought Levin.

"With laborers."

"The laborers won't work well, and won't work with good
implements. Our laborer can do nothing but get drunk, like a swine,
and then ruin everything you give him. He spoils the horses by
watering unseasonably, he cuts good harness, barters the tires of
the wheels for drink, drops bits of iron into the threshing machine,
so as to break it. He loathes the sight of anything that's not after
his fashion. And that's how the whole level of husbandry has fallen.
Lands gone out of cultivation, overgrown with weeds, or divided
among the peasants, and where millions of chetverts were raised you
get a hundred thousand; the wealth of the country has decreased. If
the same thing had been done, but with consideration for..."

And he proceeded to unfold his own scheme of emancipation by means
of which these drawbacks might have been avoided.

This did not interest Levin, but, when he had finished, Levin went
back to his first position, and, addressing Sviiazhsky, and trying
to draw him into expressing his serious opinion, said:

"It's perfectly true that the standard of culture is falling, and
that with our present relations to the peasants there is no
possibility of farming on a rational system to yield a profit," said
he.

"I don't believe it," Sviiazhsky replied quite seriously; "all I see
is that we don't know how to cultivate the land, and that our system
of agriculture in the serf days was by no means too high, but too low.
We have no machines, no good stock, no efficient supervision; we don't
even know how to keep accounts. Ask any landowner; he won't be able to
tell you which crop's profitable, and which isn't."

"Italian bookkeeping," said the landowner ironically. "You may
keep your books as you like, but if they spoil everything for you,
there won't be any profit."

"Why do they spoil things? A poor threshing machine, or your Russian
presser, they will break, but my steam press they don't break. A
wretched Russian nag they'll ruin, but keep good percherons or the
Russian wagon horses- they won't ruin them. And so it is all round. We
must raise our farming to a higher level."

"Oh, if one only had the means to do it, Nikolai Ivanovich! It's all
very well for you; but for me, with a son to keep at the university,
lads to be educated at the high school- how am I going to buy these
percherons?"

"Well, that's what the banks are for."

"To get whatever I have left sold by auction? No, thank you."

"I don't agree that it's necessary or possible to raise the level of
agriculture still higher," said Levin. "I devote myself to it, and I
have means, but I can do nothing. As to the banks, I don't know to
whom they're any good. For my part, anyway, whatever I've spent
money on in the way of husbandry has been a loss: stock- a loss,
machinery- a loss."

"That's true enough," the gentleman with the gray mustaches chimed
in, even laughing with satisfaction.

"And I'm not the only one," pursued Levin. "I mix with all the
neighboring landowners, who are cultivating their land on a rational
system; they all, with rare exceptions, are doing so at a loss.
Come, tell us how does your land do- does it pay?" said Levin, and
at once in Sviiazhsky's eyes he detected that fleeting expression of
alarm which he had noticed whenever he had tried to penetrate beyond
the outer chambers of Sviiazhsky's mind.

Moreover, this question on Levin's part was not quite in good faith.
Madame Sviiazhsky had just told him at tea that they had that summer
invited a German expert accountant from Moscow, who for a
consideration of five hundred roubles had investigated the
management of their property, and found that it was costing them a
loss of three thousand odd roubles. She did not remember the precise
sum, but it appeared that the German had worked it out to the fraction
of a kopeck.

The landowner smiled at the mention of the profits of Sviiazhsky's
farming, obviously aware how much gain his neighbor and marshal was
likely to be making.

"Possibly it does not pay," answered Sviiazhsky. "That merely proves
that either I'm a bad manager, or that I've sunk my capital for the
increase of my rents."

"Oh, rent!" Levin cried with horror. "Rent there may be in Europe,
where land has been improved by the labor put into it; but with us all
the land is deteriorating from the labor put into it- in other
words, they're working it out; so there's no question of rent."

"How- no rent? It's a law."

"Then we're outside the law; rent explains nothing for us, but
simply muddles us. No, tell me how there can be a theory of rent?..."

"Will you have some curded milk? Masha, pass us some curded milk
or raspberries." He turned to his wife. "The raspberries are lasting
extraordinarily late this year."

And in the happiest frame of mind Sviiazhsky got up and walked
off, apparently supposing the conversation to have ended at the very
point when to Levin it seemed that it was only just beginning.

Having lost his antagonist, Levin continued the conversation with
the landowner, trying to prove to him that all the difficulty arises
from the fact that we don't find out the peculiarities and habits of
our laborer; but the landowner, like all men who think independently
and in isolation, was slow in taking in any other person's thought,
and particularly partial to his own. He stuck to it that the Russian
peasant is a swine and likes swinishness, and that to get him out of
his swinishness one must have authority, and there is none; one must
have the stick, and we have become so liberal that we have all of a
sudden replaced the stick, that served us for a thousand years, with
lawyers and model prisons, where the worthless, stinking peasant is
fed on good soup and has a fixed allowance of cubic feet of air.

"What makes you think," said Levin, trying to get back to the
question, "that it's impossible to find some relation to the laborer
in which the labor would become productive?"

"That never could be so with the Russian people; we've no
authority," answered the landowner.

"How can new conditions be found?" said Sviiazhsky. Having eaten
some curded milk and lighted a cigarette, he came back to the
discussion. "All possible relations to the labor force have been
defined and studied," he said. "The relic of barbarism, the
primitive commune with a guarantee for all, will disappear of
itself; serfdom has been abolished- there remains nothing but free
labor, and its forms are fixed and ready made, and must be adopted.
Permanent hands, day laborers, farmers- you can't get out of those
forms."

"But Europe is dissatisfied with these forms."

"Dissatisfied, and seeking new ones. And will find them, in all
probability."

"That's just what I meant," answered Levin. "Why shouldn't we seek
them for ourselves?"

"Because it would be just like inventing afresh the means for
constructing railways. They are ready, invented."

"But if they don't suit us, if they're stupid?" said Levin.

And again he detected the expression of alarm in the eyes of
Sviiazhsky.

"Oh, yes; we'll bury the world under our caps! We've found the
secret Europe was seeking for! I've heard all that; but, excuse me, do
you know all that's been done in Europe on the question of the
organization of labor?"

"No, very little."

"That question is now absorbing the best minds in Europe. The
Schulze-Delitsch movement.... And then, all this enormous literature
of the labor question, the most liberal Lassalle movement.... The
Mulhausen experiment? That's a fact by now, as you're probably aware."

"I have some idea of it, but very vague."

"No, you only say that; no doubt you know all about it as well as
I do. I'm no professor of sociology, of course, but it interested
me, and really, if it interests you, you ought to study it."

"But what conclusion have they come to?"

"Excuse me..."

The two neighbors had risen, and Sviiazhsky, once more checking
Levin in his inconvenient habit of peeping into what was beyond the
outer chambers of his mind, went to see his guests out.

                           XXVIII.


Levin was insufferably bored that evening with the ladies; he was
stirred as he had never been before by the idea that the
dissatisfaction he was feeling with his system of managing his land
was not an exceptional case, but the general condition of things in
Russia; that the evolving of some relation of the laborers to the soil
which they would work, as with the peasant he had met halfway to the
Sviiazhskys', was not a dream, but a problem which must be solved. And
it seemed to him that the problem could be solved, and that he ought
to try to solve it.

After saying good night to the ladies, and promising to stay the
whole of the next day, so as to make an expedition on horseback with
them to see an interesting gap in the crown forest, Levin went, before
going to bed, into his host's study to get the books on the labor
question that Sviiazhsky had offered him. Sviiazhsky's study was a
huge room, by bookcases and with two tables in it- one a massive
writing table, standing in the middle of the room, and the other a
round table, covered with recent numbers of reviews and journals in
different languages, ranged like the rays of a star round a lamp. On
the writing table was a stand of drawers marked with gold labels,
and full of papers of various sorts.

Sviiazhsky took out the books, and sat down in a rocking chair.

"What are you looking at there?" he said to Levin, who was
standing at the round table looking through the reviews. "Oh, yes,
there's a very interesting article here," said Sviiazhsky, pointing to
the review Levin was holding in his hand. "It appears," he went on,
with eager interest, "that Friedrich was not, after all, the person
chiefly responsible for the partition of Poland. It is proved..."

And, with his characteristic clearness, he summed up those new, very
important, and interesting revelations. Although Levin was engrossed
at the moment by his ideas about the problem of the land, he wondered,
as he heard Sviiazhsky: "What is there inside of him? And why, why
is he interested in the partition of Poland?" When Sviiazhsky had
finished, Levin could not help asking: "Well, and what then?" But
there was nothing to follow. It was simply interesting that such and
such had been "proved." But Sviiazhsky did not explain, and saw no
need of explaining, why it was interesting to him.

"Yes, but I was very much interested by your irritable neighbor,"
said Levin, sighing. "He's a clever fellow, and said a lot that was
true."

"Oh, get along with you! An inveterate supporter of serfdom at
heart, like all of them!" said Sviiazhsky.

"Whose marshal you are."

"Yes, only I marshal them in the other direction," said
Sviiazhsky, laughing.

"I'll tell you what interests me very much," said Levin. "He's right
that our system, that is to say, of rational farming, doesn't
answer; that the only thing that answers is the moneylender system,
like that meek-looking gentleman's, or else the very simplest. Whose
fault is it?"

"Our own, of course. Besides, it's not true that it doesn't
answer. It answers with Vassilchikov."

"A factory..."

"But I really don't know what it is you are surprised at. The people
are at such a low stage of material and moral development, that
obviously they're bound to oppose everything that's necessary to them.
In Europe, a rational system answers because the people are
educated; it follows that we must educate the people- that's all."

"But how are we to educate the people?"

"To educate the people three things are needed: schools, and
schools, and schools."

"But you said yourself the people are at such a low stage of
material development: what help are schools for that?"

"Do you know, you remind me of the story of the advice given to
the sick man.- You should try purgative medicine. Taken it: worse. Try
leeches. Tried them: worse. Well, then, there's nothing left but to
pray to God. Tried it: worse. That's just how it is with us. I say
political economy; you say- worse. I say socialism- worse.
Education- worse."

"But how do schools help matters?"

"They give the peasant fresh wants."

"Well, that's a thing I've never understood," Levin replied with
heat. "In what way are schools going to help the people to improve
their material position? You say schools, education, will give them
fresh wants. So much the worse, since they won't be capable of
satisfying them. And in what way a knowledge of addition and
subtraction and the catechism is going to improve their material
condition, I never could make out. The day before yesterday I met a
peasant woman in the evening with a little baby, and asked her where
she was going. She said she was going to the wisewoman; her boy had
screaming fits, so she was taking him to be doctored. I asked, 'Why,
how does the wisewoman cure screaming fits?' 'She puts the child on
the hen roost and repeats some charm....'"

"Well, you're saying it yourself! What's wanted to prevent her
taking her child to the hen roost to cure it of screaming fits is
just..." Sviiazhsky said, smiling good-humoredly.

"Oh, no!" said Levin with annoyance; "that method of doctoring I
merely meant as a simile for doctoring the people with schools. The
people are poor and ignorant- that we see as surely as the peasant
woman sees the baby has fits because it screams. But in what way
this trouble of poverty and ignorance is to be cured by schools is
as incomprehensible as how the hen roost affects the screaming. What
has to be cured is what makes him poor."

"Well, in that, at least, you're in agreement with Spencer, whom you
dislike so much. He says, too, that education may be the consequence
of greater prosperity and comfort, of more frequent washing, as he
says, but not of being able to read and write...."

"Well, then, I'm very glad- or the contrary, very sorry- that I'm in
agreement with Spencer; only I've known it a long while. Schools can
do no good; what will do good is an economic organization in which the
people will become richer, will have more leisure- and then there will
be schools."

"Still, all over Europe now schools are obligatory."

"And how far do you agree with Spencer yourself about it?" asked
Levin.

But there was a gleam of alarm in Sviiazhsky's eyes, and he said
smiling:

"No; that screaming story is positively capital! Did you really hear
it yourself?"

Levin saw that he was not to discover the connection between this
man's life and his thoughts. Obviously he did not care in the least
what his reasoning led him to; all he wanted was the process of
reasoning. And he did not like it when the process of reasoning
brought him into a blind alley. That was the only thing he disliked,
and avoided by changing the conversation to something agreeable and
amusing.

All the impressions of the day, beginning with the impression made
by the old peasant, which served, as it were, as the thorough bass
of all the conceptions and ideas of the day, threw Levin into
violent excitement. This dear good Sviiazhsky, keeping a stock of
ideas simply for public purposes, and obviously having some other
principles hidden from Levin, while with the crowd, whose name is
legion, he guided public opinion by ideas he did not share; that
irascible country gentleman, perfectly correct in the conclusions that
he had been worried into by life, but wrong in his exasperation
against a whole class, and that the best class in Russia; his own
dissatisfaction with the work he had been doing, and the vague hope of
finding a remedy for all this- all was blended in a sense of inward
turmoil, and the anticipation of some solution near at hand.

Left alone in the room assigned him, lying on a spring mattress,
that yielded unexpectedly at every movement of his arm or his leg,
Levin did not fall asleep for a long while. Not one conversation
with Sviiazhsky, though he had said a great deal that was clever,
had interested Levin; but the conclusions of the irascible landowner
required consideration. Levin could not help recalling every word he
had said, and in imagination amending his own replies.

"Yes, I ought to have said to him: You say that our husbandry does
not answer because the peasant hates improvements, and that they
must be forced on him by authority. If no system of husbandry answered
at all without these improvements, you would be quite right. But the
only system that does answer is when the laborer is working in
accordance with his habits, just as on the old peasant's land
halfway here. Your and our general dissatisfaction with the system
shows that either we are to blame or the laborers. We have gone our
way- the European way- a long while, without asking ourselves about
the qualities of our labor force. Let us try to look upon the labor
force not as an abstract force but as the Russian mouzhik with his
instincts, and let us arrange our system of agriculture in
accordance with that. Imagine, I ought to have said to him, that you
have the same system as the old peasant has, that you have found means
of making your laborers take an interest in the success of the work,
and have found the happy mean in the way of improvements which they
will admit, and you will, without exhausting the soil, get twice or
three times the yield you got before. Divide it in halves, give half
as the share of labor, the surplus left you will be greater, and
labor's share will be greater too. And to do this one must lower the
standard of husbandry and interest the laborers in its success. How to
do this?- that's a matter of detail; but undoubtedly it can be done."

This idea threw Levin into a great excitement. He did not sleep half
the night, thinking over in detail the putting of his idea into
practice. He had not intended to go away next day, but he now
determined to go home early in the morning. Besides, the sister-in-law
with her low-necked bodice aroused in him a feeling akin to shame
and remorse for some utterly base action. Most important of all- he
must get back without delay: he would have to make haste to put his
new project to the peasants before the sowing of the winter wheat,
so that the sowing might be undertaken on a new basis. He had made
up his mind to revolutionize his whole system.

                           XXIX.


The carrying out of Levin's plan presented many difficulties; but he
struggled on, doing his utmost, and attained a result which, though
not what he desired, was enough to enable him, without self-deception,
to believe that the attempt was worth the trouble. One of the chief
difficulties was that the process of cultivating the land was in
full swing, that it was impossible to stop everything and begin it all
again from the beginning, and the machine had to be mended while in
motion.

When on the evening of his arrival home he informed the bailiff of
his plans, the latter with visible pleasure agreed with what he
said, so long as he was pointing out that all that had been done up to
that time was stupid and useless. The bailiff said that he had said so
a long while ago, but no heed had been paid him. But as for the
proposal made by Levin- to take a part as shareholder with his
laborers in each agricultural undertaking- at this the bailiff
simply expressed a profound despondency, and offered no definite
opinion, but began immediately talking of the urgent necessity of
carrying the remaining sheaves of rye the next day, and of sending the
men out for the second plowing, so that Levin felt that this was not
the time for discussing it.

On beginning to talk to the peasants about it, and making a
proposition to cede them the land on new terms, he came into collision
with the same great difficulty- that they were so much absorbed by the
current work of the day that they had not time to consider the
advantages and disadvantages of the proposed scheme.

The simplehearted Ivan, the cowherd, seemed to grasp Levin's
proposal fully- that he should with his family take a share of the
profits of the cattle yard- and he was in complete sympathy with the
plan. But when Levin hinted at the future advantages, Ivan's face
expressed alarm and regret that he could not hear all he had to say,
and he made haste to find himself some task that would admit of no
delay: he either snatched up the fork to pitch the hay out of the
pens, or ran to get water or to clear out the manure.

Another difficulty lay in the invincible disbelief of the peasants
that a landowner's object could be anything else than a desire to
squeeze all he could out of them. They were firmly convinced that
his real aim (whatever he might say to them) would always be in what
he did not say to them. And they themselves, in giving their
opinion, said a great deal but never said what was their real
object. Moreover (Levin felt that the irascible landowner had been
right) the peasants made their first and unalterable condition of
any agreement whatsoever that they should not be forced to any new
methods of tillage of any kind, nor to use new implements. They agreed
that the modern plow plowed better, that the scarifier did the work
more quickly, but they found thousands of reasons that made it out
of the question for them to use either of them; and though he had
accepted the conviction that he would have to lower the standard of
cultivation, he felt sorry to give up improved methods, the advantages
of which were so obvious. But in spite of all these difficulties he
got his way, and by autumn the system was working, or at least so it
seemed to him.

At first Levin had thought of giving up the whole farming of the
land just as it was to the peasants, the laborers, and the bailiff, on
new conditions of partnership; but he was very soon convinced that
this was impossible, and determined to divide it up. The cattle
yard, the garden, hayfields, and arable land, divided into several
parts, had to be made into separate lots. The simplehearted cowherd,
Ivan, who, Levin fancied, understood the matter better than any of
them, collecting together a gang of workers to help him, principally
of his own family, became a partner in the cattle yard. A distant part
of the estate, a tract of wasteland that had lain fallow for eight
years, was with the help of the clever carpenter, Fiodor Rezunov,
taken by six families of peasants on new conditions of partnership and
the peasant Shuraev took the management of all the vegetable gardens
on the same terms. The remainder of the land was still worked on the
old system, but these three items were the first step to a new
organization of the whole, and they completely engrossed Levin.

It is true that in the cattle yard things went no better than
before, and Ivan strenuously opposed warm housing for the cows and
butter made of fresh cream, affirming that cows require less food if
kept cold, and that butter is more profitable made from sour cream,
and he asked for wages just as under the old system, and took not
the slightest interest in the fact that the money he received was
not wages but an advance out of his future share in the profits.

It is true that Fiodor Rezunov's company did not plow over the
ground twice before sowing, as had been agreed, justifying
themselves on the plea that the time was too short. It is true that
the peasants of the same company, though they had agreed to work the
land on new conditions, always spoke of the land, not as held in
partnership, but as rented for half the crop, and more than once the
peasants and Rezunov himself said to Levin: "If you would take a
rent for the land, it would save you trouble, and we should be more
free." Moreover, the same peasants kept putting off, on various
excuses, the building of a cattle yard and threshing barn on the
land as agreed upon, and delayed doing it till the winter.

It is true that Shuraev would have liked to let out the kitchen
gardens he had undertaken in small lots to the peasants. He
evidently quite misunderstood, and apparently intentionally
misunderstood, the conditions upon which the land had been given to
him.

Often, too, talking to the peasants and explaining to them all the
advantages of the plan, Levin felt that the peasants heard nothing but
the sound of his voice, and were firmly resolved, whatever he might
say, not to let themselves be taken in. He felt this especially when
he talked to the cleverest of the peasants, Rezunov, and detected that
gleam in Rezunov's eyes which showed so plainly both ironical
amusement at Levin, and the firm conviction that, if anyone were to be
taken in, it would not be he, Rezunov.

But in spite of all this Levin thought the system worked, and that
by keeping accounts strictly, and insisting on his own way, he would
prove to them in the future the advantages of the arrangement, and
then the system would go of itself.

These matters, together with the management of the land still left
on his hands, and the indoor work over his book, so engrossed Levin
the whole summer that he scarcely ever went out shooting. At the end
of August he heard that the Oblonskys had gone away to Moscow- from
their servant, who brought back the sidesaddle. He felt that in not
answering Darya Alexandrovna's letter he had by his rudeness, of which
he could not think without a flush of shame, burned his ships, and
that he would never go to see them again. He had been just as rude
with the Sviiazhskys, leaving them without saying good-by. But he
would never go to see them again either. He did not care about that
now. The business of reorganizing the farming of his land absorbed him
as completely as though there would never be anything else in his
life. He read the books lent him by Sviiazhsky, and ordering from
Moscow what he had not had, he read both the economic and
socialistic books on the subject, but, as he had anticipated, found
nothing bearing on the scheme he had undertaken. In the books on
political economy- in Mill, for instance- whom he studied first with
great ardor, hoping every minute to find an answer to the questions
that were engrossing him, he found laws deduced from the condition
of land culture in Europe; but he did not see why these laws, which
did not apply in Russia, must be general. He saw just the same thing
in the socialistic books: either they were the beautiful but
impracticable fantasies which had fascinated him when he was a
student, or they were attempts at improving, at rectifying the
economic position in which Europe was placed, with which the system of
land tenure in Russia had nothing in common. Political economy told
him that the laws by which the wealth of Europe had been developed,
and was developing, were universal and unvarying. Socialism told him
that development along these lines leads to ruin. And neither of
them gave an answer, or even a hint, in reply to the question as to
what he, Levin, and all the Russian peasants and landowners, were to
do with their millions of hands and millions of dessiatinas, to make
them as productive as possible for the common weal.

Having once taken the subject up, he read conscientiously everything
bearing on it, and intended in the autumn to go abroad to study land
systems on the spot, in order that he might not on this question be
confronted with what so often met him on various subjects. Often, just
as he was beginning to understand the idea in the mind of anyone he
was talking to, and was beginning to explain his own, he would
suddenly be told: "But Kauffmann, but Jones, but Dubois, but Michelli?
You haven't read them: do read, they've thrashed that question out
thoroughly."

He saw now distinctly that Kauffmann and Michelli had nothing to
tell him. He knew what he wanted. He saw that Russia had splendid
land, splendid laborers, and that in certain cases, as at the
peasant's on the way to Sviiazhsky's, the produce raised by the
laborers and the land is great- in the majority of cases when
capital is applied in the European way the produce is small, and
that this simply arises from the fact that the laborers want to work
and work well only in their own peculiar way, and that this antagonism
is not incidental but invariable, and has its roots in the national
spirit. He thought that the Russian people whose task it was to
colonize and cultivate vast tracts of unoccupied land, consciously
adhered, till all their land was occupied, to the methods suitable
to their purpose, and that their methods were by no means so bad as
was generally supposed. And he wanted to prove this theoretically in
his book and practically on his land.

                           XXX.


At the end of September the timber had been carted for building
the cattle yard on the land that had been allotted to the
association of peasants, and the butter from the cows was sold and the
profits divided. In Practice the system worked capitally, or, at
least, so it seemed to Levin. In order to work out the whole subject
theoretically and to complete his book, which, in Levin's daydreams,
was not merely to effect a revolution in political economy, but to
annihilate that science entirely and to lay the foundation of a new
science of the relation of the people to the soil, all that was left
to do was to make a tour abroad, and to study on the spot all that had
been done in the same direction, and to collect conclusive evidence
that all that had been done there was not what was wanted. Levin was
only waiting for the delivery of his wheat to receive the money for it
and go abroad. But the rains began preventing the harvesting of the
corn and potatoes left in the fields, and putting a stop to all
work, even to the delivery of the wheat. The mud was impassable
along the roads; two mills were carried away by the spate, and the
weather got worse and worse.

On the 30th of September the sun came out in the morning, and,
hoping for fine weather, Levin began making final preparations for his
journey. He gave orders for the wheat to be delivered, sent the
bailiff to the merchant to get the money owing him, and went out
himself to give some final directions on the estate before setting
off.

Having finished all his business, soaked through with the streams of
water which kept running into his leather coat and down his neck and
his boot tops, but in the keenest and most confident temper, Levin
turned homeward in the evening. The weather had become worse than ever
toward evening; the hail lashed the drenched mare so cruelly that
she went along sideways, shaking her head and ears; but Levin was
all right under his hood, and he looked cheerfully about him at the
muddy streams running under the wheels, at the drops hanging on
every bare twig, at the whiteness of the patch of unmelted
hailstones on the planks of the bridge, at the thick layer of still
succulent, fleshy leaves that lay heaped up about the stripped elm
tree. In spite of the gloominess of nature around him, he felt
peculiarly eager. The talks he had been having with the peasants in
the farther village had shown that they were beginning to get used
to their new position. The innkeeper, an old man, to whose inn he
had gone to get dry evidently approved of Levin's plan, and of his own
accord proposed to enter the partnership for purchasing of cattle.

"I have only to go on stubbornly toward my aim, and I shall attain
my end," thought Levin; "and it's something to work and take trouble
for. This is not a matter of myself individually, the question of
the public welfare comes into it. The whole system of agriculture, the
chief element in the condition of the people, must be completely
transformed. Instead of poverty- general prosperity and content;
instead of hostility- harmony and unity of interests. In short, a
bloodless revolution, but a revolution of the greatest magnitude,
beginning in the little circle of our district, then the province,
then Russia, and the whole world. Because a just idea cannot but be
fruitful. Yes, it's an aim worth working for. And the fact that it
is I, Kostia Levin, who went to a ball in a black tie, and was refused
by the Shcherbatsky girl, and who is intrinsically such a pitiful,
worthless creature to himself- that proves nothing; I feel sure
Franklin felt just as worthless, and he too had no faith in himself,
thinking of himself as a whole. That means nothing. And he too, most
likely, had an Agathya Mikhailovna to whom he confided his secrets."

Musing on such thoughts Levin reached home in the darkness.

The bailiff, who had been to the merchant, had come back and brought
part of the money for the wheat. An agreement had been made with the
old innkeeper, and on the road the bailiff had learned that everywhere
the corn was still standing in the fields, so that his one hundred and
sixty shocks that had not been carried were nothing in comparison with
the losses of others.

After dinner Levin was sitting, as he usually did, in an easy
chair with a book, and as he read he went on thinking of the journey
before him in connection with his book. Today all the significance
of his book rose before him with special distinctness, and whole
periods ranged themselves in his mind in illustration of his theories.
"I must write that down," he thought. "That ought to form a brief
introduction, which I thought unnecessary before." He got up to go
to his writing table, and Laska, lying at his feet, got up too,
stretching and looking at him as though to inquire where to go. But he
had not time to write it down, for the overseers had come for
receiving orders, and Levin went out into the hall to meet them.

After giving orders, that is to say, directions about the labors
of the next day, and seeing all the peasants who had business with
him, Levin went back to his study and sat down to work. Laska lay
under the table; Agathya Mikhailovna settled herself in her place with
her stocking.

After writing for a little while, Levin suddenly thought with
exceptional vividness of Kitty, her refusal, and their last meeting.
He got up and began walking about the room.

"What's the use of being downhearted?" said Agathya Mikhailovna.
"Come, why do you stay on at home? You ought to go to some warm
springs, especially now that you're ready for the journey."

"Well, I am going away the day after tomorrow, Agathya
Mikhailovna; I must finish my work."

"There, there, your work, you say! As if you hadn't done enough
for the peasants! Why, as 'tis, they're saying, 'Your master will be
getting some honor from the Czar for it.' Indeed, 'tis a strange
thing: why need you worry about the peasants?"

"I'm not worrying about them; I'm doing it for my own good."

Agathya Mikhailovna knew every detail of Levin's plans for his land.
Levin often put his views before her in all their complexity, and
not uncommonly he argued with her and did not agree with her comments.
But on this occasion she entirely misinterpreted what he had said.

"Of one's soul's salvation we all know and must think before all
else," she said with a sigh. "Parfion Denissich now, for all he was no
scholar, died a death whose like may God grant to every one of us,"
she said, referring to a servant who had died recently. "Took the
sacrament and all."

"That's not what I mean," said he. "I mean that I'm acting for my
own advantage. It's all the better for me if the peasants do their
work better."

"Well, whatever you do, if he's a lazy good-for-naught,
everything'll be at sixes and sevens. If he has a conscience, he'll
work, and if not, there's no doing anything."

"Oh, come, you say yourself Ivan has begun looking after the
cattle better."

"All I say is," answered Agathya Mikhailovna, evidently not speaking
at random, but in strict sequence of ideas, "that you ought to get
married- that's what I say."

Agathya Mikhailovna's allusion to the very subject he had only
just been thinking about hurt and stung him. Levin scowled, and
without answering her, he sat down again to his work, repeating to
himself all that he had been thinking of the real significance of that
work. Only at intervals he listened in the stillness to the click of
Agathya Mikhailovna's needles, and, recollecting what he did not
want to remember, he would frown again.

At nine o'clock they heard the bell and the faint vibration of a
carriage over the mud.

"Well, here's visitors come to us, and you won't be dull," said
Agathya Mikhailovna, getting up and going to the door. But Levin
overtook her. His work was not going well now, and he was glad of a
visitor, whoever it might be.

                           XXXI.


Running halfway down the staircase, Levin caught a sound he knew,
a familiar cough in the hall. But he heard it indistinctly through the
sound of his own footsteps, and hoped he was mistaken. Then he
caught sight of a long, bony, familiar figure, and now it seemed there
was no possibility of mistake; and yet he still went on hoping that
this tall man taking off his fur cloak and coughing was not his
brother Nikolai.

Levin loved his brother, but being with him was always a torture.
Just now, when Levin, under the influence of the thoughts that had
come to him, and Agathya Mikhailovna's hint, was in a troubled and
uncertain humor, this meeting with his brother which he had to face
seemed particularly difficult. Instead of a lively, healthy visitor,
some outsider who would, he hoped, cheer him up in his uncertain
humor, he had to see his brother, who knew him through and through,
who would call forth all the thoughts nearest his heart, would force
him to show himself fully. And that he was not disposed to do.

Angry with himself for so base a feeling, Levin ran into the hall;
as soon as he had seen his brother close, this feeling of selfish
disappointment vanished instantly and was replaced by pity. Terrible
as his brother Nikolai had been before in his emaciation and
sickliness, now he looked still more emaciated, still more wasted.
He was a skeleton covered by skin.

He stood in the hall, jerking his long thin neck, and pulling the
scarf off it, and smiled a strange and pitiful smile. When he saw that
smile, submissive and humble, Levin felt something clutching at his
throat.

"You see, I've come to you," said Nikolai in a thick voice, never
for one second taking his eyes off his brother's face. "I've been
meaning to a long while, but I've been constantly unwell. Now I'm ever
so much better," he said, rubbing his beard with his big thin hands.

"Yes, yes!" answered Levin. And he felt still more frightened
when, kissing him, he felt with his lips the dryness of his
brother's skin and saw close to him his big eyes, full of a strange
light.

A few weeks before, Konstantin Levin had written to his brother that
through the sale of the small part of the property that had remained
undivided, there was a sum of about two thousand roubles to come to
him as his share.

Nikolai said that he had come now to take his money and, what was
more important, to stay a while in the old nest, to get in touch
with the earth, so as to renew his strength like the heroes of old for
the work that lay before him. In spite of his exaggerated stoop, and
the emaciation that was so striking from his height, his movements
were as rapid and abrupt as ever. Levin led him into his study.

His brother dressed with particular care- a thing he never used to
do- combed his scanty, lank hair, and, smiling, went upstairs.

He was in the most affectionate and good-humored mood, just as Levin
often remembered him in childhood. He even referred to Sergei
Ivanovich without rancor. When he saw Agathya Mikhailovna, he joked
with her and asked after the old servants. The news of the death of
Parfion Denissich made a painful impression on him. A look of fear
crossed his face, but he regained his serenity immediately.

"Of course he was quite old," he said, and changed the subject.
"Well, I'll spend a month or two with you, and then I'm off to Moscow.
Do you know, Miaghkov has promised me a place there, and I'm going
into the service. Now I'm going to arrange my life quite differently,"
he went on. "You know I got rid of that woman."

"Marya Nikolaevna? Why, what for?"

"Oh, she was a horrid woman! She caused me all sorts of annoyances."
But he did not say what the annoyances were. He could not say that
he had driven off Marya Nikolaevna because the tea was weak, and,
above all, because she would look after him as though he were an
invalid. "Besides, I want to turn over a new leaf completely now. I've
done silly things, of course, like everyone else, but money's the last
consideration; I don't regret it. So long as there's health- and my
health, thank God, is quite restored."

Levin listened and racked his brains, but could think of nothing
to say. Nikolai probably felt the same; he began questioning his
brother about his affairs; and Levin was glad to talk about himself,
because then he could speak without hypocrisy. He told his brother
of his plans and his doings.

His brother listened, but evidently he was not interested.

These two men were so akin, so near each other, that the slightest
gesture, the tone of voice, told both more than could be said in
words.

Both of them now had only one thought- the illness of Nikolai and
the nearness of his death- which stifled all else. But neither of them
dared speak of it, and so, whatever they said- without uttering the
one thought that filled their minds- was all falsehood. Never had
Levin been so glad when the evening was over and it was time to go
to bed. Never with any outside person, never on any official visit,
had he been so unnatural and false as he was that evening. And the
consciousness of this unnaturalness, and the remorse he felt at it,
made him even more unnatural. He wanted to weep over his dying, dearly
loved brother, and he had to listen and keep on talking of how he
meant to live.

As the house was damp, and only the one bedroom had been kept
heated, Levin put his brother to sleep in his own bedroom, behind a
partition.

His brother got into bed, and whether he slept or did not sleep,
tossed about like a sick man, coughed, and when he could not get his
throat clear, mumbled something. Sometimes when his breathing was
painful, he said, "Oh, my God!" Sometimes when he was choking he
muttered angrily, "Ah, the devil!" Levin could not sleep for a long
while, hearing him. His thoughts were of the most various kinds, but
the end of all his thoughts was the same- death.

Death, the inevitable end of all, for the first time presented
itself to him with irresistible force. And death, which was here in
this loved brother, groaning half-asleep and from habit calling
without distinction on God and the devil, was not so remote as it
had hitherto seemed to him. It was in himself, too, that he felt this.
If not today, tomorrow; if not tomorrow, in thirty years- wasn't it
all the same? And what was this inevitable death- he did not know, had
never thought about it, and, what was more, had not the power, had not
the courage to think about it.

"I work, I want to do something, but I had forgotten it must all
end; I had forgotten- death."

He sat on his bed in the darkness, crouched up, hugging his knees,
and, holding his breath from the strain of thought, he pondered. But
the more intensely he thought, the clearer it became to him that it
was indubitably so, that, in reality, looking upon life, he had
forgotten one little fact- that death will come, and all ends; that
nothing was even worth beginning, and that there was no helping it
anyway. Yes, it was awful, but it was so.

"But I am alive still. What's to be done now- what's to be done?" he
asked in despair. He lighted a candle, got up cautiously, went to
the looking glass, and began looking at his face and hair. Yes,
there were gray hairs about his temples. He opened his mouth. His back
teeth were beginning to decay. He bared his muscular arms. Yes,
there was strength in them. But Nikolenka, who lay there breathing
with what was left of his lungs, had had a strong, healthy body too.
And suddenly he recalled how they used to go to bed together as
children, and how they only waited till Fiodor Bogdanich was out of
the room to fling pillows at each other and laugh, laugh
irrepressibly, so that even their awe of Fiodor Bogdanich could not
check the effervescing, overbrimming sense of life and happiness. "And
now that warped, hollow chest... And I, not knowing what will become
of me, or wherefore...."

"K-ha! K-ha! Damnation! Why do you keep fidgeting- why don't you
go to sleep?" his brother's voice called to him.

"Oh, I don't know; I'm not sleepy."

"I have had a good sleep, I'm not in a sweat now. Just see, feel
my shirt- there's no sweat, is there?"

Levin felt it, withdrew behind the partition, and put out the
candle, but for a long while he could not sleep. The question how to
live had hardly begun to grow a little clearer to him, when a new,
insolvable question presented itself- death.

"Why, he's dying- yes, he'll die in the spring; and how is one to
help him? What can I say to him? What do I know about it? I'd even
forgotten the very fact of it."

                           XXXII.


Levin had long before made the observation that when one is
uncomfortable with people from their being excessively amenable and
meek, one is apt very soon after to find things intolerable from their
pretensions and irritability. He felt that this was how it would be
with his brother. And his brother Nikolai's gentleness did not, in
fact, last out for long. The very next morning he began to be
irritable, and seemed doing his best to find fault with his brother,
attacking him on his tenderest points.

Levin felt himself to blame, and could not set things right. He felt
that if they had both not kept up appearances, but had spoken, as it
is called, from the heart- that is to say, had said only just what
they were thinking and feeling- they would simply have looked into
each other's faces, and Konstantin could only have said: "You're
dying, you're dying," and Nikolai could only have answered: "I know
I'm dying, but I'm afraid, I'm afraid, I'm afraid!" And they could
have said nothing more, if they had said only what was in their
hearts. But life like that was impossible, and so Konstantin tried
to do what he had been trying to do all his life, and never could
learn to do, though, as far as he could observe, many people knew so
well how to do it, and without it there was no living at all. He tried
to say what he was not thinking, but he felt continually that it had a
ring of falsehood, that his brother detected him in it, and was
exasperated at it.

The third day Nikolai induced his brother to explain his plan to him
again, and began not merely attacking it, but intentionally
confounding it with communism.

"You've simply borrowed an idea that's not your own, but you've
distorted it, and are trying to apply it where it's not applicable."

"But I tell you there's nothing in common. They deny the justice
of property, of capital, of inheritance, while I do not deny this
chief stimulus." (Levin felt disgusted himself at using such
expressions, but ever since he had been engrossed by his work, he
had unconsciously come more and more frequently to use non-Russian
words.) "All I want is to regulate labor."

"Which means, you've borrowed an idea, stripped it of all that
gave it its force, and want to make believe that it's something
new," said Nikolai, angrily tugging at his necktie.

"But my idea has nothing in common..."

"The other, at any rate," said Nikolai Levin, with an ironical
smile, his eyes flashing malignantly, "has the charm of- what's one to
call it?- geometrical symmetry, of clearness, of definiteness. It
may be a Utopia. If one once allows the possibility of making all
the past a tabula rasa- no property, no family- then labor would
organize itself. But you have nothing..."

"Why do you mix things up? I've never been a communist."

"But I have, and I consider it's premature, but rational, and it has
a future, just like Christianity in its first ages."

"All that I maintain is that the labor force ought to be
investigated from the point of view of natural science; that is to
say, it ought to be studied, its qualities ascertained..."

"But that's an utter waste of time. That force finds a certain
form of activity of itself, according to the stage of its development.
There have been slaves first, everywhere; then metayers; and we have
the metayage system, rent, and day laborers. What are you trying to
find?"

Levin suddenly lost his temper at these words, because at the bottom
of his heart he was afraid that it was true- true that he was trying
to hold the balance even between communism and the familiar forms, and
that this was hardly possible.

"I am trying to find means of working productively for myself and
for the laborers. I want to organize..." he answered hotly.

"You don't want to organize anything; it's simply the same as you've
been all your life- you want to be original, to pose as not simply
exploiting the peasants, but with some idea in view."

"Oh, all right, that's what you think- and let me alone!" answered
Levin, feeling the muscles of his left cheek twitching uncontrollably.

"You've never had, and never have, convictions; all you want is to
please your vanity."

"Oh, very well; let me alone then!"

"And I will let you alone! And it's high time I did, and go to the
devil with you! And I'm very sorry I ever came!"

In spite of all Levin's efforts to soothe his brother afterward,
Nikolai would listen to nothing he said, declaring that it was
better to part, and Konstantin saw that it was simply a case of life
being unbearable to him.

Nikolai was just getting ready to go, when Konstantin went in to him
again and begged him, rather unnaturally, to forgive him if he had
hurt his feelings in any way.

"Ah, generosity!" said Nikolai, and he smiled. "If you want to be
right, I can give you that satisfaction. You're in the right; but
I'm going all the same."

It was only just at parting that Nikolai kissed him, and said,
looking with sudden strangeness and seriousness at his brother:

"Anyway, don't remember evil against me, Kostia!" and his voice
quavered.

These were the only words that had been spoken sincerely between
them. Levin knew that those words meant, "You see, and you know,
that I'm in a bad way, and maybe we shall never see each other again."
Levin knew this, and the tears gushed from his eyes. He kissed his
brother once more, but he could not speak, and knew not what to say.

Two days after his brother's departure, Levin too set off for his
foreign tour. Happening to meet Shcherbatsky, Kitty's cousin, in the
railway train, Levin greatly astonished him by his depression.

"What's the matter with you?" Shcherbatsky asked him.

"Oh, nothing; there's not much happiness in life."

"Not much? You come with me to Paris instead of to Mulhouse. You
shall see how to be happy."

"No, I've done with it all. It's time I was dead."

"Well, that's a good one!" said Shcherbatsky, laughing, "why, I'm
only just getting ready to begin."

"Yes, I thought the same not long ago, but now I know I shall soon
be dead."

Levin said what he had genuinely been thinking of late. He saw
nothing but death, or an approach to death in everything. But his
cherished scheme only engrossed him the more. Life had to be got
through somehow, till death did come. Darkness had fallen upon
everything for him; but just because of this darkness he felt that the
one guiding clue in the darkness was his work, and he clutched it, and
clung to it with all his strength.

                       PART FOUR


                           I.


The Karenins, husband and wife, continued living in the same
house, met every day, but were complete strangers to one another.
Alexei Alexandrovich made it a rule to see his wife every day, so that
the servants might have no grounds for suppositions, but avoided
dining at home. Vronsky was never at Alexei Alexandrovich's house, but
Anna saw him away from home, and her husband was aware of it.

The position was one of torture for all three; and not one of them
would have been equal to enduring this position for a single day,
had it not been for the expectation that it would change, that it
was merely a temporary painful difficulty which would pass over.
Alexei Alexandrovich hoped that this passion would pass, as everything
does pass, that everyone would forget about it, and his name would
remain unsullied. Anna, on whom the position depended, and for whom it
was more poignant than for any other, endured it because she not
merely hoped, but firmly believed, that it would all very soon be
settled and come right. She had not the least idea what would settle
the situation, but she firmly believed that something would now very
soon turn up. Vronsky unaccountably followed her lead, hoping too that
something, independent of him, would be sure to clear up all
difficulties.

In the middle of the winter Vronsky spent a very tiresome week. A
foreign Prince, who had come on a visit to Peterburg, was put under
his charge, and he had to show him the sights worth seeing. Vronsky
was of distinguished appearance; he possessed, moreover, the art of
behaving with respectful dignity, and was used to having to do with
such grand personages- that was how he came to be put in charge of the
Prince. But he felt his duties to be very irksome. The Prince was
anxious to miss nothing about which he would be asked at home: Had
he seen this and that in Russia? And on his own account he was anxious
to enjoy to the utmost all Russian forms of amusement. Vronsky was
obliged to be his guide in satisfying both these inclinations. The
mornings they spent driving to look at places of interest: the
evenings they passed enjoying the national amusements. The prince
enjoyed a health exceptional even among Princes. By gymnastics and
careful attention to his person he had brought himself to such a point
that in spite of his excesses in pleasure he looked as fresh as a big,
glossy, green Dutch cucumber. The Prince had traveled a great deal,
and considered one of the chief advantages of modern facilities of
communication the accessibility of the pleasures of all nations. He
had been in Spain, and there had indulged in serenades, and had made
friends with a Spanish girl who played the mandolin. In Switzerland he
had killed chamois. In England he had galloped in a red coat over
hedges and killed two hundred pheasants on a bet. In Turkey he had got
into a harem; in India he had traveled on an elephant; and now, in
Russia, he wished to taste all the peculiarly Russian forms of
pleasure.

Vronsky, who was, as it were, chief master of the ceremonies to him,
was at great pains to distribute all the Russian amusements
suggested by various persons to the Prince. They had race horses,
and Russian pancakes and bear hunts, and troikas, and gypsy
choruses, and drinking orgies, with the Russian accompaniment of
broken crockery. And the Prince, with surprising ease, fell in with
the Russian spirit; he smashed trays full of crockery, sat with a
gypsy girl on his knee, and seemed to be asking: What more? Or does
the whole Russian spirit consist in just this?

In reality, of all the Russian entertainments the Prince liked
best French actresses, a ballet dancer, and white-seal champagne.
Vronsky was used to Princes, but, either because he had himself
changed of late, or that he was in too close proximity to the
Prince, that week seemed fearfully wearisome to him. The whole of that
week he experienced unceasingly a sensation such as a man might have
who has been put in charge of a dangerous madman, who is afraid of the
madman, and, at the same time, from being with him, fears for his
own reason. Vronsky was continually conscious of the necessity of
never for a second relaxing the tone of stern official respectfulness,
so that he might not himself be insulted. The Prince's manner of
treating the very people who, to Vronsky's surprise, were ready to
descend to any depths to provide him with Russian amusements, was
contemptuous. His criticisms of Russian women, whom he wished to
study, more than once made Vronsky crimson with indignation. The chief
reason why the Prince was so particularly disagreeable to Vronsky
was that he could not help seeing himself in him. And what he saw in
this mirror did not gratify his self-esteem. He was a very stupid
and a very self-satisfied and a very healthy and a very well-washed
man, and nothing else. He was a gentleman, it was true, and Vronsky
could not deny it. He was equable and not cringing with his superiors,
was free and ingratiating in his behavior with his equals, and was
contemptuously indulgent with his inferiors. Vronsky was himself the
same, and regarded it as a great merit to be so. But to this Prince he
was an inferior, and his contemptuous and indulgent attitude to him
revolted him.

"Brainless beef! Can I be like that?" he reflected.

Be that as it might, when, on the seventh day, he parted from the
Prince, who was starting for Moscow, and received his thanks, he was
happy to be rid of his uncomfortable position and the unpleasant
reflection of himself. He said good-by to him at the station, on their
return from a bear hunt, at which they had had a display of Russian
derring-do kept up all night.

                           II.


When he got home, Vronsky found there a note from Anna. She wrote:
"I am ill and unhappy. I cannot come out, yet cannot go on longer
without seeing you. Come in this evening. Alexei Alexandrovich goes to
the Council at seven and will be there till ten." After a minute's
reflection on the strangeness of her bidding him come straight to her,
in spite of her husband's insisting on her not receiving him, he
decided to go.

Vronsky had that winter got his promotion, was now a colonel, had
left the regiment, and was living alone. After having some lunch, he
lay down on the sofa immediately, and in five minutes memories of
the hideous scenes he had witnessed during the last few days were
jumbled and joined to a mental image of Anna and of the peasant, one
of the encompassing people, who had played an important part in the
bear hunt, and Vronsky fell asleep. He waked up in the dark, trembling
with horror, and made haste to light a candle. "What was it? What?
What was the dreadful thing I dreamed? Yes, yes; the peasant bear
hunter, I think; a little dirty man with a disheveled beard was
stooping down doing something, and all of a sudden he began saying
some strange words in French. Yes, there was nothing else in the
dream," he said to himself. "But why was it so awful?" He vividly
recalled the peasant again and those incomprehensible French words the
peasant had uttered, and a chill of horror ran down his spine.

"What nonsense!" thought Vronsky, and glanced at his watch.

It was half-past eight already. He rang up his servant, dressed in
haste, and went out on the steps, completely forgetting the dream
and only worried at being late. As he drove up to the Karenins'
entrance he looked at his watch and saw it was ten minutes to nine.
A high, narrow carriage with a pair of grays was standing at the
entrance. He recognized Anna's carriage. "She is coming to me,"
thought Vronsky, "and better she should. I don't like going into
that house. But no matter; I can't hide myself," he thought, and
with that manner peculiar to him from childhood, as of a man who has
nothing to be ashamed of, Vronsky got out of his sleigh and went to
the door. The door opened, and the hall porter with a rug on his arm
called the carriage. Vronsky, though he did not usually notice
details, noticed at this moment the amazed expression with which the
porter glanced at him. In the very doorway Vronsky almost ran up
against Alexei Alexandrovich. The gas jet threw its full light on
the bloodless, sunken face under the black hat, and on the white
cravat, brilliant against the beaver of the coat. Karenin's fixed,
dull eyes were fastened upon Vronsky's face. Vronsky bowed, and Alexei
Alexandrovich, chewing his lips, lifted his hand to his hat and went
on. Vronsky saw him get into the carriage without looking back,
receive the rug and the opera glasses through the window, and
disappear. Vronsky went into the hall. His brows were scowling, and
his eyes gleamed with a proud and angry light in them.

"What a situation!" he thought. "If he would fight, would stand up
for his honor, I could act, could express my feelings; but this
weakness or baseness... He puts me in the position of playing false,
which I never meant and never mean to do."

Vronsky's ideas had changed since the day of his conversation with
Anna in the Vrede garden. Unconsciously yielding to the weakness of
Anna- who had surrendered herself up to him utterly, and simply looked
to him to decide her fate, ready to submit to anything- he had long
ceased to think that their liaison might end as he had thought then.
His ambitious plans had retreated into the background again, and
feeling that he had got out of that circle of activity in which
everything was definite, he had given himself up entirely to his
passion, and that passion was binding him more and more closely to
her.

He was still in the hall when he caught the sound of her
retreating footsteps. He realized she had been expecting him, had
listened for him, and was now going back to the drawing room.

"No," she cried, on seeing him, and at the first sound of her
voice the tears came into her eyes. "No; if things are to go on like
this, the end will come much, much too soon."

"What is it, dear one?"

"What? I've been waiting in agony for an hour, two hours... No, I
won't... I can't quarrel with you. Of course you couldn't come. No,
I won't."

She laid her two hands on his shoulders, and looked a long while
at him with a profound, passionate, and, at the same time, searching
look. She was studying his face to make up for the time she had not
seen him. She was, every time she saw him, making the picture of him
in her imagination (incomparably superior, impossible in reality)
fit with him as he really was.

                           III.


"You met him?" she asked, when they had sat down at the table in the
lamplight. "You're punished, you see, for being late."

"Yes; but how was it? Wasn't he to be at the Council?"

"He had been and come back, and was going out somewhere again. But
that doesn't matter. Don't talk about it. Where have you been? With
the Prince still?"

She knew every detail of his existence. He was going to say that
he had been up all night and had dropped asleep, but looking at her
thrilled and rapturous face, he was ashamed. And he said he had had to
report on the Prince's departure.

"But it's over now? He is gone?"

"Thank God it's over! You wouldn't believe how insufferable it's
been for me."

"Why so? Isn't it the life all of you- all young men- always
lead?" she said, knitting her brows; and, taking up the crochet work
that was lying on the table, she began drawing the hook out of it,
without looking at Vronsky.

"I gave that life up long ago," said he, wondering at the change
in her face, and trying to divine its meaning. "And I confess," he
said, with a smile, showing his thick, white teeth, "this week I've
been, as it were, looking at myself in a glass, seeing that life,
and I didn't like it."

She held the work in her hands, but did not crochet, and looked at
him with strange, shining, and hostile eyes.

"This morning Liza came to see me- they're not afraid to call on me,
in spite of the Countess Lidia Ivanovna," she put in- "and she told me
about your Athenian evening. How loathsome!"

"I was just going to say..."

She interrupted him.

"It was that Therese you used to know?"

"I was just saying..."

"How disgusting you are, you men! How is it you can't understand
that a woman can never forget that," she said, getting more and more
angry, and so letting him see the cause of her irritation, "especially
a woman who cannot know your life? What do I know? What have I ever
known?" she said. "Only what you tell me. And how do I know whether
you tell me the truth?..."

"Anna, you hurt me. Don't you trust me? Haven't I told you that I
haven't a thought I wouldn't lay bare to you?"

"Yes, yes," she said, evidently trying to suppress her jealous
thoughts. "But if only you knew how wretched I am! I believe you, I
believe you.... What were you saying?"

But he could not at once recall what he had been going to say. These
fits of jealousy, which of late had been more and more frequent with
her, horrified him, and however much he tried to disguise the fact,
made him feel cold to her, although he knew the cause of her
jealousy was her love for him. How often he had told himself that
her love was happiness; and now she loved him as a woman can love when
love has outweighed for her all the good things of life- and he was
much further from happiness than when he had followed her from Moscow.
Then he had thought himself unhappy, but happiness was before him; now
he felt that the best happiness was already left behind. She was
utterly unlike what she had been when he first saw her. Both morally
and physically she had changed for the worse. She had broadened out
all over, and in her face at the time when she was speaking of the
actress there was an evil expression of hatred that distorted it. He
looked at her as a man looks at a faded flower he has gathered, with
difficulty recognizing in it the beauty for which he picked and ruined
it. And in spite of this he felt that then, when his love was
stronger, he could, if he had greatly wished it, have torn that love
out of his heart; but now when, as at this moment it seemed to him
he felt no love for her, he knew that his bond with her could not be
broken.

"Well, well, what was it you were going to say about the Prince? I
have driven away the fiend, I have," she added. The fiend was the name
they had given her jealousy. "What did you begin to tell me about
the Prince? Why did you find it so tiresome?"

"Oh, it was intolerable!" he said, trying to pick up the thread of
his interrupted thought. "He does not improve on closer
acquaintance. If you want him defined, here he is: a prime, well-fed
animal, such as takes medals at the cattle shows, and nothing more,"
he said, with a tone of vexation that interested her.

"No; how so?" she replied. "He's seen a great deal, anyway; he's
cultured?"

"It's an utterly different culture- their culture. He's
cultivated, one sees, simply to be able to despise culture, as they
despise everything but animal pleasures."

"But don't you all care for these animal pleasures?" she said, and
again he noticed a dark look in her eyes that avoided him.

"How is it you're defending him?" he said, smiling.

"I'm not defending him, it's nothing to me; but I imagine, if you
had not cared for those pleasures yourself, you might have got out
of them. But it affords you satisfaction to gaze at Therese in the
attire of Eve..."

"Again- again the devil," Vronsky said, taking the hand she had laid
on the table and kissing it.

"Yes; but I can't help it. You don't know what I have suffered
waiting for you. I believe I'm not jealous. I'm not jealous: I believe
you when you're here, near me; but when you're away somewhere
leading your life alone, so incomprehensible to me..."

 She turned away from him, pulled the hook at last out of the
crochet work, and rapidly with the help of her forefinger, began
working loop after loop of the wool that was dazzlingly white in the
lamplight, while the slender wrist moved swiftly, nervously in its
embroidered cuff.

"How was it, then? Where did you meet Alexei Alexandrovich?" Her
voice sounded in an unnatural and jarring tone.

"We ran against each other in the doorway."

"And he bowed to you like this?"

She drew a long face, and half-closing her eyes, quickly transformed
her expression, folded her hands, and Vronsky suddenly saw in her
beautiful face the very expression with which Alexei Alexandrovich had
bowed to him. He smiled, while she laughed gaily, with that sweet,
deep laugh, which was one of her greatest charms.

"I don't understand him in the least," said Vronsky. "If after
your avowal to him at your summer villa he had broken with you, if
he had challenged me... But this I can't understand. How can he put up
with such a position? He feels it, that's evident."

"He?" she said sneeringly. "He's perfectly satisfied."

"What are we all miserable for, when everything might be so well?"

"Except for him. Don't I know him- the falsity in which he's utterly
steeped?... Could one, with any feeling, live as he is living with me?
He understands nothing, and feels nothing. Could a man of any
feeling live in the same house with his unfaithful wife? Could he talk
to her, call her 'my dear'?"

And again she could not help mimicking him: "Anna, ma chere; Anna,
dear!"

"He's not a man, not a human being- he's a mannikin! No one knows
him; but I know him. Oh, if I'd been in his place, I'd long ago have
killed, have torn to pieces a wife like me. I wouldn't have said,
'Anna, ma chere'! He's not a man, he's a ministerial machine. He
doesn't understand that I'm your wife, that he's outside, that he's
superfluous.... Don't let's talk of him!..."

"You're unfair, very unfair, dearest," said Vronsky, trying to
soothe her. "But never mind, don't let's talk of him. Tell me what
you've been doing. What is the matter? Why are you unwell, and what
did the doctor say?"

She looked at him with mocking amusement. Evidently she had hit on
other absurd and grotesque aspects in her husband and was awaiting the
moment to give expression to them.

But he went on:

"I imagine that it's not illness, but your condition. When will it
be?"

The ironical light died away in her eyes, but a different smile, a
consciousness of something, he did not know what, and of quiet
melancholy, came over her face.

"Soon, soon. You say that our position is miserable, that we must
put an end to it. If you knew how terrible it is to me- what I would
give to be able to love you freely and unafraid! I should not
torture myself and torture you with my jealousy.... And it will come
soon, but not as we expect."

And at the thought of how it would come, she seemed so pitiable to
herself that tears came into her eyes, and she could not go on. She
laid on his sleeve her hand, shining with its whiteness and its
rings in the lamplight.

"It won't come as we suppose. I didn't mean to say this to you,
but you've made me. Soon, soon, all will be over, and we shall all,
all be at peace, and suffer no more."

"I don't understand," he said, understanding her.

"You asked when? Soon. And I shan't live through it. Don't interrupt
me!" and she made haste to speak. "I know it; I know for certain. I
shall die; and I'm very glad I shall die, and release myself and you."

Tears dropped from her eyes; he bent down over her hand and began
kissing it, trying to hide his emotion, which, he knew, had no sort of
grounds, though he could not control it.

"Yes, it's better so," she said, tightly gripping his hand.
"That's the only way- the only way left us."

He had recovered himself, and lifted his head.

"How absurd! What absurd nonsense you are talking!"

"No, it's the truth."

"What- what's the truth?"

"That I shall die. I have had a dream."

"A dream?" repeated Vronsky, and instantly he recalled the peasant
of his dream.

"Yes, a dream," she said. "It's a long while since I dreamed it. I
dreamed that I ran into my bedroom, that I had to get something there,
to find out something; you know how it is in dreams," she said, her
eyes wide with horror; "and in the bedroom, in the corner, stood
something."

"Oh, what nonsense! How can you believe..."

But she would not let him interrupt her. What she was saying was too
important to her.

"And the something turned round, and I saw it was a peasant with a
disheveled beard- a little man, and dreadful. I wanted to run away,
but he bent down over a sack, and was fumbling there with his
hands..."

She showed how he had moved his hands. There was terror in her face.
And Vronsky, remembering his dream, felt the same terror filling his
soul.

"He was fumbling and kept talking quickly, quickly in French, and,
you know, he burred: Il faut le battre, le fer, le broyer, le
petrir.... And in my horror I tried to wake up, and woke up... but
woke up in the dream. And I began asking myself what it meant. And
Kornei said to me: 'In childbirth you'll die, ma'am, you'll die....'
And I woke up."

"What nonsense, what nonsense!" said Vronsky; but he felt himself
that there was no conviction in his voice.

"But don't let's talk of it. Ring the bell, I'll have tea. And
stay a little, now; it's not long I shall..."

But all at once she stopped. The expression of her face
instantaneously changed. Horror and excitement were suddenly
replaced by a look of soft, solemn, blissful attention. He could not
comprehend the meaning of the change. She was listening to the
stirring of the new life within her.

                           IV.


Alexei Alexandrovich, after meeting Vronsky on his own steps, drove,
as he had intended, to the Italian opera. He sat through two acts
there, and saw everyone he wanted to see. On returning home, he
carefully scrutinized the hatstand, and noticing that there was not
a military overcoat there, he went, as usual, to his own room. But,
contrary to his usual habit, he did not go to bed; he walked up and
down his study till three o'clock in the morning. The feeling of
furious anger with his wife, who would not observe the proprieties and
keep to the one stipulation he had laid on her- not to receive her
lover in her own house- gave him no peace. She had not complied with
his request, and he was bound to punish her and carry out his
threat- obtain a divorce and take away his son. He knew all the
difficulties connected with this course, but he had said he would do
it, and now he must carry out his threat. Countess Lidia Ivanovna
had hinted that this was the best way out of his position, and of late
the obtaining of divorces had been brought to such a pitch of
perfection that Alexei Alexandrovich saw a possibility of overcoming
the formal difficulties. Misfortunes never come singly, and the
affairs of the reorganization of the native tribes, and of the
irrigation of the lands of the Zaraisky province, had brought such
official worries upon Alexei Alexandrovich that he had been of late in
a continual state of extreme irritability.

He did not sleep the whole night, and his fury growing in a sort
of vast, arithmetical progression, reached its highest limits in the
morning. He dressed in haste, and, as though carrying his cup full
of wrath, and fearing to spill any over, fearing to lose with his
wrath the energy necessary for the interview with his wife, he went
into her room directly he heard she was up.

Anna, who had thought she knew her husband so well, was amazed at
his appearance when he went in to her. His brow was lowering and his
eyes stared darkly before him, avoiding her eyes; his mouth was
tightly and contemptuously shut. In his walk, in his gestures, in
the sound of his voice there was a determination and firmness such
as his wife had never seen in him. He went into her room, and, without
greeting her, walked straight up to her writing table, and, taking her
keys, opened a drawer.

"What do you want?" she cried.

"Your lover's letters," he said.

"They're not here," she said, shutting the drawer; but from that
action he saw he had guessed right, and roughly pushing away her hand,
he quickly snatched a portfolio in which he knew she used to put her
most important papers. She tried to pull the portfolio away, but he
pushed her back.

"Sit down! I have to speak to you," he said, putting the portfolio
under his arm, and squeezing it so tightly with his elbow that his
shoulder stood up.

Amazed and intimidated, she gazed at him in silence.

"I told you that I would not allow you to receive your lover in this
house."

"I had to see him to..."

She stopped, not finding a reason.

"I do not enter into the details of why a woman wants to see her
lover."

"I meant, I only..." she said, flushing hotly. This coarseness of
his angered her, and gave her courage. "Surely you must feel how
easy it is for you to insult me?" she said.

"An honest man and an honest woman may be insulted, but to tell a
thief he's a thief is simply la constatation d'un fait."

"This cruelty is something new- I did not know in you."

"You call it cruelty for a husband to give his wife liberty,
giving her the honorable protection of his name, simply on the
condition of observing the proprieties: is that cruelty?"

"It's worse that cruel- it's base, if you want to know!" Anna cried,
in a rush of hatred, and, getting up, she was about to leave the room.

"No!" he shrieked in his shrill voice, which pitched a note even
higher than usual, and his big hands clutching her by the arm so
violently that red marks were left from the bracelet he was squeezing,
he forcibly made her sit down in her place. "Base! If you care to
use that word, what is base is to forsake husband and child for a
lover, while you eat your husband's bread!"

She bowed her head. She did not say what she had said the evening
before to her lover, that he was her husband, and her husband was
superfluous; she did not even think of that. She felt all the
justice of his words, and only said softly:

"You cannot describe my position as worse than I feel it to be
myself; but what are you saying all this for?"

"What am I saying it for? What for?" he went on, as angrily. "So
that you may know that, since you have not carried out my wishes in
regard to observing outward decorum, I will take measures to put an
end to this state of things."

"Soon, very soon, it will end, anyway," she said; and again, at
the thought of death near at hand and now desired, tears came into her
eyes.

"It will end sooner than you and your lover have planned! If you
must have the satisfaction of animal passion..."

"Alexei Alexandrovich! I won't say it's not generous, but it's not
like a gentleman to strike anyone who's down."

"Yes, you only think of yourself! But the sufferings of a man who
was your husband have no interest for you. You don't care that his
whole life is ruined, that he is seff... seff..."

Alexei Alexandrovich was speaking so quickly that he began to
stammer, and was utterly unable to articulate the word "suffering". In
the end he pronounced it "saffering". She wanted to laugh, and was
immediately ashamed that anything could amuse her at such a moment.
And for the first time, for an instant, she felt for him, put
herself in his place, and was sorry for him. But what could she say or
do? Her head sank, and she sat silent. He too was silent for some
time, and then began speaking in a frigid, less shrill voice,
emphasizing random words that had no special significance.

I came to tell you..." he said.

She glanced at him. "No; it was my fancy," she thought, recalling
the expression of his face when he stumbled over the word "suffering."
"No; can a man with those dull eyes, with that self-satisfied
complacency, feel anything?"

"I cannot change anything," she whispered.

"I have come to tell you that I am going tomorrow to Moscow, and
shall not return again to this house, and you will receive notice of
what I decide through the lawyer into whose hands I shall entrust
the task of getting a divorce. My son is going to my sister's," said
Alexei Alexandrovich, with an effort recalling what he had meant to
say about his son.

"You take Seriozha to hurt me," she said, looking at him from
under her brows. "You do not love him.... Leave me Seriozha!"

"Yes, I have lost even my affection for my son, because he is
associated with the repulsion I feel for you. But still I shall take
him. Good-by!"

And he was going away, but now she detained him.

"Alexei Alexandrovich, leave me Seriozha!" she whispered once
more. "I have nothing else to say. Leave Seriozha till my... I shall
soon be confined; leave him!"

Alexei Alexandrovich flared up, and, snatching his hand from her, he
went out of the room without a word.

                           V.


The waiting room of the celebrated Peterburg lawyer was full when
Alexei Alexandrovich entered it. Three ladies- an old lady, a young
lady, and a merchant's wife, and three gentlemen- one a German
banker with a ring on his finger, the second a merchant with a
beard, and the third a wrathful-looking government clerk in official
uniform, with a cross on his neck- had obviously been waiting a long
while already. Two clerks were writing at tables with scratching pens.
The appurtenances of the writing tables, about which Alexei
Alexandrovich was himself very fastidious, were exceptionally good. He
could not help observing this. One of the clerks, without getting
up, turned fretfully to Alexei Alexandrovich, half-closing his eyes.

"What is it you wish?"

"My business has to do with the lawyer."

"He is engaged," the clerk responded severely, and he pointed with
his pen at the persons waiting, and went on writing.

"Can't he spare time to see me?" said Alexei Alexandrovich.

"He has no time free; he is always busy. Kindly wait your turn."

"Then I must trouble you to give him my card," Alexei
Alexandrovich said with dignity, seeing the impossibility of
preserving his incognito.

The clerk took the card and, obviously not approving of what he read
on it, went to the door.

Alexei Alexandrovich was in principle in favor of the publicity of
legal proceedings, though for some higher official considerations he
disliked the application of the principle in Russia, and disapproved
of it, as far as he could disapprove of anything instituted by
authority of the Emperor. His whole life had been spent in
administrative work, and consequently, when he did not approve of
anything, his disapproval was softened by the recognition of the
inevitability of mistakes and the possibility of reform in every
department. In the new public law courts he disliked the
restrictions laid on the lawyers conducting cases. But till then he
had had nothing to do with the law courts, and so had disapproved of
their publicity simply in theory; now his disapprobation was
strengthened by the unpleasant impression made on him in the
lawyer's waiting room.

"He will be out right away," said the clerk; and two minutes later
there did actually appear in the doorway the large figure of an old
student of jurisprudence who had been consulting with the lawyer,
and the lawyer himself.

The lawyer was a little, squat, bald man, with a dark, reddish
beard, light-colored long eyebrows, and beetling brow. He was
attired as though for a wedding, from his cravat to his double watch
chain and patent-leather shoes. His face was clever and rustic, but
his dress was dandified and in bad taste.

"Pray walk in," said the lawyer, addressing Alexei Alexandrovich;
and, gloomily ushering Karenin in before him, he closed the door.
"Won't you sit down?" He indicated an armchair at a writing table
covered with papers. He sat down himself, and, rubbing his little
hands with short fingers covered with white hairs, he bent his head on
one side. But as soon as he was settled in this position a moth flew
over the table. The lawyer, with a swiftness that could never have
been expected of him, opened his hands, caught the moth, and resumed
his former attitude.

"Before beginning to speak of my business," said Alexei
Alexandrovich, following the lawyer's movements with wondering eyes,
"I ought to observe that the matter about which I have to speak to you
is to be a secret."

The lawyer's drooping reddish mustaches were stirred by a scarcely
perceptible smile.

"I should not be a lawyer if I could not keep the secrets confided
to me. But if you would like proof..."

Alexei Alexandrovich glanced at his face, and saw that the shrewd,
gray eyes were laughing, and seemed to know all about it already.

"You know my name?" Alexei Alexandrovich resumed.

"I know you and the good"- again he caught a moth- "work you are
doing, like every Russian," said the lawyer, bowing.

Alexei Alexandrovich sighed, plucking up his courage. But, having
once made up his mind, he went on in his shrill voice, without
timidity or hesitation, accentuating a word here and there.

"I have the misfortune," Alexei Alexandrovich began, "to be a
deceived husband, and I desire to break off all relations with my wife
by legal means- that is, to be divorced; but do this so that my son
may not remain with his mother."

The lawyer's gray eyes tried not to laugh, but they were dancing
with irrepressible glee, and Alexei Alexandrovich saw that it was
not simply the delight of a man who has just got a profitable job:
there was triumph and joy, there was a gleam like the malignant
gleam he had seen in his wife's eyes.

"You desire my assistance in securing a divorce?"

"Yes, precisely; but I ought to warn you that I may be wasting
your time and attention. I have come simply to consult you as a
preliminary step. I want a divorce, but the form which it may take
is of great consequence to me. It is very possible that if that form
does not correspond with my requirements I may give up a legal
action."

"Oh, that's always the case," said the lawyer, "and that's always
for you to decide."

He let his eyes rest on Alexei Alexandrovich's feet, feeling that he
might offend his client by the sight of his irrepressible amusement.
He looked at a moth that flew before his nose, and moved his hand, but
did not catch it from regard for Alexei Alexandrovich's situation.

"Though in their general features our laws on this subject are known
to me," pursued Alexei Alexandrovich, "I should be glad to have an
idea of the forms in which such things are done, in practice."

"You would be glad," the lawyer, without lifting his eyes,
responded, adopting, with a certain satisfaction, the tone of his
client's remarks, "for me to lay before you all the methods by which
you could secure what you desire?"

And on receiving an assenting nod from Alexei Alexandrovich, he went
on, stealing a glance now and then at Alexei Alexandrovich's face,
which was growing red in patches.

"Divorce by our laws," he said, with a slight shade of
disapprobation of our laws, "is possible, as you are aware, in the
following cases... To wait!" he called to a clerk who put his head
in at the door, but he got up all the same, said a few words to him,
and sat down again. "In the following cases: physical defect in the
married parties, desertion without communication for five years," he
said, crooking a short finger covered with hair, "adultery" (this word
he pronounced with obvious satisfaction), "subdivided as follows"
(he continued to crook his fat fingers, though the cases and their
subdivisions could obviously not be classified together): "physical
defect of the husband or of the wife, adultery of the husband or of
the wife." As by now all his fingers were used up, he straightened
them and went on: "This is the theoretical view; but I imagine you
have done me the honor to apply to me in order to learn its
application in practice. And therefore, guided by precedents, I must
inform you that in practice cases of divorce may all be reduced to the
following- there's no physical defect, I may assume, nor
desertion?..."

Alexei Alexandrovich bowed his head in assent.

"They may be reduced to the following: adultery of one of the
married parties, and the detection in the fact of the guilty party
by mutual agreement, and, failing such agreement, accidental
detection. It must be admitted that the latter case is rarely met with
in practice," said the lawyer, and stealing a glance at Alexei
Alexandrovich he paused, as a man selling pistols, after enlarging
on the advantages of each weapon, might await his customer's choice.
But Alexei Alexandrovich said nothing, and therefore the lawyer went
on: "The most usual and simple, the sensible course, I consider, is
adultery by mutual consent. I should not permit myself to express it
so, speaking with a man of no education," he said, "but I imagine that
to you this is comprehensible."

Alexei Alexandrovich was, however, so perturbed that he did not
immediately comprehend all the reasonableness of adultery by mutual
consent, and his eyes expressed this uncertainty; but the lawyer
promptly came to his assistance.

"People cannot go on living together- here you have a fact. And if
both are agreed about it, the details and formalities become a
matter of no importance. And at the same time this is the simplest and
most certain method."

Alexei Alexandrovich understood fully now. But he had religious
scruples, which hindered the execution of such a plan.

"That is out of the question in the present case," he said. "Only
one alternative is possible: involuntary detection, supported by
letters which I have."

At the mention of letters the lawyer pursed up his lips, and gave
utterance to a thin little compassionate and contemptuous sound.

"Kindly consider," he began, "cases of that kind are, as you are
aware, under ecclesiastical jurisdiction; the reverend fathers are
fond of going into the minutest details in cases of that kind," he
said, with a smile which betrayed his sympathy with the taste of the
reverend fathers. "Letters may, of course, be a partial
confirmation; but detection in the act there must be of the most
direct kind- that is, by eyewitnesses. In fact, if you do me the honor
to trust me with your confidence, you will do well to leave me the
choice of the measures to be employed. If one wants the result, one
must allow the means."

"If it is so..." Alexei Alexandrovich began, suddenly turning white;
but at that moment the lawyer rose and again went to the door to speak
to the intruding clerk.

"Tell her we don't haggle over fees!" he said, and returned to
Alexei Alexandrovich.

On his way back he caught, unobserved, another moth. "Nice state
my rep curtains will be in by the summer!" he thought, frowning.

"And so you were saying?..." he said.

"I will communicate my decision to you by letter," said Alexei
Alexandrovich, getting up, and he clutched at the table. After
standing a moment in silence, he said: "From your words I may
consequently conclude that a divorce may be obtained? I would ask
you to let me know what your terms are."

"It may be obtained if you give me complete liberty of action," said
the lawyer, without answering his question. "When can I count on
receiving word from you?" he asked moving toward the door, his eyes
and his patent-leather shoes shining.

"In a week's time. You will be kind enough to communicate to me your
answer as to whether you will undertake to conduct the case, and on
what terms."

"Very good, sir."

The lawyer bowed respectfully, let his client out of the door,
and, left alone, gave himself up to his sense of amusement. He felt so
mirthful that, contrary to his rule, he made a reduction in his
terms to the haggling lady, and gave up catching moths, finally
deciding that next winter he must have the furniture covered with
velvet, like Sigonin's.

                           VI.


Alexei Alexandrovich had gained a brilliant victory at the sitting
of the Commission of the 17th of August, but in the sequel this
victory cut the ground from under his feet. The new commission for the
inquiry into the condition of the native tribes on every aspect had
been formed and despatched to its destination with an unusual speed
and energy, inspired by Alexei Alexandrovich. Within three months a
report was presented. The condition of the native tribes was
investigated in its political, administrative, economic, ethnographic,
material, and religious aspects. To all these questions there were
answers admirably stated, and answers admitting no shade of doubt,
since they were not a product of human thought, always liable to
error, but were all the product of official activity. The answers were
all based on official data furnished by governors and bishops, and
founded on the reports of district magistrates and ecclesiastical
superintendents, founded in their turn on the reports of local
authorities and parish priests; and so all of these answers were
unhesitating and certain. All such questions as, for instance, the
cause of crop failures, why certain tribes adhered to their ancient
beliefs, and so on- questions which, but for the convenient
intervention of the official machine, are not, and cannot be solved
for ages- received full, unhesitating solution. And this solution
was in favor of Alexei Alexandrovich's contention. But Stremov, who
had felt stung to the quick at the last sitting, had, on the reception
of the commission's report, resorted to tactics which Alexei
Alexandrovich had not anticipated. Stremov, carrying with him
several other members, went over to Alexei Alexandrovich's side,
and, not contenting himself with warmly defending the measure proposed
by Karenin, proposed other measures, still more extreme, in the same
direction. These measures, still stronger than Alexei
Alexandrovich's fundamental idea, were passed by the commission, and
then the aim of Stremov's tactics became apparent. Carried to an
extreme, the measures seemed at once to be so absurd that the
highest authorities, and public opinion, and intellectual ladies,
and the newspapers, all at the same time fell foul of them, expressing
their indignation both with the measures and their nominal father,
Alexei Alexandrovich. Stremov drew back, affecting to have blindly
followed Karenin, and to be astounded and distressed at what had
been done. This meant the defeat of Alexei Alexandrovich. But in spite
of failing health, in spite of his domestic griefs, he did not give
in. There was a split in the Commission. Some members, with Stremov at
their head, justified their mistake on the ground that they had put
faith in the commission of revision, instituted by Alexei
Alexandrovich, and maintained that the report of the commission was
rubbish, and simply so much wastepaper. Alexei Alexandrovich, with a
following of those who saw the danger of so revolutionary an
attitude to official documents, persisted in upholding the
statements obtained by the revising commission. In consequence of
this, in the higher spheres, and even in society, all was chaos, and
although everyone was interested, no one could tell whether the native
tribes really were becoming impoverished and ruined, or whether they
were in a flourishing condition. The position of Alexei Alexandrovich,
owing to this, and partly owing to the contempt lavished on him for
his wife's infidelity, became very precarious. And in this position he
took an important resolution. To the astonishment of the Commission,
he announced that he should ask permission to go himself to
investigate the question on the spot. And having obtained
permission, Alexei Alexandrovich prepared to set off to these remote
provinces.

Alexei Alexandrovich's departure created a great stir, the more so
as just before he started he officially returned the posting fares
allowed him for twelve horses to drive to his destination.

"I think it very noble," Betsy said about this to the Princess
Miaghkaia. "Why take money for posting horses when everyone knows that
there are railways everywhere now?"

But Princess Miaghkaia did not agree, and the Princess Tverskaia's
opinion annoyed her indeed.

"It's all very well for you to talk," said she, "when you have I
don't know how many millions; but I am very glad when my husband
goes on a revising tour in the summer. It's very good for him and
pleasant traveling about, and it's a settled arrangement for me to
keep a carriage and hired coach on the money."

On his way to the remote provinces Alexei Alexandrovich stopped
for three days at Moscow.

The day after his arrival he went to call on the governor general.
At the crossroads by Gazetny Lane, where there are always crowds of
carriages and hired sleighs, Alexei Alexandrovich suddenly heard his
name called out in such a loud and cheerful voice that he could not
help looking round. At the corner of the pavement, in a short, stylish
overcoat and a low-crowned fashionable hat, jauntily askew, with a
smile that showed a gleam of white teeth and red lips, stood Stepan
Arkadyevich, radiant, young, and beaming. He called him vigorously and
urgently, and insisted on his stopping. He had one arm on the window
of a carriage that was stopping at the corner, and out of the window
were thrust the heads of a lady in a velvet hat, and two children.
Stepan Arkadyevich was smiling and beckoning to his brother-in-law.
The lady smiled a kindly smile too, and she too waved her hand to
Alexei Alexandrovich. It was Dolly with her children.

Alexei Alexandrovich did not want to see anyone in Moscow, and least
of all his wife's brother. He raised his hat and would have driven on,
but Stepan Arkadyevich told his coachman to stop, and ran across the
snow to him.

"Well, what a shame not to have let us know! Been here long? I was
at Dussot's yesterday and saw 'Karenin' on the visitors' list, but
it never entered my head that it was you," said Stepan Arkadyevich,
sticking his head in at the window of the carriage, "or I should
have looked you up. I am glad to see you!" he said, knocking one
foot against the other to shake the snow off. "What a shame you did
not let us know!" he repeated.

"I had no time; I am very busy," Alexei Alexandrovich responded
dryly.

"Come to my wife- she does so want to see you."

Alexei Alexandrovich unfolded the rug in which his frozen feet
were wrapped, and getting out of his carriage made his way over the
snow to Darya Alexandrovna.

"Why, Alexei Alexandrovich, what are you cutting us like this
for?" said Dolly smiling.

"I was very busy. Delighted to see you!" he said in a tone clearly
indicating that he was annoyed by it. "How are you?"

"Tell me, how is my darling Anna?"

Alexei Alexandrovich mumbled something and would have gone on. But
Stepan Arkadyevich stopped him.

"I tell you what we'll do tomorrow. Dolly, ask him to dinner.
We'll ask Koznishev and Pestsov, so as to entertain him with our
Moscow intellectuals."

"Yes, please, do come," said Dolly; "we will expect you at five-
or six o'clock, if you like. How is my darling Anna? How long..."

"She is quite well," Alexei Alexandrovich mumbled, frowning.
"Delighted!" and he moved away toward his carriage.

"You will come?" Dolly called after him.

Alexei Alexandrovich said something which Dolly could not catch in
the noise of the moving carriages.

"I shall come round tomorrow!" Stepan Arkadyevich shouted to him.

Alexei Alexandrovich got into his carriage, and buried himself in it
so as neither to see nor to be seen.

"Queer fish!" said Stepan Arkadyevich to his wife, and, glancing
at his watch, he made a motion of his hand before his face, indicating
a caress to his wife and children, and walked jauntily along the
pavement.

"Stiva! Stiva!" Dolly called, reddening.

He turned round.

"I must get coats, you know, for Grisha and Tania. Give me the
money."

"Never mind; you tell them I'll pay the bill!" and he vanished,
nodding genially to an acquaintance who drove by.

                           VII.


The next day was Sunday. Stepan Arkadyevich went to the Grand
Theater to a rehearsal of the ballet, and gave Masha Chibisova, a
pretty dancing girl who had been engaged through his protection, the
coral necklace he had promised her the evening before, and, behind the
scenes, in the dim daylight of the theater, managed to kiss her pretty
little face, radiant over the present. Besides the gift of the
necklace he wanted to arrange a meeting with her after the ballet.
After explaining that he could not come at the beginning of the
ballet, he promised he would come for the last act and take her to
supper. From the theater Stepan Arkadyevich drove to Okhotny Riad,
selected himself the fish and asparagus for dinner, and by twelve
o'clock was at Dussot's, where he had to see three people, luckily all
staying at the same hotel: Levin, who had recently come back from
abroad and was staying there; the new head of his board who had just
been promoted to that position, and had come on a tour of revision
to Moscow; and his brother-in-law, Karenin, whom he must see, so as to
be sure of bringing him to dinner.

Stepan Arkadyevich liked dining, but still better he liked to give a
dinner, small, but very choice, both as regards the food and drink and
as regards the selection of guests. He particularly liked the
program of that day's dinner. There would be fresh perch, asparagus,
and la piece de resistance- first-rate, but quite plain, roast beef,
and wines to suit: so much for the eating and drinking. Kitty and
Levin would be of the party, and, so that this might not be
obtrusively evident, there would be a girl cousin too, and young
Shcherbatsky, and- la piece de resistance among the guests- Sergei
Koznishev and Alexei Alexandrovich. Sergei Ivanovich was a Moscow man,
and a philosopher; Alexei Alexandrovich a Peterburg man, and a
practical politician. He was asking, too, the well-known eccentric
enthusiast, Pestsov, a liberal, a great talker, a musician, a
historian, and the most delightfully youthful person of fifty, who
would be a sauce or garnish for Koznishev and Karenin. He would
provoke them and set them off against one another.

The second installment for the forest had been received from the
merchant and was not yet exhausted; Dolly had been very amiable and
good-humored of late, and the idea of the dinner pleased Stepan
Arkadyevich from every point of view. He was in the most
lighthearted mood. There were two circumstances a little unpleasant,
but these two circumstances were drowned in the sea of good-humored
gaiety which flooded the soul of Stepan Arkadyevich. These two
circumstances were: first, that on meeting Alexei Alexandrovich the
day before in the street Stiva had noticed that the latter was cold
and reserved with him, and putting together the expression of Alexei
Alexandrovich's face, and the fact that he had not come to see them,
or let them know of his arrival, with the rumors he had heard about
Anna and Vronsky, Stepan Arkadyevich guessed that something was
wrong between the husband and wife.

That was one disagreeable thing. The other slightly disagreeable
fact was that the new head of his board, like all new heads, already
had the reputation of a terrible person, who got up at six o'clock
in the morning, worked like a horse, and insisted on his
subordinates working in the same way. Moreover, this new head had
the further reputation of being a bear in his manners, and was,
according to all reports, a man of a class in all respects the
opposite of that to which his predecessor had belonged, and to which
Stepan Arkadyevich had hitherto belonged himself. On the previous
day Stepan Arkadyevich had appeared at the office in a uniform, and
the new chief had been very affable and had talked to him as to an
acquaintance. Consequently Stepan Arkadyevich deemed it his duty to
call upon him in his nonofficial dress. The thought that the new chief
might not give him a warm reception was the other unpleasant thing.
But Stepan Arkadyevich instinctively felt that everything would come
round all right. "They're all human, all men, like us poor sinners;
why be nasty and quarrelsome?" he thought as he went into the hotel.

"Good day, Vassilii," he said, walking into the corridor with his
hat cocked on one side, and addressing a footman he knew; "why, you've
let your whiskers grow! Levin- number seven, eh? Take me up, please.
And find out whether Count Anychkin" (this was the new head) "is
receiving."

"Yes, sir," Vassilii responded, smiling. "You've not been to see
us for a long while."

"I was here yesterday, but at the other entrance. Is this number
seven?"

Levin was standing with a peasant from Tver in the middle of the
room, measuring a fresh bearskin, when Stepan Arkadyevich came in.

"What! You killed him?" cried Stepan Arkadyevich. "Well done! A
she-bear? How are you, Arkhip!"

He shook hands with the peasant and sat down on a chair, without
taking off his coat and hat.

"Come, take off your coat and stay a little," said Levin, taking his
hat.

"No, I haven't time; I've only looked in for just a second,"
answered Stepan Arkadyevich. He threw open his fur coat, but afterward
did take it off, and sat on for a whole hour, talking to Levin about
hunting and the most intimate subjects. "Come, tell me, please, what
you did abroad. Where have you been?" said Stepan Arkadyevich, when
the peasant had gone.

"Oh, I stayed in Germany, in Prussia, in France, and in England- not
in the capitals, but in the manufacturing towns- and saw a great
deal that was new to me. And I'm glad I went."

"Yes, I knew your idea of the solution of the labor question."

"Not a bit: in Russia there can be no labor question. In Russia
the question is that of the relation of the working people to the
land; though the question exists there too- but there it's a matter of
repairing what's been ruined, while with us..."

Stepan Arkadyevich listened attentively to Levin.

"Yes, yes!" he said. "It's very possible you're right. But I'm
glad you're in good spirits, and are hunting bears, and working, and
interested. Shcherbatsky told me another story- he met you: that you
were in such a depressed state, talking of nothing but death..."

"Well, what of it? I've not given up thinking of death," said Levin.
"It's true that it's high time I was dead; and that all this is
nonsense. It's the truth I'm telling you. I do value my idea and my
work awfully; but really, do consider this: all this world of ours
is nothing but a speck of mildew, which has grown up on a tiny planet.
And yet we think that something great is possible to us- ideas,
work! Grains of sand- that's all they are."

"But all that's as old as the hills, my boy!"

"It is old; but, do you know, when you grasp this fully, then
somehow everything becomes of no consequence. When you understand that
you will die tomorrow, if not today, and nothing will be left, then
everything is so unimportant! And I consider my idea very important,
but it turns out really to be just as unimportant, even if it were
carried out, as outwitting that she-bear. So one goes on living,
amusing oneself with hunting, with work- anything, so as not to
think of death!"

Stepan Arkadyevich smiled a subtle and affectionate smile as he
listened to Levin.

"Well, of course! Here you've come round to my point. Do you
remember you attacked me for seeking enjoyment in life?


         'Don't be, O moralist, severe...'"


"No; all the same, what's fine in life is..." Levin hesitated.
"Oh! I don't know. All I know is that we shall soon be dead."

"Why so soon?"

"And I know there's less charm in life, when one thinks of death-
but there's more peace."

"On the contrary, the finish is always the best. But I must be
going," said Stepan Arkadyevich, getting up for the tenth time.

"Oh, no, stay a bit!" said Levin, detaining him. "Now, when shall we
see each other again? I'm going tomorrow."

"I'm a fine fellow! Why, that's just what I came for! You simply
must come to dinner with us today. Your brother's coming, and Karenin,
my brother-in-law."

"You don't mean to say he's here?" said Levin, and he wanted to
inquire about Kitty. He had heard at the beginning of the winter
that she was at Peterburg with her sister, the wife of the diplomat,
and he did not know whether she had come back or not; but he changed
his mind and did not ask. "Whether she's coming or not, I don't care,"
he said to himself.

"So you'll come?"

"Of course."

"At five o'clock, then, and wear a frock coat."

And Stepan Arkadyevich got up and went down below to the new head of
his department. Instinct had not misled Stepan Arkadyevich. The
terrible new head turned out to be an extremely amenable person, and
Stepan Arkadyevich lunched with him and stayed on, so that it was past
three o'clock before he got to Alexei Alexandrovich.

                           VIII.


Alexei Alexandrovich, on coming back from church service, had
spent the whole morning indoors. He had two pieces of business
before him that morning; first, to receive and send on a deputation
from the native tribes which was on its way to Peterburg, and which
was now at Moscow; secondly, to write the promised letter to the
lawyer. The deputation, though it had been summoned at Alexei
Alexandrovich's instigation, was not without its discomforting and
even dangerous aspect, and he was glad he had found it in Moscow.
The members of this deputation had not the slightest conception of
their duty and the part they were to play. They naively believed
that it was their business to lay before the Commission their needs
and the actual condition of things, and to ask assistance of the
government, and utterly failed to grasp that some of their
statements and requests supported the contention of the enemy's
side, and so spoiled the whole business. Alexei Alexandrovich was
busily engaged with them for a long while, drew up a program for
them from which they were not to depart, and on dismissing them
wrote a letter to Peterburg for the guidance of the deputation. He had
his chief support in this affair in the Countess Lidia Ivanovna. She
was a specialist in the matter of deputations, and no one knew
better than she how to puff, and put them in the way they should go.
Having completed this task, Alexei Alexandrovich wrote the letter to
the lawyer. Without the slightest hesitation he gave him permission to
act as he might judge best. In the letter he enclosed three of
Vronsky's notes to Anna, which were in the portfolio he had taken
away.

Since Alexei Alexandrovich had left home with the intention of not
returning to his family again, and since he had been at the lawyer's
and had spoken, though only to one man, of his intention, since,
moreover, he had translated the matter from the world of real life
to the world of ink and paper, he had grown more and more used to
his own intention, and by now distinctly perceived the feasibility
of its execution.

He was sealing the envelope to the lawyer, when he heard the loud
tones of Stepan Arkadyevich's voice. Stepan Arkadyevich was
disputing with Alexei Alexandrovich's servant, and insisting on
being announced.

"No matter," thought Alexei Alexandrovich, "so much the better. I
will inform him at once of my position in regard to his sister, and
explain why it is I can't dine with him."

"Come in!" he said aloud, collecting his papers, and putting them
under the blotting pad.

"There, you see, you're talking nonsense, and he is at home!"
responded Stepan Arkadyevich's voice, addressing the servant, who
had refused to let him in, and, taking off his coat as he went,
Oblonsky walked into the room. "Well, I'm awfully glad I've found you!
So I hope..." Stepan Arkadyevich began cheerfully.

"I cannot come," Alexei Alexandrovich said coldly, standing and
not asking his visitor to sit down.

Alexei Alexandrovich had thought to pass at once into those frigid
relations in which he ought to stand with the brother of a wife
against whom he was beginning a suit for divorce. But he had not taken
into account the ocean of kindliness brimming over in the heart of
Stepan Arkadyevich.

Stepan Arkadyevich opened wide his clear, shining eyes.

"Why can't you? What do you mean?" he asked in perplexity,
speaking in French. "Oh, but it's a promise. And we're all counting on
you."

"I want to tell you that I can't dine at your house, because the
terms of relationship which have existed between us must cease."

"How? How do you mean? For what reason?" said Stepan Arkadyevich
with a smile.

"Because I am beginning an action for divorce against your sister,
my wife. I ought to have..."

But, before Alexei Alexandrovich had time to finish his sentence,
Stepan Arkadyevich was behaving not at all as he had expected.
Stepan Arkadyevich groaned and sank into an armchair.

"No, Alexei Alexandrovich! What are you saying?" cried Oblonsky, and
his suffering was apparent in his face.

"It is so."

"Excuse me, I can't, I can't believe it!"

Alexei Alexandrovich sat down, feeling that his words had not had
the effect he anticipated, and that it would be unavoidable for him to
explain his position, and that, whatever explanations he might make,
his relations with his brother-in-law would remain unchanged.

"Yes, I am brought to the painful necessity of seeking a divorce,"
he said.

"I will say one thing, Alexei Alexandrovich. I know you for an
excellent, upright man; I know Anna- excuse me, I can't change my
opinion of her- for a good, an excellent woman; and so you must excuse
me if I cannot believe it. There is some misunderstanding," said he.

"Oh, if it were merely a misunderstanding!..."

"Pardon, I understand," interposed Stepan Arkadyevich. "But of
course... One thing: you must not act in haste. You must not, you must
not act in haste!"

"I am not acting in haste," Alexei Alexandrovich said coldly, "but
one cannot ask advice of anyone in such a matter. I have quite made up
my mind."

"This is awful!" said Stepan Arkadyevich. "I would do one thing,
Alexei Alexandrovich. I beseech you- do it!" he said. "No action has
yet been taken, if I understand rightly. Before you take advice, see
my wife, talk to her. She loves Anna like a sister, she loves you, and
she's a wonderful woman. For God's sake, talk to her! Do me that
favor, I beseech you!"

Alexei Alexandrovich pondered, and Stepan Arkadyevich looked at
him sympathetically, without interrupting his silence.

"You will go to see her?"

"I don't know. That was just why I have not been to see you. I
imagine our relations must change."

"Why so? I don't see that. Allow me to believe that, apart from
our connection, you have for me, at least in part, the same friendly
feeling I have always had for you... and sincere esteem," said
Stepan Arkadyevich, pressing his hand. "Even if your worst
suppositions were correct, I don't- and never would- take on myself to
judge either side, and I see no reason why our relations should be
affected. But now, do this, come and see my wife."

"Well, we look at the matter differently," said Alexei Alexandrovich
coldly. "However, we won't discuss it."

"No; why shouldn't you come today to dine, anyway? My wife's
expecting you. Please, do come. And, above all, talk it over with her.
She's a wonderful woman. For God's sake, on my knees, I implore you!"

"If you so much wish it, I will come," said Alexei Alexandrovich,
sighing.

And, anxious to change the conversation, he inquired about what
interested them both- the new head of Stepan Arkadyevich's board, a
man not yet old, who had suddenly been promoted to so high a position.


Alexei Alexandrovich had previously felt no liking for Count
Anychkin, and had always differed from him in his opinions. But now,
from a feeling readily comprehensible to officials- that hatred felt
by one who has suffered a defeat in the service for one who has
received a promotion- he could not endure him.

"Well, have you seen him?" said Alexei Alexandrovich with a
malignant smile.

"Of course; he was at our sitting yesterday. He seems to know his
work capitally, and to be very energetic."

"Yes, but what is his energy directed to?" said Alexei
Alexandrovich. "Is he aiming at doing anything, or simply doing
again what's been done? It's the great misfortune of our government-
this paper administration, of which he's a worthy representative."

"Really, I don't know what fault one could find with him. His policy
I don't know, but one thing is certain- he's a very fine fellow,"
answered Stepan Arkadyevich. "I've just been seeing him, and he's
really a fine fellow. We lunched together, and I taught him how to
make- you know that drink- wine and oranges. It's so cooling. And it's
a wonder he didn't know it. He liked it awfully. No, really, he's a
fine fellow."

Stepan Arkadyevich glanced at his watch.

"Why, good heavens, it's four already, and I've still to go to
Dolgovushin's! So please come round to dinner. You can't imagine how
you will grieve my wife and me if you don't."

The way in which Alexei Alexandrovich saw his brother-in-law out was
very different from the manner in which he had met him.

"I've promised, and I'll come," he answered wearily.

"Believe me, I appreciate it, and I hope you won't regret it,"
answered Stepan Arkadyevich, smiling.

And, putting on his coat as he went, he patted the footman on the
head with his coat sleeve, chuckled, and went out.

"At five o'clock, and wear your frock coat, please," he shouted once
more, returning at the door.

                           IX.


It was past five, and several guests had already arrived, before the
host himself got home. He went in together with Sergei Ivanovich
Koznishev and with Pestsov, both of whom had reached the street door
at the same moment. These were the two leading representatives of
the Moscow intellectuals, as Oblonsky had called them. Both were men
respected for their character and their intelligence. They respected
each other, but were in complete and hopeless disagreement upon almost
every subject, not because they belonged to opposite parties, but
precisely because they were of the same party (their enemies refused
to see any distinction between their views); but, in that party,
each had his own special shade of opinion. And since no difference
is less easily overcome than the difference of opinion about
semiabstract questions, they never agreed on any opinion, and, indeed,
had long been accustomed to jeer without anger at each other's
incorrigible aberrations.

They were just going in at the door, talking of the weather, when
Stepan Arkadyevich overtook them. In the drawing room there were
already sitting Prince Alexander Dmitrievich Shcherbatsky, young
Shcherbatsky, Turovtsin, Kitty, and Karenin.

Stepan Arkadyevich saw immediately that things were not going well
in the drawing room without him. Darya Alexandrovna, in her best
gray silk gown, obviously worried about the children who were to
have their dinner by themselves in the nursery, and by her husband's
absence, was not equal to the task of making the party mix without
him. All were sitting like so many priests' daughters on a visit (so
the old Prince expressed it), obviously wondering why they were there,
and pumping up remarks simply to avoid being silent. Turovtsin-
goodhearted man- felt unmistakably like a fish out of water, and the
smile with which his thick lips greeted Stepan Arkadyevich said, as
plainly as words: "Well, old boy, you have popped me down in a learned
set! A drinking party, and the Chateau des Fleurs, would be more in my
line!" The old Prince sat in silence, his bright little eyes
watching Karenin with a sidelong look; and Stepan Arkadyevich saw that
he had already formed a sharp remark to sum up that politician of whom
guests had been invited to partake, as though he were a sturgeon.
Kitty was looking at the door, calling up all her energies to keep her
from blushing at the entrance of Konstantin Levin. Young Shcherbatsky,
who had not been introduced to Karenin, was trying to look as though
he were not in the least embarrassed by it. Karenin himself had
followed the Peterburg. etiquette for a dinner with ladies present and
was wearing evening dress and a white tie. Stepan Arkadyevich saw by
his face that he had come simply to keep his promise, and was
performing a disagreeable duty in being present at this gathering.
He was indeed the person chiefly responsible for the chill benumbing
all the guests before Stepan Arkadyevich came in.

On entering the drawing room Stepan Arkadyevich apologized,
explaining that he had been detained by that Prince who was always the
scapegoat for all his absences and unpunctualities, and in one
moment he had made all the guests acquainted with each other, and,
bringing together Alexei Alexandrovich and Sergei Koznishev, had
started them on a discussion of the Russification of Poland, into
which they immediately plunged with Pestsov. Slapping Turovtsin on the
shoulder, he whispered something comic in his ear, and set him down by
his wife and the old Prince. Then he told Kitty she was looking very
pretty that evening, and presented Shcherbatsky to Karenin. In a
moment he had so kneaded together the social dough that the drawing
room became very lively, and there was a merry buzz of voices.
Konstantin Levin was the only person who had not arrived. But this was
so much the better, as, going into the dining room, Stepan Arkadyevich
found to his horror that the port and sherry had been procured from
Depre, and not from Leve, and, directing that the coachman should be
sent off as speedily as possible to Leve's he started back to the
drawing room.

In the dining room he was met by Konstantin Levin.

"I'm not late?"

"You can never help being late!" said Stepan Arkadyevich, taking his
arm.

"Have you a lot of people? Who's here?" asked Levin, unable to
help blushing, as he knocked the snow off his cap with his glove.

"All our own set. Kitty's here. Come along, I'll introduce you to
Karenin."

Stepan Arkadyevich, for all his liberal views, was well aware that
to meet Karenin was sure to be felt a flattering distinction, and so
treated his best friends to this honor. But at that instant Konstantin
Levin was not in a condition to feel all the gratification of making
such an acquaintance. He had not seen Kitty since that memorable
evening when he met Vronsky- not counting, that is, the moment when he
had had a glimpse of her on the highroad. He had known at the bottom
of his heart that he would see her here today. But, to keep his
thoughts free, he had tried to persuade himself that he did not know
it. Now when he heard that she was here, he was suddenly conscious
of such delight, and at the same time of such dread, that his breath
failed him and he could not utter what he wanted to say.

"What is she like, what is she like? As she used to be, or as she
was in the carriage? What if Darya Alexandrovna told the truth? Why
shouldn't it be the truth?" he thought.

"Oh, please, introduce me to Karenin," he brought out with an
effort, and with a desperately determined step he walked into the
drawing room and beheld her.

She was not the same as she used to be, nor was she as she had
been in the carriage; she was quite different.

She was scared, shy, shamefaced, and because of all this, still more
charming. She saw him the very instant he walked into the room. She
had been expecting him. She was delighted, and so confused at her
own delight that there was a moment, the moment when he went up to her
sister and glanced again at her, when she, and he, and Dolly, who
saw it all, thought she would break down and begin to cry. She
crimsoned, turned white, crimsoned again, and grew faint, waiting with
quivering lips for him to come to her. He went up to her, bowed, and
held out his hand without speaking. Except for the slight quiver of
her lips and the moisture in her eyes, making them brighter, her smile
was almost calm as she said:

"How long it is since we've seen each other!" and, with desperate
determination, with her cold hand squeezed his.

"You've not seen me, but I've seen you," said Levin, with a
radiant smile of happiness. "I saw you when you were driving from
the railway station to Ergushovo."

"When?" she asked, wondering.

"You were driving to Ergushovo," said Levin, feeling as if he
would sob with the rapture that was flooding his heart.- "And how
dared I associate a thought of anything not innocent with this
touching creature? And, yes, I do believe what Darya Alexandrovna told
me is true," he thought.

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

"Let me introduce you." He mentioned their names.

"Very glad to meet you again," said Alexei Alexandrovich coldly,
shaking hands with Levin.

"You are acquainted?" Stepan Arkadyevich asked in surprise.

"We spent three hours together in the train," said Levin smiling,
"but got out, just as in a masquerade, quite mystified- at least I
was."

"Oh, so that's it! Come along, please," said Stepan Arkadyevich,
pointing in the direction of the dining room.

The men went into the dining room and went up to the table for
hors d'oeuvres, laid with six sorts of vodka and as many kinds of
cheese, some with little silver spades and some without, caviar,
herrings, preserves of various kinds, and plates with slices of French
bread.

The men stood round the strong-smelling spirits and salt delicacies,
and the discussion of the Russification of Poland between Koznishev,
Karenin and Pestsov, died down in anticipation of dinner.

Sergei Ivanovich was unequaled in his skill in winding up the most
heated and serious argument by some unexpected pinch of Attic salt
that changed the disposition of his opponent. He did this now.

Alexei Alexandrovich had been maintaining that the Russification
of Poland could only be accomplished as a result of greater
principles, which ought to be introduced by the Russian government.

Pestsov insisted that one country can absorb another only when it is
the more densely populated.

Koznishev admitted both points, but with limitations. As they were
going out of the drawing room to conclude the argument, Koznishev said
smiling:

"So, then, for the Russification of our foreign populations there is
but one method- to bring up as many children as one can. My brother
and I are terribly at fault, I see. You married men- especially you,
Stepan Arkadyevich- are the real patriots: what number have you
reached?" he said, smiling genially at their host and holding out a
tiny wineglass to him.

Everyone laughed, and Stepan Arkadyevich with particular good humor.

"Oh, yes, that's the best method!" he said, munching cheese and
filling the wineglass with a special sort of vodka. The conversation
dropped at the jest.

"This cheese is not bad. Shall I give you some?" said the master
of the house. "Why, have you been going in for gymnastics again?" he
asked Levin, pinching his muscle with his left hand. Levin smiled,
bent his arm, and under Stepan Arkadyevich's fingers the muscles
swelled up like a sound cheese, hard as a knob of iron, through the
fine cloth of the coat.

"What biceps! A perfect Samson!"

"I imagine great strength is needed for hunting bears," observed
Alexei Alexandrovich, who had the mistiest notions about the chase. He
cut off and spread with cheese a wafer of bread fine as a spiderweb.

Levin smiled.

"Not at all. Quite the contrary- a child can kill a bear," he
said, with a slight bow moving aside for the ladies, who were
approaching the hors d'oeuvres table.

"You have killed a bear, I've been told!" said Kitty, trying
assiduously to catch with her fork a perverse mushroom that would slip
away, and shaking the lace over her white arm. "Are there bears on
your place?" she added, turning her charming little head to him and
smiling.

There was apparently nothing extraordinary in what she said, but
what unutterable meaning there was for him in every sound, in every
turn of her lips, her eyes, her hand as she said it! There was
entreaty for forgiveness, and trust in him, and tenderness- soft,
timid tenderness- and promise, and hope, and love for him, which he
could not but believe in, and which suffocated him with happiness.

"No, we've been hunting in the Tver province. It was coming back
from there that I met your beau-frere in the train, or your
beau-frere's brother-in-law," he said with a smile. "It was an amusing
meeting."

And he began telling with droll good humor how, after not sleeping
all night, he had, wearing a fur-lined, full-skirted coat, got into
Alexei Alexandrovich's compartment.

"The conductor, forgetting the proverb, would have chucked me out on
account of my attire; but thereupon I began expressing my feelings
in elevated language, and... you, too," he said, addressing Karenin
and forgetting his name, "at first would have ejected me on the ground
of my coat, but afterward you took my part, for which I am extremely
grateful."

"The rights of passengers generally to choose their seats are too
ill-defined," said Alexei Alexandrovich, rubbing the tips of his
fingers on his handkerchief.

"I saw you were in uncertainty about me," said Levin, smiling
good-naturedly, "but I made haste to plunge into intellectual
conversation to smooth over the defects of my attire."

Sergei Ivanovich, while he kept a conversation with their hostess,
had one ear for his brother, and he glanced askance at him. "What is
the matter with him today? Why such a conquering hero?" he thought. He
did not know that Levin was feeling as though he had grown wings.
Levin knew she was listening to his words and that she was glad to
listen to him. And this was the only thing that interested him. Not in
that room only, but in the whole world, there existed for him only
himself, with enormously increased importance and dignity in his own
eyes, and she. He felt himself on a pinnacle that made him giddy,
and far away down below were all those kind, excellent Karenins,
Oblonskys, and all the world.

Quite without attracting notice, without glancing at them, as though
there were no other places left, Stepan Arkadyevich put Levin and
Kitty side by side.

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

The dinner was as choice as the china, of which Stepan Arkadyevich
was a connoisseur. The soupe Marie-Louise was a splendid success;
the tiny patties eaten with it melted in the mouth and were
irreproachable. The two footmen and Matvei, in white cravats, did
their duty with the dishes and wines unobtrusively, quietly, and
dexterously. On the material side the dinner was a success; it was
no less so on the immaterial. The conversation, at times general and
at times between individuals, never paused, and toward the end the
company was so lively that the men rose from the table without
stopping speaking, and even Alexei Alexandrovich became lively.

                           X.


Pestsov liked threshing an argument out to the end, and was not
satisfied with Sergei Ivanovich's words, especially as he felt the
injustice of his view.

"I did not mean," he said over the soup, addressing Alexei
Alexandrovich, "mere density of population alone, but in conjunction
with fundamental ideas, and not by means of principles."

"It seems to me," Alexei Alexandrovich said languidly, and with no
haste, "that that's the same thing. In my opinion, influence over
another people is only possible to the people which has the higher
development, which..."

"But that's just the question," Pestsov broke in in his bass. He was
always in a hurry to speak, and seemed always to put his whole soul
into whatever he was saying; "of what are we to make higher
development consist? The English, the French, the Germans- which is at
the highest stage of development? Which of them will nationalize the
other? We see the Rhine provinces have been turned French, yet the
Germans are not at a lower stage!" he shouted. "There is another law
at work there!"

"I fancy that the greater influence is always on the side of true
civilization," said Alexei Alexandrovich, slightly lifting his
eyebrows.

"But what are we to lay down as the outward signs of true
civilization?" said Pestsov.

"I imagine such signs are generally very well known," said Alexei
Alexandrovich.

"But are they fully known?" Sergei Ivanovich put in with a subtle
smile. "It is the accepted view now that real culture must be purely
classical; but we see most intense disputes on each side of the
question, and there is no denying that the opposite camp has strong
points in its favor."

"You are for the classics, Sergei Ivanovich. Will you take red
wine?" said Stepan Arkadyevich.

"I am not expressing my own opinion of either form of culture,"
Sergei Ivanovich said, holding out his glass with a smile of
condescension, as to a child. "I only say that both sides have
strong arguments to support them," he went on, addressing Alexei
Alexandrovich. "My sympathies are classical from education, but in
this discussion I am personally unable to arrive at a conclusion. I
see no distinct grounds for classical studies being given a
pre-eminence over scientific studies."

"The natural sciences have just as great an educational value,"
put in Pestsov. "Take astronomy, take botany, or zoology, with its
system of general principles."

"I cannot quite agree with that," responded Alexei Alexandrovich.
"It seems to me that one must admit that the very process of
studying the forms of language has a peculiarly favorable influence on
intellectual development. Moreover, it cannot be denied that the
influence of the classical authors is in the highest degree moral,
while, unfortunately, with the study of the natural sciences are
associated the false and noxious doctrines which are the curse of
our day."

Sergei Ivanovich would have said something, but Pestsov
interrupted him in his rich bass. He began warmly contesting the
justice of this view. Sergei Ivanovich waited serenely to speak,
obviously with a convincing reply ready.

"But," said Sergei Ivanovich, smiling subtly, and addressing
Karenin, "one must allow that to weigh all the advantages and
disadvantages of classical and scientific studies is a difficult task,
and the question which form of education was to be preferred would not
have been so quickly and conclusively decided if there had not been in
favor of classical education, as you expressed it just now, its moral-
disons le mot- antinihilist influence."

"Undoubtedly."

"If it had not been for the distinctive property of antinihilistic
influence on the side of classical studies, we should have
considered the subject more, have weighed the arguments on both
sides," said Sergei Ivanovich with a subtle smile, "we should have
given elbowroom to both tendencies. But now we know that these
little pills of classical learning possess the medicinal property of
antinihilism, and we boldly prescribe them to our patients.... But
what if they had no such medicinal property?" he added his pinch of
Attic salt.

At Sergei Ivanovich's little pills everyone laughed; Turovtsin in
especial roared loudly and jovially, glad at last to have found
something to laugh at- all he ever looked for in listening to
conversation.

Stepan Arkadyevich had not made a mistake in inviting Pestsov.
With Pestsov intellectual conversation never flagged for an instant.
Directly Sergei Ivanovich had concluded the conversation with his
jest, Pestsov promptly started a new one.

"I can't agree even," said he, "that the government had that aim.
The government obviously is guided by abstract considerations, and
remains indifferent to the influence its measures may exercise. The
education of women, for instance, would naturally be regarded as
likely to be harmful, but the government opens schools and
universities for women."

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

Alexei Alexandrovich expressed the idea that the education of
women is apt to be confounded with the emancipation of women, and that
it is only so that it can be considered dangerous.

"I consider, on the contrary, that the two questions are inseparably
connected together," said Pestsov; "it is a vicious circle. Woman is
deprived of rights from lack of education, and the lack of education
results from the absence of rights. We must not forget that the
subjection of women is so complete, and dates from such distant
ages, that we are often unwilling to recognize the gulf that separates
them from us," said he.

"You mentioned rights," said Sergei Ivanovich, waiting till
Pestsov had finished, "meaning the right of sitting on juries, of
voting, of presiding at councils, the right of entering the civil
service, of sitting in parliament...."

"Undoubtedly."

"But if women, as a rare exception, can occupy such positions, it
seems to me you are wrong in using the expression 'rights'. It would
be more correct to say duties. Every man will agree that in doing
the duty of a juryman, a witness, a telegraph clerk, we feel we are
performing duties. And, therefore, it would be correct to say that
women are seeking duties, and quite legitimately. And one can but
sympathize with this desire to assist in the general labor of man."

"Quite so," Alexei Alexandrovich assented. "The question, I imagine,
is simply whether they are fitted for such duties."

"They will most likely be perfectly fitted," said Stepan
Arkadyevich, "when education has become general among them. We see
this..."

"How about the proverb?" said the Prince, who had a long while
been intent on the conversation, his mocking little eyes twinkling. "I
can say it before my daughters: her hair is long, but her wit is
short...."

"Just what they thought of the Negroes before their emancipation!"
said Pestsov angrily.

"What seems strange to me is that women should seek fresh duties,"
said Sergei Ivanovich, "while we see, unhappily, that men usually
try to avoid them."

"Duties are bound up with rights- power, money, honor; those are
what women are seeking," said Pestsov.

"Just as though I should seek the right to be a wet nurse, and
feel injured because women are paid for the work, while no one will
take me," said the old Prince.

Turovtsin exploded in a loud roar of laughter, and Sergei
Ivanovich regretted that he had not made this comparison. Even
Alexei Alexandrovich smiled.

"Yes, but a man can't nurse a baby," said Pestsov, "while a
woman..."

"No, there was an Englishman who did suckle his baby on board ship,"
said the old Prince, feeling this freedom in conversation
permissible before his own daughters.

"There are as many such Englishmen as there would be women
officials," said Sergei Ivanovich.

"Yes, but what is a girl to do who has no family?" put in Stepan
Arkadyevich, thinking of Masha Chibisova, whom he had had in his
mind all along, in sympathizing with Pestsov and supporting him.

"If the story of such a girl were thoroughly sifted, you would
find she had abandoned a family- her own or a sister's, where she
might have found a woman's duties," Darya Alexandrovna broke in
unexpectedly, in a tone of exasperation, probably suspecting what sort
of girl Stepan Arkadyevich had in mind.

"But we take our stand on principle, on the ideal," replied
Pestsov in his sonorous bass. "Woman desires to have the right to be
independent, educated. She is oppressed, humiliated by the
consciousness of her disabilities."

"And I'm oppressed and humiliated that they won't engage me at the
Foundling Asylum," the old Prince said again, to the huge delight of
Turovtsin, who in his mirth dropped his asparagus with the thick end
in the sauce.

                           XI.


Everyone took part in the conversation except Kitty and Levin. At
first, when they were talking of the influence that one people has
on another, there rose to Levin's mind what he had to say on the
subject. But these ideas, once of such importance in his eyes,
seemed to come into his brain as in a dream, and had now not the
slightest interest for him. It even struck him as strange that they
should be so eager to talk of what was of no use to anyone. Kitty,
too, one would have supposed, should have been interested in what they
were saying of the rights and education of women. How often she had
mused on the subject, thinking of her friend abroad, Varenka, of her
painful state of dependence; how often she had wondered about
herself as to what would become of her if she did not marry, and how
often she had argued with her sister about it! But now it did not
interest her at all. She and Levin had a conversation of their own,
yet not a conversation, but a sort of mysterious communication,
which brought them every moment nearer, and stirred in both a sense of
glad terror before the unknown into which they were entering.

At first Levin, in answer to Kitty's question how he could have seen
her last year in the carriage, told her that he had been coming home
from the mowing along the highroad and had met her.

"It was very, very early in the morning. You were probably only just
awake. Your maman was asleep in her corner. It was an exquisite
morning. I was walking along wondering who it could be in the
four-in-hand. It was a splendid set of four horses with bells, and
in a second you flashed by, and I saw you at the window- you were
sitting, like this; holding the strings of your cap in both hands, and
in awfully deep thought about something," he said, smiling. "How I
should like to know what you were thinking about then! Something
important?"

"Wasn't I dreadfully untidy?" she wondered, but seeing the smile
of ecstasy these reminiscences called up, she felt that the impression
she had made had been very good. She blushed and laughed with delight:

"Really I don't remember."

"How nicely Turovtsin laughs!" said Levin, admiring his humid eyes
and heaving chest.

"Have you known him long?" asked Kitty.

"Oh, everyone knows him!"

"And I see you think he's a horrid man?"

"Not horrid, but there's nothing in him."

"Oh, you're wrong! And you must give up thinking so directly!"
said Kitty. "I used to have a very poor opinion of him too, but he's
an awfully fine and wonderfully goodhearted man. He has a heart of
gold."

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

"We are great friends. I know him very well. Last winter, soon
after... you came to see us," she said, with a guilty and at the
same time a confiding smile, "all Dolly's children had scarlatina, and
he happened to come to see her. And only fancy," she said in a
whisper, "he felt so sorry for her that he stayed and began to help
her look after the children. Yes, and for three weeks he stopped
with them, and looked after the children like a nurse."

"I am telling Konstantin Dmitrievich about Turovtsin and the
scarlatina," she said, bending over to her sister.

"Yes, it was wonderful, noble!" said Dolly, glancing toward
Turovtsin, who had become aware they were talking of him, and
smiling gently to him. Levin glanced once more at Turovtsin, and
wondered how it was he had not realized all this man's goodness
before.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, and I'll never think ill of people again!" he
said gaily, genuinely expressing what he felt at the moment.

                           XII.


Connected with the conversation that had sprung up on the rights
of women there were certain questions as to the inequality of rights
in marriage, improper to discuss before the ladies. Pestsov had
several times during dinner touched upon these questions, but Sergei
Ivanovich and Stepan Arkadyevich carefully drew him off them.

When they rose from the table and the ladies had gone out, Pestsov
did not follow them, but, addressing Alexei Alexandrovich, began to
expound the chief ground of inequality. The inequality in marriage, in
his opinion, lay in the fact that the infidelity of the wife and
infidelity of the husband are punished unequally, both by the law
and by public opinion.

Stepan Arkadyevich went hurriedly up to Alexei Alexandrovich and
offered him a cigar.

"No, I don't smoke," Alexei Alexandrovich answered calmly, and, as
though purposely wishing to show that he was not afraid of the
subject, he turned to Pestsov with a chilly smile.

"I imagine that such a view has a foundation in the very nature of
things," he said, and would have gone on to the drawing room. But at
this point Turovtsin broke suddenly and unexpectedly into the
conversation, addressing Alexei Alexandrovich.

"You heard, perhaps, about Priachnikov?" said Turovtsin, warmed up
by the champagne he had drunk, and long waiting for an opportunity
to break the silence that had weighed on him. "Vassia Priachnikov," he
said, with a good-natured smile on his moist, red lips, addressing
himself principally to the most important guest, Alexei Alexandrovich,
"they told me today he fought a duel with Kvitsky at Tver, and has
killed him."

Just as it always seems that one bruises oneself on a sore place, so
Stepan Arkadyevich felt now that the conversation would by ill luck
fall at any moment on Alexei Alexandrovich's sore spot. He would again
have got his brother-in-law away, but Alexei Alexandrovich himself
inquired, with curiosity:

"What did Priachnikov fight about?"

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

"Ah!" said Alexei Alexandrovich indifferently, and, lifting his
eyebrows, he went into the drawing room.

"How glad I am you have come," Dolly said with a frightened smile,
meeting him in the outer drawing room. "I must talk to you. Let's
sit here."

Alexei Alexandrovich, with the same expression of indifference,
due to his lifted eyebrows, sat down beside Darya Alexandrovna, and
smiled affectedly.

"It's fortunate," said he, "especially as I meant to ask you to
excuse me, and to be taking leave. I have to start tomorrow."

Darya Alexandrovna was firmly convinced of Anna's innocence, and she
felt herself growing pale and her lips quivering with anger at this
frigid, unfeeling man, who was so calmly intending to ruin her
innocent friend.

"Alexei Alexandrovich," she said, with desperate resolution
looking him in the face, "I asked you about Anna; you made me no
answer. How is she?"

"She is, I believe, quite well, Darya Alexandrovna," replied
Alexei Alexandrovich, without looking at her.

"Alexei Alexandrovich, forgive me, I have no right... But I love
Anna as a sister, and esteem her; I beg, I beseech you to tell me what
is wrong between you? What fault do you find with her?"

Alexei Alexandrovich frowned, and, almost closing his eyes,
dropped his head.

"I presume that your husband has told you the grounds on which I
consider it necessary to change my attitude to Anna Arkadyevna?" he
said, without looking her in the face, but eying with displeasure
Shcherbatsky, who was walking across the drawing room.

"I don't believe it, I don't believe it- I can't believe it!"
Dolly said, clasping her bony hands before her with a vigorous
gesture. She rose quickly and laid her hand on Alexei
Alexandrovich's sleeve. "We shall be disturbed here. Come this way,
please."

Dolly's agitation had an effect on Alexei Alexandrovich. He got up
and submissively followed her to the schoolroom. They sat down at a
table covered with an oilcloth cut in slits by penknives.

"I don't- I don't believe it!" Dolly said, trying to catch his
glance, still avoiding her.

"One cannot disbelieve facts, Darya Alexandrovna," said he, with
an emphasis on the word facts.

"But what has she done?" said Darya Alexandrovna. "What,
precisely, has she done?"

"She has forsaken her duty, and deceived her husband. That's what
she has done," said he.

"No, no, it can't be! No, for God's sake, you are mistaken," said
Dolly, putting her hands to her temples and closing her eyes.

Alexei Alexandrovich smiled coldly, with his lips alone, meaning
to signify to her and himself the firmness of his conviction; but this
warm defense, though it could not shake him, reopened his wound. He
began to speak with greater heat.

"It is extremely difficult to be mistaken when a wife herself
informs her husband of the fact- informs him that eight years of her
life, and a son, are all a mistake, and that she wants to begin life
anew," he said angrily, with a snort.

"Anna and sin- I cannot connect them, I cannot believe it!"

"Darya Alexandrovna," he said, now looking straight into Dolly's
kindly, troubled face, and feeling that his tongue was being
loosened in spite of himself, "I would give a great deal for doubt
to be still possible. When I doubted, I was miserable, but it was
better than now. When I doubted, I had hope; but now there is no hope,
and still I doubt everything. I am in such doubt of everything that
I even hate my son, and sometimes do not believe he is my son. I am
very unhappy."

He had no need to say that. Darya Alexandrovna had seen that as soon
as he glanced into her face; and she felt sorry for him, and her faith
in the innocence of her friend began to waver.

"Oh, this is awful, awful! But can it be true that you are
resolved on a divorce?"

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

"Nothing else to do, nothing else to do..." she replied, with
tears in her eyes. "Oh no, don't say there's nothing else to do!"
she said.

"What is horrible in a misfortune of this kind is that one cannot,
as in any other- in loss, in death- bear one's trouble in peace, but
that one must act," said he, as though guessing her thought. "One must
get out of the humiliating position in which one is placed; one
can't live a trois."

"I understand, I quite understand that," said Dolly, and her head
sank. She was silent for a little, thinking of herself, of her own
grief in her family, and all at once, with an impulsive movement,
she raised her head and clasped her hands with an imploring gesture.
"But wait a little! You are a Christian. Think of her! What will
become of her, if you cast her off?"

"I have thought, Darya Alexandrovna- I have thought a great deal,"
said Alexei Alexandrovich. His face turned red in patches, and his dim
eyes looked straight before him. Darya Alexandrovna at that moment
pitied him with all her heart. "That indeed was what I did when she
herself made known to me my humiliation; I left everything as of
old. I gave her a chance to reform, I tried to save her. And with what
result? She would not regard the least request- that she should
observe decorum," he said, getting heated. "One may save anyone who
does not want to be ruined; but if the whole nature is so corrupt,
so depraved, that ruin itself seems to her salvation, what's to be
done?"

"Anything, only not divorce!" answered Darya Alexandrovna.

"But what is anything?"

"No, it is awful! She will be no one's wife; she will be lost!"

"What can I do?" said Alexei Alexandrovich, raising his shoulders
and his eyebrows. The recollection of his wife's last act had so
incensed him that he had become frigid, as at the beginning of the
conversation. "I am very grateful for your sympathy, but I must be
going," he said, getting up.

"No, wait a minute. You must not ruin her. Wait a little; I will
tell you about myself. I was married, and my husband deceived me; in
anger and jealousy I would have thrown up everything, I would
myself... But I came to myself again; and who did it? Anna saved me.
And here I am living on. The children are growing up, my husband has
come back to his family, and feels his fault, is growing purer,
better, and I live on... I have forgiven it, and you ought to
forgive!"

Alexei Alexandrovich heard her, but her words had no effect on him
now. All the hatred of that day when he had resolved on a divorce
had sprung up again in his soul. He shook himself, and said in a
shrill loud voice:

"Forgive I cannot, and do not wish to, and I regard it as wrong. I
have done everything for this woman, and she has trodden it all in the
mud to which she is kin. I am not a spiteful man, I have never hated
anyone, but I hate her with my whole soul, and I cannot even forgive
her, because I hate her too much for all the wrong she has done me!"
he said, with tears of hatred in his voice.

"Love those that hate you..." Darya Alexandrovna whispered,
timorously.

Alexei Alexandrovich smiled contemptuously. That he knew long ago,
but it could not be applied to his case.

"Love those that hate you, but to love those one hates is
impossible. Forgive me for having troubled you. Everyone has enough to
bear in his own grief!" And, regaining his self-possession, Alexei
Alexandrovich quietly took leave and went away.

                           XIII.


When they rose from the table, Levin would have liked to follow
Kitty into the drawing room; but he was afraid she might dislike this,
as too obviously paying her attention. He remained in the little
ring of men, taking part in the general conversation, and, without
looking at Kitty, he was aware of her movements, her looks, and the
place where she was in the drawing room.

He did at once, and without the smallest effort, keep the promise he
had made her- always to think well of all men, and to like everyone
always. The conversation fell on the village commune, in which Pestsov
saw a sort of special principle, called by him the choral principle.
Levin did not agree with Pestsov, nor with his brother, who had a
special attitude of his own, both admitting yet not admitting the
significance of the Russian commune. But he talked to them, simply
trying to reconcile and soften their differences. He was not in the
least interested in what he said himself, and even less so in what
they said; all he wanted was that they and everyone should be happy
and contented. He knew now the one thing of importance; and that one
thing was at first there, in the drawing room, and then began moving
across, and came to a standstill at the door. Without turning round he
felt her eyes fixed on him, and her smile, and he could not help
turning round. She was standing in the doorway with Shcherbatsky,
looking at Levin.

"I thought you were going toward the piano," said he, going up to
her. "That's something I miss in the country- music."

"No; we only came to fetch you, and I thank you," she said,
rewarding him with a smile that was like a gift, "for coming. What
do they want to argue for? No one ever convinces anyone, you know."

"Yes; that's true," said Levin; "it generally happens that one
argues warmly simply because one can't make out what one's opponent
wants to prove."

Levin had often noticed in discussions between the most
intelligent people that after enormous efforts, and an enormous
expenditure of logical subtleties and words, the disputants finally
arrived at the realization that what they had so long been
struggling to prove to one another had long ago, from the beginning of
the argument, been known to both, but that they liked different
things, and would not define what they liked for fear of its being
attacked. He had often had the experience of suddenly grasping in a
discussion what it was his opponent liked and at once liking it too,
and immediately he found himself agreeing, and then all arguments fell
away as useless. Sometimes, too, he had experienced the opposite,
expressing at last what he liked himself, which he was devising
arguments to defend, and, chancing to express it well and genuinely,
he had found his opponent at once agreeing and ceasing to dispute
his position. He tried to say this.

She knit her brow, trying to understand. But directly he began to
illustrate his meaning, she understood at once.

"I know: one must find out what he is arguing for, what is
precious to him, then one can..."

She had completely guessed and expressed his badly expressed idea.
Levin smiled joyfully; he was struck by this transition from the
confused, verbose discussion with Pestsov and his brother to this
laconic, clear, almost wordless communication of the most complex
ideas.

Shcherbatsky moved away from them, and Kitty, going up to a card
table, sat down, and, taking up the chalk, began drawing diverging
circles over the new green cloth.

They began again on the subject that had been started at dinner- the
liberty and occupations of women. Levin was of the opinion of Darya
Alexandrovna that a girl who did not marry should find a woman's
duties in a family. He supported this view by the fact that no
family can get on without women to help; that in every family, poor or
rich, there are and must be nurses, either relations or hired.

"No," said Kitty, blushing, but looking at him all the more
bravely with her truthful eyes; "a girl may be so circumstanced that
she cannot live in the family without humiliation, while she
herself..."

At the hint he understood her.

"Oh, yes," he said. "Yes, yes, yes- you're right; you're right!"

And he saw all that Pestsov had been maintaining at dinner about the
liberty of woman, simply from getting a glimpse of the terror of an
old maid's existence and its humiliation in Kitty's heart; and
loving her, he felt that terror and humiliation, and at once gave up
his arguments.

A silence followed. She was still drawing with the chalk on the
table. Her eyes were shining with a soft light. Under the influence of
her mood he felt in all his being a continually growing tension of
happiness.

"Ah! I've scribbled all over the table!" she said, and, laying
down the chalk, she made a movement as though to get up.

"What! Shall I be left alone- without her?" he thought with
horror, and he took the chalk. "Wait a minute," he said, sitting
down to the table. "I've long wanted to ask you one thing."

He looked straight into her caressing, though frightened eyes.

"Please, ask it."

"Here," he said; and he wrote the initial letters, w, y, t, m: i, c,
n, b, d, t, m, n, o, t. These letters meant, "When you told me: it
could never be, did that mean never, or then?" There seemed no
likelihood that she could make out this complicated sentence; but he
looked at her as though his life depended on her understanding the
words.

She glanced at him seriously, then leaned her puckered brow on her
hands and began to read. Once or twice she stole a look at him, as
though asking him, "Is it what I think it is?"

"I understand," she said, flushing.

"What is this word?" he said, pointing to the n that stood for
never.

"It means never," she said; "but that's not true!"

He quickly rubbed out what he had written, gave her the chalk, and
stood up. She wrote, t, i, c, n, a, d.

Dolly was completely comforted in the depression caused by her
conversation with Alexei Alexandrovich when she caught sight of the
two figures: Kitty with the chalk in her hand, with a shy and happy
smile looking upward at Levin, and his handsome figure bending over
the table with glowing eyes fastened one minute on the table and the
next on her. He was suddenly radiant: he had understood. It meant,
"Then I could not answer differently."

He glanced at her questioningly, timidly.

"Only then?"

"Yes," her smile answered.

"And n... And now?" he asked.

"Well, read this. I'll tell you what I should like- should like so
much!" She wrote the initial letters, i, y, c, f, a, f, w, h. This
meant, "If you could forget and forgive what happened."

He snatched the chalk with nervous, trembling fingers, and
breaking it, wrote the initial letters of the following phrase, "I
have nothing to forget and to forgive; I have never ceased to love
you."

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

"I understand," she said in a whisper.

He sat down and wrote a long phrase. She understood it all, and
without asking him, "Is it this?" took the chalk and at once answered.

For a long while he could not understand what she had written, and
often looked into her eyes. He was stupefied with happiness. He
could not supply the words she had meant; but in her charming eyes,
beaming with happiness, he saw all he needed to know. And he wrote
three letters. But he had hardly finished writing when she read them
over her arm, and herself finished and wrote the answer, "Yes."

"You're playing secretaire?" said the old Prince. "But we must
really be getting along if you want to be in time at the theater."

Levin got up and escorted Kitty to the door.

In their conversation everything had been said; it had been said
that she loved him, and that she would tell her father and mother that
he would come tomorrow morning.