APDL Eductation Resources/APDL Eductation Resources.iso/text/authors/tolstoy/annakareni/ANNA_K_6

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                           XX.


                          DEATH.


The next day the sick man received the sacrament and Extreme
Unction. During the ceremony Nikolai Levin prayed fervently. His great
eyes fastened on the holy icon that was set out on a card table
covered with a colored napkin, expressed such passionate prayer and
hope that it was awful to Levin to see it. Levin knew that this
passionate prayer and hope would only make him feel more bitterly
the parting from the life he so loved. Levin knew his brother and
the workings of his intellect: he knew that his unbelief came not from
life being easier for him without faith, but had grown up because,
step by step, the contemporary scientific interpretation of natural
phenomena crushed out the possibility of faith; and so he knew that
his present return was not a legitimate one, brought about by way of
the same working of his intellect, but simply a temporary,
interested return to faith in a desperate hope of recovery. Levin knew
too that Kitty had strengthened his hope by accounts of the
marvelous recoveries she had heard of Levin knew all this; and it
was agonizingly painful to him to behold the supplicating, hopeful
eyes and the emaciated wrist, lifted with difficulty, making the
sign of the cross on the tense brow, and the prominent shoulders and
hollow, gasping chest, which one could not feel consistent with the
life the sick man was praying for. During the sacrament Levin
offered prayers, and did what he, an unbeliever, had done a thousand
times. He said, addressing God: "If Thou dost exist, make this man
recover" (of course this same thing has been repeated many times),
"and Thou wilt save him and me."

After Extreme Unction the sick man became suddenly much better. He
did not cough once in the course of an hour, smiled, kissed Kitty's
hand, thanking her with tears, and said he was comfortable, free
from pain, and that he felt strong and had an appetite. He even raised
himself when his soup was brought, and asked for a cutlet as well.
Hopelessly ill as he was, obvious as it was at the first glance that
he could not recover, Levin and Kitty were for that hour both in the
same state of excitement, happy, though fearful of being mistaken.

"Is he better?"- "Yes, much."- "It's wonderful."- "There's nothing
wonderful in it."- "Anyway, he's better,"- they said in a whisper,
smiling to one another.

This self-deception was not of long duration. The sick man fell into
a quiet sleep, but he was waked up half an hour later by his cough.
And all at once every hope vanished in those about him and in himself.
The reality of his suffering crushed all hopes in Levin and Kitty, and
in the sick man himself, leaving no doubt, no memory even of past
hopes.

Without referring to what he had believed in half an hour before, as
though ashamed even to recall it, he asked for iodine to inhale in a
bottle covered with perforated paper. Levin gave him the bottle, and
the same look of passionate hope with which he had taken the sacrament
was now fastened on his brother, demanding from him the confirmation
of the doctor's words that inhaling iodine worked wonders.

"Isn't Katia here?" he gasped, looking round while Levin reluctantly
assented to the doctor's words. "No- then I can say it.... It was
for her sake I went through that farce. She's so sweet; but you and
I can't deceive ourselves. This is what I believe in," he said, and,
squeezing the bottle in his bony hand, he began breathing over it.

At eight o'clock in the evening Levin and his wife were drinking tea
in their room, when Marya Nikolaevna ran in to them breathlessly.
She was pale, and her lips were quivering.- "He is dying!" she
whispered. "I'm afraid he will die right away."

Both of them ran to him. He was sitting raised up, with one elbow on
the bed, his long back bent, and his head hanging low.

"How do you feel?" Levin asked in a whisper, after a silence.

"I feel I'm setting off," Nikolai said with difficulty, but with
extreme distinctness, deliberately squeezing the words out of himself.
He did not raise his head, but simply turned his eyes upward,
without their reaching his brother's face. "Katia, go away!" he added.

Levin jumped up, and with a peremptory whisper made her go out.

"I'm setting off," he said again.

"Why do you think so?" said Levin, so as to say something.

"Because I'm setting off," he repeated, as though he had a liking
for the phrase. "It's the end."

Marya Nikolaevna went up to him.

"You had better lie down; you'd be easier," she said.

"I shall lie down soon enough," he pronounced slowly, "when I'm
dead," he said sarcastically, wrathfully. "Well, you can put me down
if you like."

Levin laid his brother on his back, sat down beside him, and gazed
at his face, holding his breath. The dying man lay with closed eyes,
but the muscles twitched from time to time on his forehead, as with
one thinking deeply and intensely. Levin involuntarily thought with
him of what it was that was happening to him now, but in spite of
all his mental efforts to keep him company, he saw by the expression
of that calm, stern face, and by the playing muscle above his brow,
that for the dying man there was growing clearer and clearer all
that was still as dark as ever for Levin.

"Yes, yes, so," the dying man articulated slowly at intervals. "Wait
a little." He was silent again. "Right!" he pronounced all at once
reassuringly, as though all were solved for him. "O Lord!" he
murmured, and sighed deeply.

Marya Nikolaevna felt his feet. "They're getting cold," she
whispered.


For a long while, a very long while, it seemed to Levin, the sick
man lay motionless. But he was still alive, and from time to time he
sighed. Levin by now was exhausted from mental strain. He felt that
with no mental effort could he understand what it was that was
right. He felt that he could not follow the dying man's thinking. He
could not even think of the problem of death itself, but, with no will
of his own, thoughts kept coming to him of what he had to do next-
closing the dead man's eyes, dressing him, ordering the coffin. And,
strange to say, he felt utterly cold, and was not conscious of
sorrow nor of loss, less still of pity for his brother. If he had
any feeling for his brother at that moment, it was rather envy for the
knowledge the dying man had now, which he could not have.

A long time more he sat over him so, continually expecting the
end. But the end did not come. The door opened and Kitty appeared.
Levin got up to stop her. But at the moment he was getting up, he
caught the sound of the dying man stirring.

"Don't go away," said Nikolai and held out his hand. Levin gave
him his, and angrily waved to his wife to go away.

With the dying man's hand in his hand, he sat for half an hour, an
hour, another hour. He did not think of death at all now. He
wondered what Kitty was doing; who lived in the next room; whether the
doctor lived in a house of his own. He longed for food and for
sleep. He cautiously drew away his hand and felt the feet. The feet
were cold, but the sick man was still breathing. Levin tried once more
to move away on tiptoe, but the sick man stirred again and said:
"Don't go."


The dawn came; the sick man's condition was unchanged. Levin
stealthily withdrew his hand, and, without looking at the dying man,
went off to his own room and went to sleep. When he woke up, instead
of news of his brother's death which he expected, he learned that
the sick man had returned to his earlier condition. He had begun
sitting up again, coughing, had begun eating again, talking again, and
again had ceased to talk of death, again had begun to express hope
of his recovery, and had become more irritable and gloomier than ever.
No one, neither his brother nor Kitty, could soothe him. He was
angry with everyone, and said nasty things to everyone, reproached
everyone for his sufferings, and insisted that they should get him a
celebrated doctor from Moscow. To all inquiries made of him as to
how he felt, he made the same answer with an expression of
vindictive reproachfulness: "I'm suffering horribly, intolerably!" The
sick man was suffering more and more, especially from bedsores,
which it was impossible now to remedy, and grew more and more angry
with everyone about him, blaming them for everything, and especially
for not having brought him a doctor from Moscow. Kitty tried in
every possible way to relieve him, to soothe him; but it was all in
vain, and Levin saw that she herself was exhausted both physically and
morally, though she would not admit it. The sense of death, which
had been evoked in all by his taking leave of life on the night when
he had sent for his brother, was broken up. Everyone knew that he must
inevitably die soon, that he was half-dead already. Everyone wished
for nothing but that he should die as soon as possible, and
everyone, concealing this, gave him medicines, tried to find
remedies and doctors, and deceived him, and themselves, and one
another. All this was falsehood, disgusting, irreverent deceit. And
owing to the bent of his character, and because he loved the dying man
more than anyone else did, Levin was most painfully conscious of
this deceit.

Levin, who had long been possessed by the idea of reconciling his
brothers, at least in face of death, had written to his brother,
Sergei Ivanovich, and having received an answer from him, he read this
letter to the sick man. Sergei Ivanovich wrote that he could not
come himself, and in touching terms he begged his brother's
forgiveness.

The sick man said nothing.

"What am I to write to him?" said Levin. "I hope you are not angry
with him?"

"No, not in the least!" Nikolai answered, vexed at the question.
"Tell him to send me a doctor."

Three more days of agony followed; the sick man was still in the
same condition. The sense of longing for his death was felt by
everyone now who saw him: by the waiters, and the hotelkeeper, and all
the people staying in the hotel, and the doctor, and Marya Nikolaevna,
and Levin, and Kitty. The sick man alone did not express this feeling,
but on the contrary was furious at their not getting him doctors,
and went on taking medicine and talking of life. Only at rare moments,
when the opium gave him an instant's relief from his never-ceasing
pain, he would sometimes, half-asleep, utter what was ever more
intense in his heart than in all the others: "Oh, if it were only
the end!" or, "When will it be over?"

His sufferings, steadily growing more intense, did their work and
prepared him for death. There was no position in which he was not in
pain, there was not a minute in which he was unconscious of it, not
a limb, not a part of his body that did not ache and cause him
agony. Even the memories, the impressions, the thoughts of this body
awakened in him now the same aversion as the body itself. The sight of
other people, their remarks, his own reminiscences- everything was for
him a source of agony. Those about him felt this, and instinctively
did not allow themselves to move freely, to talk, to express their
wishes before him. All his life was merged in the one feeling of
suffering and desire to be rid of it.

There was evidently coming over him that revulsion which would
make him look upon death as the goal of his desires, as happiness.
Hitherto each individual desire, aroused by suffering or privation,
such as hunger, fatigue, thirst, had been satisfied by some bodily
function giving pleasure. But now no physical craving or suffering
received relief, and the effort to relieve them only caused fresh
suffering. And so all desires were merged in one- the desire to be rid
of all his sufferings and their source, the body. But he had no
words to express this desire of deliverance, and so he did not speak
of it, and from habit asked for the satisfaction of desires which
could not now be satisfied. "Turn me over on the other side," he would
say, and immediately after he would ask to be turned back again as
before. "Give me some broth. Take away the broth. Talk of something:
why are you silent?" And directly they began to talk he would close
his eyes, and would show weariness, indifference, and loathing.

On the tenth day from their arrival in the town, Kitty was unwell.
She suffered from headache and sickness, and she could not get up
all the morning.

The doctor opined that the indisposition arose from fatigue and
excitement, and prescribed rest.

After dinner, however, Kitty got up and went as with her work to the
sick man. He looked at her sternly when she came in, and smiled
contemptuously when she said she had been unwell. That day he was
continually blowing his nose, and groaning piteously.

"How do you feel?" she asked him.

"Worse," he articulated with difficulty. "In pain!"

"In pain, where?"

"Everywhere."

"It will be over today, you will see," said Marya Nikolaevna. Though
it was said in a whisper, the sick man, whose hearing Levin had
noticed was very keen, must have heard. Levin said "Hush!" to her, and
looked round at the sick man. Nikolai had heard; but these words
produced no effect on him. His eyes had still the same intense,
reproachful look.

"Why do you think so?" Levin asked her, when she had followed him
into the corridor.

"He has begun picking at himself," said Marya Nikolaevna.

"How do you mean?"

"Like this," she said, tugging at the folds of her woolen skirt.
Levin noticed, indeed, that all that day the patient pulled at
himself, as it were, trying to snatch something away.

Marya Nikolaevna's prediction came true. Toward night the sick man
was not able to lift his hands, and could only gaze before him with
the same intensely concentrated expression in his eyes. Even when
his brother or Kitty bent over him, so that he could see them, he
looked just the same. Kitty sent for the priest to read the prayer for
the dying.

While the priest was reading it, the dying man did not show any sign
of life; his eyes were closed. Levin, Kitty and Marya Nikolaevna stood
at the bedside. The priest had not quite finished reading the prayer
when the dying man stretched, sighed, and opened his eyes. The priest,
on finishing the prayer, put the cross to the cold forehead, then
slowly returned it to the stand, and, after standing in silence for
two minutes more, he touched the huge, bloodless hand that was turning
cold.

"He is gone," said the priest, and would have moved away; but
suddenly there was a faint stir in the mustaches of the dead man, that
seemed glued together, and quite distinctly in the hush they heard
from the bottom of the chest the sharply defined sounds:

"Not quite.... Soon."

And a minute later the face brightened, a smile came out under the
mustaches, and the women who had gathered round began carefully laying
out the corpse.

The sight of his brother, and the nearness of death, revived in
Levin that sense of horror in the face of the insolvable enigma,
together with the nearness and inevitability of death, that had come
upon him that autumn evening when his brother had come to him. This
feeling was now even stronger than before; even less than before did
he feel capable of apprehending the meaning of death, and its
inevitability rose up before him more terrible than ever. But now,
thanks to his wife's presence, that feeling did not reduce him to
despair. In spite of death, he felt the need of life and love. He felt
that love saved him from despair, and that his love, under the
menace of despair, had become still stronger and purer.

The one mystery of death, still unsolved, had scarcely passed before
his eyes, when another mystery had arisen, as insoluble, urging him to
love and to life.

The doctor confirmed his former suppositions in regard to Kitty. Her
indisposition consisted of pregnancy.

                           XXI.


From the moment when Alexei Alexandrovich understood from his
interviews with Betsy and with Stepan Arkadyevich that all that was
expected of him was to leave his wife in peace, without burdening
her with his presence, and that his wife herself desired this, he felt
so distraught that he could come to no decision by himself; he did not
know himself what he wanted now, and, putting himself in the hands
of those who were so pleased to interest themselves in his affairs, he
met everything with unqualified assent. It was only when Anna had left
his house, and the English governess sent to ask him whether she
should dine with him or separately, that for the first time he clearly
comprehended his position, and was appalled by it.

Most difficult of all in this position was the fact that he could
not in any way connect and reconcile his past with the present. It was
not the past when he had lived happily with his wife that troubled
him. The transition from that past to a knowledge of his wife's
unfaithfulness he had already lived through miserably; that state
had been painful, but he could understand it. If his wife had then, on
declaring to him her unfaithfulness, left him, he would have been
wounded, unhappy, but he would not have been in the hopeless position-
incomprehensible to himself- in which he felt himself now. He could
not now reconcile his immediate past, his tenderness, his love for his
sick wife, and for the other man's child with what was now the case-
with the fact that, seemingly in return for all this, he now found
himself alone, put to shame, a laughingstock, needed by no one, and
despised by everyone.

For the first two days after his wife's departure Alexei
Alexandrovich received petitioners and his head clerk, drove to the
committee, and went down to dinner in the dining room as usual.
Without giving himself a reason for what he was doing, he strained
every nerve of his being for those two days, simply to preserve an
appearance of composure, and even of indifference. Answering inquiries
about the disposition of Anna Arkadyevna's rooms and belongings, he
had exercised immense self-control to appear like a man in whose
eyes what had occurred was not unforeseen nor out of the ordinary
course of events, and he attained his aim: no one could have
detected in him any signs of despair. But on the second day after
her departure, when Kornei gave him a bill from a fashionable draper's
shop, which Anna had forgotten to pay, and announced that the
shopman was waiting, Alexei Alexandrovich told him to show the man up.

"Excuse me, Your Excellency, for venturing to trouble you. But if
you direct us to apply to Her Excellency, would you graciously
oblige us with her address?"

Alexei Alexandrovich pondered, as it seemed to the shopman, and
all at once, turning round, he sat down to the table. Burying his head
in his hands, he sat for a long while in that position, made several
attempts to speak, and stopped short.

Kornei, perceiving his master's emotion, asked the shopman to call
another time. Left alone, Alexei Alexandrovich realized that he had
not the strength to keep up the role of firmness and composure any
longer. He gave orders for the carriage that was awaiting him to be
taken back, and for no one to be admitted, and he did not go down to
dinner.

He felt that he could not endure the weight of universal contempt
and exasperation, which he had distinctly seen in the faces of the
shopman and of Kornei and of everyone, without exception, whom he
had met during these two days. He felt that he could not turn aside
from himself the hatred of men, because that hatred did not come
from his being bad (in that case he could have tried to be better),
but from his being shamefully and repulsively unhappy. He knew that
for this, for the very fact that his heart was torn with grief, they
would be merciless to him. He felt that men would crush him as dogs
strangle a mangled dog, yelping with pain. He knew that his sole means
of security against people was to hide his wounds from them, and
instinctively he tried to do this for two days, but now he felt
incapable of keeping up the unequal struggle.

His despair was even intensified by the consciousness that he was
utterly alone in his sorrow. In all Peterburg there was not a human
being to whom he could express what he was feeling, who would feel for
him, not as a high official, not as a member of society, but simply as
a suffering man; indeed, he had not such a one in the whole world.

Alexei Alexandrovich grew up an orphan. There were two brothers.
They did not remember their father, and their mother died when
Alexei Alexandrovich was ten years old. The property was a small
one. Their uncle, Karenin, a government official of high standing,
at one time a favorite of the late Czar, had brought them up.

On completing his high school and university courses with medals,
Alexei Alexandrovich had, with his uncle's aid, immediately started in
a prominent position in the service, and from that time forward he had
devoted himself exclusively to political ambition. In the high
school and the university, and afterward in the service, Alexei
Alexandrovich had never formed a close friendship with anyone. His
brother had been the person nearest to his heart, but he had a post in
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and was always abroad, where he had
died shortly after Alexei Alexandrovich's marriage.

While he was governor of a province, Anna's aunt, a wealthy
provincial lady, had brought him- middle-aged as he was, though
young for a governor- together with her niece, and had succeeded in
putting him in such a position that he had either to declare himself
or to leave town. Alexei Alexandrovich hesitated a great while.
There were at the time as many reasons for the step as against it, and
there was no overbalancing consideration to outweigh his invariable
rule of abstaining when in doubt. But Anna's aunt had through a common
acquaintance insinuated that he had already compromised the girl,
and that he was in honor bound to propose to her. He proposed, and
concentrated on his betrothed and his wife all the feeling of which he
was capable.

The attachment he felt to Anna precluded in his heart every need
of intimate relations with others. And now, among all his
acquaintances, he had not one friend. He had plenty of so-called
connections, but no friendships. Alexei Alexandrovich had plenty of
people whom he could invite to dinner, to whose sympathy he could
appeal in any public affair he was concerned about, whose interest
he could reckon upon for anyone he wished to help, with whom he
could candidly discuss other people's business and affairs of state.
But his relations with these people were confined to one clearly
defined channel, and had a certain routine from which it was
impossible to depart. There was one man, a comrade of his at the
university, with whom he had become friendly later, and with whom he
could have spoken of a personal sorrow; but this friend had a post
in the Department of Education in a remote part of Russia. Of the
people in Peterburg the most intimate and most likely were his head
clerk and his doctor.

Mikhail Vassilievich Sludin, the head clerk, was a
straightforward, intelligent, goodhearted and conscientious man, and
Alexei Alexandrovich was aware of his personal good will. But their
five years of official work together seemed to have put a barrier
between them that cut off warmer relations.

After signing the papers brought him, Alexei Alexandrovich had sat
for a long while in silence, glancing at Mikhail Vassilievich, and
several times he attempted to speak, but could not. He had already
prepared the phrase: "You have heard of my trouble?" But he ended by
saying as usual: "So you'll get this ready for me?" and with that
dismissed him.

The other person was the doctor, who had also a kindly feeling for
him; but there had long existed a silent understanding between them
that both were weighed down by work, and always in a hurry.

Of his women friends, foremost among them Countess Lidia Ivanovna,
Alexei Alexandrovich never thought. All women, simply as women, were
terrible and distasteful to him.

                           XXII.


Alexei Alexandrovich had forgotten the Countess Lidia Ivanovna but
she had not forgotten him. At the bitterest moment of his lonely
despair she came to him, and, without waiting to be announced,
walked straight into his study. She found him as he was sitting with
his head in both hands.

"F'ai force la consigne," she said, walking in with rapid steps
and breathing hard with excitement and rapid exertion. "I have heard
all! Alexei Alexandrovich! Dear friend!" she went on, warmly squeezing
his hand in both of hers and gazing with her fine pensive eyes into
his.

Alexei Alexandrovich, frowning, got up, and, disengaging his hand,
moved a chair up for her.

"Won't you sit down, Countess? I'm seeing no one because I'm unwell,
Countess," he said, and his lips twitched.

"Dear friend!" repeated Countess Lidia Ivanovna, never taking her
eyes off his, and suddenly her eyebrows rose at the inner corners,
describing a triangle on her forehead, her ugly yellow face becoming
still uglier, but Alexei Alexandrovich felt that she was sorry for him
and was preparing to cry. And he too was softened; he snatched her
plump hand and proceeded to kiss it.

"Dear friend!" she said in a voice breaking with emotion. "You ought
not to give way to grief. Your sorrow is a great one, but you ought to
find consolation."

"I am crushed, I am annihilated, I am no longer a man!" said
Alexei Alexandrovich, letting go her hand, but still gazing into her
brimming eyes. "My position is so awful because I can find nowhere,
I cannot find within me, strength to support me."

"You will find support; seek it- not in me, though I beseech you
to believe in my friendship," she said, with a sigh. "Our support is
love, that love that He has vouchsafed us. His burden is light," she
said, with the look of ecstasy Alexei Alexandrovich knew so well.
"He will be your support and your succor."

Although there was in these words a flavor of that sentimental
emotion at her own lofty feelings, and that new mystical fervor
which had lately gained ground in Peterburg, and which seemed to
Alexei Alexandrovich disproportionate, still it was pleasant to him to
hear this now.

"I am weak. I am crushed. I foresaw nothing, and now I understand
nothing."

"Dear friend!" repeated Lidia Ivanovna.

"It's not the loss of what I no longer have; it's not that!" pursued
Alexei Alexandrovich. "I do not grieve for that. But I cannot help
feeling ashamed before other people for the position I am placed in.
It is wrong, but I can't help it- I can't help it."

"It was not you who performed that noble act of forgiveness, at
which I was moved to ecstasy, and everyone else too, but He, working
within your heart," said Countess Lidia Ivanovna, raising her eyes
rapturously, "and so you cannot be ashamed of your act."

Alexei Alexandrovich knit his brows, and, crooking his hands, he
cracked his fingers.

"One must know all the details," he said in his high voice. "A man's
strength has its limits, Countess, and I have reached my limits. The
whole day I have had to be making arrangements, arrangements about
household matters arising" (he emphasized the word arising) "from my
new, solitary position. The servants, the governess, the
accounts.... These pinpricks have stabbed me to the heart, and I
have not the strength to bear it. At dinner... yesterday, I was almost
getting up from the dinner table. I could not bear the way my son
looked at me. He did not ask me the meaning of it all, but he wanted
to ask, and I could not bear the look in his eyes. He was afraid to
look at me, but that is not all..." Alexei Alexandrovich would have
referred to the bill that had been brought him, but his voice shook,
and he stopped. That bill on blue paper, for a hat and ribbons, he
could not recall without a rush of self-pity.

"I understand, dear friend," said Lidia Ivanovna. "I understand it
all. Succor and comfort you will find not in me, though I have come
only to aid you, if I can. If I could take from off you all these
petty, humiliating cares... I understand that a woman's word, a
woman's superintendence, is needed. You will intrust it to me?"

Silently and gratefully Alexei Alexandrovich squeezed her hand.

"Together we will take care of Seriozha. Practical affairs are not
my strong point. But I will set to work. I will be your housekeeper.
Don't thank me. I do it not from myself..."

"I cannot help thanking you."

"But, dear friend, do not give way to the feeling of which you
spoke- being ashamed of what is the Christian's highest glory: he
who humbles himself shall be exalted. And you cannot thank me. You
must thank Him, and pray to Him for succor. In Him alone we find
peace, consolation, salvation, and love," she said, and turning her
eyes heavenward, she began praying, as Alexei Alexandrovich gathered
from her silence.

Alexei Alexandrovich listened to her now, and those expressions
which had seemed to him, if not distasteful, at least exaggerated, now
seemed to him natural and consolatory. Alexei Alexandrovich had
disliked this new enthusiastic fervor. He was a believer, who was
interested in religion primarily in its political aspect, and the
new doctrine which ventured upon several new interpretations, just
because it paved the way to discussion and analysis, was in
principle disagreeable to him. He had hitherto taken up a cold and
even antagonistic attitude to this new doctrine, and with Countess
Lidia Ivanovna, who had been carried away by it, he had never
argued, but by silence had assiduously parried her attempts to provoke
him into argument. Now for the first time he heard her words with
pleasure, and did not inwardly oppose them.

"I am very, very grateful to you, both for your deeds and for your
words," he said, when she had finished praying.

Countess Lidia Ivanovna once more squeezed both of her friend's
hands.

"Now I will enter upon my duties," she said with a smile after a
pause, as she wiped away the traces of tears. "I am going to Seriozha.
Only in the last extremity shall I apply to you." And she got up and
went out.

Countess Lidia Ivanovna went into Seriozha's part of the house, and,
dropping tears on the scared child's cheeks, she told him that his
father was a saint and his mother was dead.


Countess Lidia Ivanovna kept her promise. She did actually take upon
herself the care of the organization and management of Alexei
Alexandrovich's household. But she had not overstated the case when
saying that practical affairs were not her strong point. All her
arrangements had to be modified because they could not be carried out,
and they were modified by Kornei, Alexei Alexandrovich's valet, who,
though no one was aware of the fact, now managed Karenin's
household, and quietly and discreetly reported to his master, while
the latter was dressing, all it was necessary for him to know. But
Lidia Ivanovna's help was none the less real; she gave Alexei
Alexandrovich moral support in the consciousness of her love and
respect for him, and still more (as it was soothing to her to believe)
by having almost turned him to Christianity- that is, from an
indifferent and apathetic believer she had turned him into an ardent
and steadfast adherent of the new interpretation of Christian
doctrine, which had been gaining ground of late in Peterburg. It was
easy for Alexei Alexandrovich to believe in this teaching. Alexei
Alexandrovich, like Lidia Ivanovna indeed, and others who shared their
views, was completely devoid of profundity of imagination, that
spiritual faculty in virtue of which the ideas evoked by the
imagination become so actual that they must needs be in harmony with
other ideas, and with reality itself. He saw nothing impossible and
absurd in the idea that death, though existing for unbelievers, did
not exist for him, and that, as he was possessed of the most perfect
faith, of the measure of which he was himself the judge, there was
therefore no sin in his soul, and he was experiencing complete
salvation here on earth.

It is true that the erroneousness and shallowness of this conception
of his faith was dimly perceptible to Alexei Alexandrovich, and he
knew that when, without the slightest idea that his forgiveness was
the action of a higher power, he had surrendered directly to the
feeling of forgiveness, he had felt more happiness than now, when he
was thinking every instant that Christ was in his heart, and that in
signing official papers he was doing His will. But for Alexei
Alexandrovich it was a necessity to think in that way; it was such a
necessity for him in his humiliation to have some elevated standpoint,
however imaginary, from which, looked down upon by all, he could
look down on others, that he clung, as to his one salvation, to his
delusion of salvation.

                           XXIII.


The Countess Lidia Ivanovna had, as a very young and enthusiastic
girl, been married to a wealthy man of high rank, a very good-natured,
jovial, and extremely dissipated rake. One month after marriage her
husband abandoned her, and her enthusiastic protestations of affection
he met with an irony and even hostility which people, knowing the
Count's good heart, and seeing no defects in the enthusiastic Lidia,
were at a loss to explain. Though they were divorced and lived
apart, yet whenever the husband met the wife, he invariably behaved to
her with the same malignant irony, the cause of which was
incomprehensible.

Countess Lidia Ivanovna had long given up being in love with her
husband, but from that time she had never given up being in love
with someone. She was in love with several people at once, both men
and women; she had been in love with almost everyone who had been
particularly distinguished in any way. She was in love with all the
new princes and princesses who married into the Imperial family; she
had been in love with one archbishop, one vicar, and one parish
priest; she had been in love with one journalist, three Slavophils,
with Komissarov, with one minister, one doctor, one English
missionary, and Karenin. All these passions, constantly waning or
growing more ardent, did not prevent her from keeping up the most
extended and complicated relations with the Court and fashionable
society. But from the time that, after Karenin's trouble, she had
taken him under special protection, from the time that she had set
to work in Karenin's household looking after his welfare, she felt
that all her other attachments were not the real thing, and that she
was now genuinely in love, and with no one but Karenin. The feeling
she now experienced for him seemed to her stronger than any of her
former feelings. Analyzing her feeling, and comparing it with former
passions, she distinctly perceived that she would not have been in
love with Komissarov if he had not saved the life of the Czar; that
she would not have been in love with Ristich-Kudzhitsky if there had
been no Slavonic question; but that she loved Karenin for himself, for
his lofty, uncomprehended soul, for the sweet- to her- high notes of
his voice, for his drawling intonation, his weary eyes, his character,
and his soft white hands with their swollen veins. She was not
simply overjoyed at meeting him, but she sought in his face signs of
the impression she was making on him. She tried to please him, not
by her words only, but in her whole person. For his sake it was that
she now lavished more care on her dress than before. She caught
herself in reveries on what might have been, if she had not been
married and he had been free. She blushed with emotion when he came
into the room, she could not repress a smile of rapture when he said
anything amiable to her.

For several days now Countess Lidia Ivanovna had been in a state
of intense excitement. She had learned that Anna and Vronsky were in
Peterburg. Alexei Alexandrovich must be saved from seeing her, he must
be saved even from the torturing knowledge that that awful woman was
in the same town with him, and that he might meet her any minute.

Lidia Ivanovna made inquiries through her friends as to what those
shocking people, as she called Anna and Vronsky, intended doing, and
she endeavored so to guide every movement of her friend during those
days that he might not come across them. The young adjutant, a
friend of Vronsky, through whom she obtained her information, and
who hoped through Countess Lidia Ivanovna to obtain a concession, told
her that they had finished their business and were going away next
day. Lidia Ivanovna had already begun to calm down, when the next
morning a note was brought her, the handwriting of which she
recognized with horror. It was the handwriting of Anna Karenina. The
envelope was of paper as thick as bast; on the oblong yellow paper
there was a huge monogram, and the letter smelt of agreeable scent.

"Who brought it?"

"A commissionaire from the hotel."

It was some time before Countess Lidia Ivanovna could sit down to
read the letter. Her excitement brought on an attack of asthma, to
which she was subject. When she had recovered her composure, she
read the following letter in French:


"Madame la Comtesse- The Christian feelings with which your heart is
filled give me the, I feel, unpardonable boldness to write to you. I
am miserable at being separated from my son. I entreat permission to
see him once before my departure. Forgive me for recalling myself to
your memory. I apply to you and not to Alexei Alexandrovich, simply
because I do not wish to cause that generous man to suffer in
remembering me. Knowing your friendship for him, I know you will
understand me. Could you send Seriozha to me, or should I come to
the house at some fixed hour, or will you let me know when and where I
could see him away from home? I do not anticipate a refusal, knowing
the magnanimity of him with whom it rests. You cannot conceive the
craving I have to see him, and so cannot conceive the gratitude your
help will arouse in me.

                                                         "Anna"


Everything in this letter exasperated Countess Lidia Ivanovna: its
contents, and the allusion to magnanimity, and especially its free and
easy- as she considered- tone.

"Say that there is no answer," said Countess Lidia Ivanovna, and
immediately opening her blotting book, she wrote to Alexei
Alexandrovich that she hoped to see him at one o'clock at the levee.

"I must talk with you of a grave and painful subject. There we
will arrange where to meet. Best of all at my house, where I will
order tea as you like it. Urgent. He lays the cross, but He gives
the strength to bear it," she added, so as to give him some slight
preparation.

Countess Lidia Ivanovna usually wrote some two or three letters a
day to Alexei Alexandrovich. She enjoyed that form of communication,
which gave opportunity for a refinement and air of mystery not
afforded by their personal interviews.

                           XXIV.


The levee was drawing to a close. People met as they were going
away, and gossiped of the latest news, of the newly bestowed honors,
and the changes in the positions of the higher functionaries.

"If only Countess Marya Borissovna were Minister of War, and
Princess Vatkovsky were Commander in Chief," said a gray-headed,
little old man in a gold-embroidered uniform, addressing a tall,
handsome maid of honor who had questioned him about the new
appointments.

"And if I were one of the adjutants," said the maid of honor,
smiling.

"You have an appointment already. You're over the Ecclesiastical
Department. And your assistant's Karenin."

"Good day, Prince!" said the little old man to a man who came up
to him.

"What were you saying of Karenin?" said the Prince.

"He and Putiatov have received the order of Alexandre Nevsky."

"I thought he had it already."

"No. Just look at him," said the little old man, pointing with his
embroidered hat to Karenin in a Court uniform, with the new red ribbon
across his shoulders, standing in the doorway of the hall with an
influential member of the Imperial Council. "Pleased and happy as
brass," he added, stopping to shake hands with a handsome gentleman of
the bedchamber of colossal proportions.

"No- he's looking older," said the gentleman of the bedchamber.

"From overwork. He's always drawing up projects nowadays. He won't
let a poor devil go nowadays till he's explained it all to him under
heads."

"Looking older, did you say? Il fait des passions. I believe
Countess Lidia Ivanovna's jealous now of his wife."

"Oh, come now, please don't say any harm of Countess Lidia
Ivanovna."

"Why, is there any harm in her being in love with Karenin?"

"But is it true Madame Karenina's here?"

"Well, not here in the palace, but in Peterburg. I met her yesterday
with Alexei Vronsky, bras dessus, bras dessous, on the Morskaia."

"C'est un homme qui n'a pas..." the gentleman of the bedchamber
was beginning, but he stopped to make room, bowing, for a member of
the Imperial family to pass.

Thus people talked incessantly of Alexei Alexandrovich, finding
fault with him and laughing at him, while he, blocking up the way of
the member of the Imperial Council he had captured, was explaining
to him point by point his new financial project, never interrupting
his discourse for an instant for fear he should escape.

Almost at the same time that his wife left Alexei Alexandrovich
there had come to him that bitterest moment in the life of an
official- the moment when his upward career comes to a full stop. This
full stop had arrived and everyone perceived it, but Alexei
Alexandrovich himself was not yet aware that his career was over.
Whether it was due to his feud with Stremov, or his misfortune with
his wife, or simply that Alexei Alexandrovich had reached his
predestined limits, it had become evident to everyone in the course of
that year that his career was at an end. He still filled a position of
consequence, he sat on many commissions and committees, but he was a
man whose day was over, and from whom nothing was expected. Whatever
he said, whatever he proposed, was heard as though it were something
long familiar, and the very thing that was not needed. But Alexei
Alexandrovich was not aware of this, and, on the contrary, being cut
off from direct participation in governmental activity, he saw more
clearly than ever the errors and defects in the action of others,
and thought it his duty to point out means for their correction.
Shortly after his separation from his wife, he began writing his first
note on the new judicial procedure, the first of the endless series of
notes he was destined to write in the future.

Alexei Alexandrovich did not merely fail to observe his hopeless
position in the official world, he was not merely free from anxiety on
this head- he was positively more satisfied than ever with his own
activity.

"He that is married careth for the things of the world, how he may
please his wife; he that is unmarried careth for the things that
belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord," says the Apostle
Paul, and Alexei Alexandrovich, who was now guided in every action
by Scripture, often recalled this text. It seemed to him that ever
since he had been left without a wife, he had, in these very
projects of reform, been serving the Lord more zealously than ever.

The unmistakable impatience of the member of the Council trying to
get away from him did not trouble Alexei Alexandrovich; he gave up his
exposition only when the member of the Council, seizing his chance
when one of the Imperial family was passing, slipped away from him.

Left alone, Alexei Alexandrovich looked down, collecting his
thoughts, then looked casually about him and walked toward the door,
where he hoped to meet Countess Lidia Ivanovna.

"And how strong they all are- how sound physically," thought
Alexei Alexandrovich, looking at the powerfully built gentleman of the
bedchamber with his well-groomed, perfumed whiskers, and at the red
neck of the Prince, pinched by his tight uniform. He had to pass
them on his way. "Truly is it said that all the world is evil," he
thought, with another sidelong glance at the calves of the gentleman
of the bedchamber.

Moving forward deliberately, Alexei Alexandrovich bowed with his
customary air of weariness and dignity to the gentleman who had been
talking about him, and, looking toward the door, his eyes sought
Countess Lidia Ivanovna.

"Ah! Alexei Alexandrovich!" said the little old man, with a
malicious light in his eyes, at the moment when Karenin had come up to
them, and was nodding with a frigid gesture. "I haven't
congratulated you yet," said the old man, pointing to his newly
received ribbon.

"Thank you," answered Alexei Alexandrovich. "What an exquisite day
today," he added, laying emphasis in his peculiar way on the word
exquisite.

That they laughed at him he was well aware, but he did not expect
anything but hostility from them; he was used to that by now.

Catching sight of the yellow shoulders of Lidia Ivanovna jutting out
above her corset, and her fine pensive eyes summoning him to her,
Alexei Alexandrovich smiled, revealing untarnished white teeth, and
went toward her.

Lidia Ivanovna's dress had cost her great pains, as indeed all her
dresses had done of late. Her aim in dress was now quite the reverse
of what she had pursued thirty years before. Then her desire had
been to adorn herself with something, and the more adorned the better.
Now, on the contrary, she was perforce decked out in a way so
inconsistent with her age and her figure, that her one anxiety was
to contrive that the contrast between these adornments and her own
exterior should not be too appalling. And as far as Alexei
Alexandrovich was concerned she succeeded, and was in his eyes
attractive. For him she was the one island not only of good will to
him, but of love in the midst of the sea of hostility and jeering that
surrounded him.

Passing through rows of ironical eyes, he was drawn as naturally
to her loving glance as a plant to the sun.

"I congratulate you," she said to him, her eyes on his ribbon.

Suppressing a smile of pleasure, he shrugged his shoulders,
closing his eyes, as though to say that that could not be a source
of joy to him. Countess Lidia Ivanovna was very well aware that it was
one of his chief sources of satisfaction, though he never admitted it.

"How is our angel?" said Countess Lidia Ivanovna, meaning Seriozha.

"I can't say I was quite pleased with him," said Alexei
Alexandrovich, raising his eyebrows and opening his eyes. "And
Sitnikov is not satisfied with him." (Sitnikov was the tutor to whom
Seriozha's secular education had been intrusted.) "As I have mentioned
to you, there's a sort of coldness in him toward the most important
questions which ought to touch the heart of every man and every
child...." Alexei Alexandrovich began expounding his views on the sole
question that interested him outside the service- the education of his
son.

When Alexei Alexandrovich, with Lidia Ivanovna's help, had been
brought back anew to life and activity, he felt it his duty to
undertake the education of the son left on his hands. Having never
before taken any interest in educational questions, Alexei
Alexandrovich devoted some time to the theoretical study of the
subject. After reading several books on anthropology, education, and
didactics, Alexei Alexandrovich drew up a plan of education, and,
engaging the best tutor in Peterburg to superintend it, he set to
work, and the subject continually absorbed him.

"Yes- but the heart! I see in him his father's heart, and with
such a heart a child cannot go far wrong," said Lidia Ivanovna with
enthusiasm.

"Yes, perhaps.... As for me, I do my duty. It's all I can do."

"You're coming to me," said Countess Lidia Ivanovna, after a
pause; "we have to speak of a subject painful for you. I would give
anything to have spared you certain memories, but others are not of
the same mind. I have received a letter from her. She is here in
Peterburg."

Alexei Alexandrovich shuddered at the allusion to his wife, but
immediately his face assumed the deathlike rigidity which expressed
utter helplessness in the matter.

"I was expecting it," he said.

Countess Lidia Ivanovna looked at him ecstatically, and tears of
rapture at the greatness of his soul came into her eyes.

                           XXV.


When Alexei Alexandrovich came into the Countess Lidia Ivanovna's
snug little boudoir, decorated with old china and hung with portraits,
the lady herself had not yet made her appearance.

She was changing her dress.

A cloth was laid on a round table, and on it stood a china tea
service and a silver teakettle and spirit lamp. Alexei Alexandrovich
looked idly about at the endless familiar portraits which adorned
the room, and, sitting down to the table, he opened a New Testament
lying upon it. The rustle of the Countess's silk skirt drew his
attention off.

"Well, now, we can sit quietly," said Countess Lidia Ivanovna,
slipping hurriedly with an agitated smile between the table and the
sofa, "and talk over our tea."

After some words of preparation, Countess Lidia Ivanovna,
breathing hard and flushing crimson, gave into Alexei
Alexandrovich's hands the letter she had received.

After reading the letter, he sat a long while in silence.

"I don't think I have the right to refuse her," he said, timidly
lifting his eyes.

"Dear friend, you never see evil in anyone!"

"On the contrary, I see that all is evil. But whether it is just..."

His face showed irresolution, and a seeking for counsel, support,
and guidance, in a matter he did not understand.

"No," Countess Lidia Ivanovna interrupted him; "there are limits
to everything. I can understand immorality," she said, not quite
truthfully, since she never could understand that which leads women to
immorality; "but I don't understand cruelty- to whom? To you! How
can she stay in the town where you are? No, the longer one lives the
more one learns. And I'm learning to understand your loftiness and her
baseness."

"Who is to cast a stone?" said Alexei Alexandrovich, unmistakably
pleased with the part he had to play. "I have forgiven all, and so I
cannot deprive her of what is exacted by love in her- by her love
for her son...."

"But is that love, my friend? Is it sincere? Admitting that you have
forgiven- that you forgive... have we the right to work on the soul of
that angel? He looks on her as dead. He prays for her, and beseeches
God to have mercy on her sins. And it is better so. But now what
will he think?"

"I had not thought of that," said Alexei Alexandrovich, evidently
agreeing.

Countess Lidia Ivanovna hid her face in her hands and was silent.
She was praying.

"If you ask my advice," she said, having finished her prayer and
uncovered her face, "I do not advise you to do this. Do you suppose
I don't see how you are suffering, how this has torn open your wounds?
But supposing that, as always, you don't think of yourself- what can
it lead to?- To fresh suffering for you, to torture for the child.
If there were a trace of humanity left in her, she ought not to wish
it herself. No, I have no hesitation in saying I advise against it,
and if you will intrust it to me, I will write to her."

And Alexei Alexandrovich consented, and Countess Lidia Ivanovna sent
the following letter in French:


"Dear Madame- To be reminded of you might result in your son's
asking questions, which could not be answered without implanting in
the child's soul a spirit of censure toward what should be for him
sacred, and therefore I beg you to interpret your husband's refusal in
the spirit of Christian love. I pray to Almighty God to have mercy
on you.


                                               "Countess Lidia"


This letter attained the secret object which Countess Lidia Ivanovna
had concealed from herself. It wounded Anna to the quick.

For his part, Alexei Alexandrovich, on returning home from Lidia
Ivanovna's, could not all that day concentrate himself on his usual
pursuits, and find that spiritual peace of one saved and believing
which he had felt of late.

The thought of his wife, who had so greatly sinned against him,
and toward whom he had been so saintly, as Countess Lidia Ivanovna had
so justly told him, ought not to have troubled him; but he was not
easy; he could not understand the book he was reading; he could not
drive away harassing recollections of his relations with her, of the
mistake which, as it now seemed, he had made in regard to her. The
memory of how he had received her confession of infidelity on their
way home from the races (especially his having insisted only on the
observance of external decorum, and not having sent a challenge)
tortured him like a remorse. He was tortured, too, by the thought of
the letter he had written her; and, most of all, his forgiveness,
which nobody wanted, and his care of the other man's child, seared his
heart with shame and remorse.

And just the same feeling of shame and remorse he felt now, as he
reviewed all his past with her, recalling the awkward words in
which, after long wavering, he proposed to her.

"But how have I been to blame?" he said to himself. And this
question always excited another question in him- whether they felt
differently, did their loving and marrying differently, these Vronskys
and Oblonskys... these gentlemen of the bedchamber, with their fine
calves. And there passed before his mind a whole series of these
succulent, vigorous, self-confident men, who always and everywhere
drew his inquisitive attention in spite of himself. He tried to dispel
these thoughts, he tried to persuade himself that he was not living
for this transient life, but for the life of eternity, and that
there was peace and love in his heart. But the fact that he had in
this transient, trivial life made, as it seemed to him, a few
trivial mistakes, tortured him as though the eternal salvation in
which he believed had no existence. But this temptation did not last
long, and soon there was reestablished once more in Alexei
Alexandrovich's soul the peace and the loftiness by virtue of which he
could forget what he did not want to remember.

                           XXVI.


"Well, Kapitonich?" said Seriozha, coming back rosy and good-humored
from his walk the day before his birthday, and giving his Russian
plaited overcoat to the tall old hall porter, who smiled down at the
little person from the height of his long figure. "Well, has the
bandaged official been here today? Did papa see him?"

"He saw him. The minute the head clerk came out, I announced him,"
said the hall porter with a good-humored wink. "Here, I'll take it
off."

"Seriozha!" said his Slavonic tutor, stopping in the doorway leading
to the inner rooms. "Take it off yourself." But Seriozha, though he
heard the tutor's feeble voice, did not pay attention to it. He
stood keeping hold of the hall porter's shoulder knot and gazing
into his face.

"Well, and did papa do what he wanted for him?"

The hall porter nodded his head affirmatively.

The bandaged official, who had already been seven times to ask
some favor of Alexei Alexandrovich, interested both Seriozha and the
hall porter. Seriozha had come upon him in the hall, and had heard him
plaintively beg the hall porter to announce him, saying that he and
his children had death staring them in the face.

Since then Seriozha, having met him a second time in the hall,
took great interest in him.

"Well, was he very glad?" he asked.

"Glad? I should think so! Almost dancing as he walked away."

"And has anything been left for me?" asked Seriozha, after a pause.

"Come, sir," said the hall porter; then with a shake of his head
he whispered: "Something from the Countess."

Seriozha understood at once that what the hall porter was speaking
of was a present from Countess Lidia Ivanovna for his birthday.

"You don't say? Where?"

"Kornei took it to your papa. A fine plaything it must be, too!"

"How big? Like this?"

"Rather small, but a fine thing."

"A book?"

"No-something else. Run along, run along, Vassilii Lukich is calling
you," said the porter, hearing the tutor's steps approaching, and,
carefully taking away from his shoulder knot the little hand in the
glove half-pulled off, he indicated with his head Lukich, the tutor.

"Vassilii Lukich, I'm coming in one tiny minute!" answered
Seriozha with gay and loving smile which always won over the careful
Vassilii Lukich.

Seriozha was too happy; everything was too delightful for him to
be able to help sharing with his friend the porter the family good
fortune, of which he had heard from Lidia Ivanovna's niece during
his walk in the public gardens. This piece of good news seemed to
him particularly important from its coming at the same time with the
joy of the bandaged official, and his own joy at toys having come
for him. It seemed to Seriozha that this was a day on which everyone
ought to be glad and happy.

"You know papa's received the order of Alexandre Nevsky today?"

"To be sure I do! People have already been here to congratulate
him."

"And is he glad?"

"Glad at the Czar's gracious favor? I should think so! It's a
proof he's deserved it," said the porter sternly and seriously.

Seriozha fell to musing, gazing up at the face of the porter,
which he had thoroughly studied in every detail, especially at his
chin, which hung down between the gray whiskers- never seen by
anyone but Seriozha, who saw him only from below.

"Well, and has your daughter been to see you lately?"

The porter's daughter was a ballet dancer.

"When is she to come on weekdays? They've their lessons to learn,
too. And you've your lesson, sir; run along."

On coming into the room Seriozha, instead of sitting down to his
lessons, told his tutor of his supposition that what had been
brought him must be a toy railway. "What do you think?" he inquired.

But Vassilii Lukich was thinking of nothing but the necessity of
learning the grammar lesson for the teacher, who was coming at two.

"No, do just tell me, Vassilii Lukich," he asked suddenly, when he
was seated at their worktable with the book in his hands, "what is
greater than the Alexandre Nevsky? You know papa's received the
Alexandre Nevsky?"

Vassilii Lukich replied that the Vladimir was greater than the
Alexandre Nevsky.

"And higher still?"

"Well, highest of all is the Andrei Pervozvanny."

"And higher than the Andrei?"

"I don't know."

"What- you don't know?" And Seriozha, leaning on his elbows, sank
into deep meditation.

His meditations were of the most complex and diverse character. He
imagined his father's having been suddenly presented with both the
Vladimir and the Andrei today, and in consequence being much better
tempered at his lesson; and dreamed how, when he was grown up, he
would himself receive all the orders, and what might be invented
higher than the Andrei. Directly any higher order were invented, he
would win it. They would make a higher one still, and he would
immediately win that too.

The time passed in such meditations, and when the teacher came,
the lesson about the adverbs of place and time and manner of action
was not ready, and the teacher was not only displeased, but hurt. This
touched Seriozha. He felt he was not to blame for not having learned
the lesson; however much he tried, he was utterly unable to do it.
As long as the teacher was explaining to him, he believed him and
seemed to comprehend, but as soon as he was left alone, he was
positively unable to recollect and to understand that the short and
familiar word "suddenly" is an adverb of manner of action. Still he
was sorry that he had disappointed the teacher, and he was anxious
to comfort him.

He chose a moment when the teacher was looking in silence at the
book.

"Mikhail Ivanich, when is your birthday?" he asked, all of a sudden.

"You'd much better be thinking about your work. Birthdays are of
no importance to a rational being. It's a day like any other, on which
one has to do one's work."

Seriozha looked intently at the teacher, at his scanty beard, at his
spectacles, which had slipped down below the ridge on his nose, and
fell into so deep a reverie that he heard nothing of what the
teacher was explaining to him. He knew that the teacher did not
think what he had said- he felt it from the tone in which it was said.
"But why have they all agreed to speak, just in the same manner,
always the dreariest and most useless stuff? Why does he keep me
off; why doesn't he love me?" he asked himself mournfully, and could
not think of an answer.

                           XXVII.


After the lesson with the teacher of grammar came his father's
lesson. While waiting for his father, Seriozha sat at the table
playing with a penknife, and fell to musing. Among Seriozha's favorite
occupations was searching for his mother during his walks. He did
not believe in death generally, and in her death in particular, in
spite of what Lidia Ivanovna had told him and his father had
confirmed, and it was just because of that, and after he had been told
she was dead, that he had begun looking for her when out for a walk.
Every woman of full, graceful figure with dark hair was his mother. At
the sight of such a woman such a feeling of tenderness stirred
within him that his breath failed him, and tears came into his eyes.
And he was on tiptoe with expectation that she would come up to him,
would lift her veil. All her face would be visible, she would smile,
she would hug him, he would sniff her fragrance, feel the softness
of her arms, and cry with happiness, just as he had one evening lain
on her lap while she tickled him, and he laughed and bit her white,
ring-covered fingers. Later, when he accidentally learned from his old
nurse that his mother was not dead, and his father and Lidia
Ivanovna had explained to him that she was dead to him because she was
wicked (which he could not possibly believe, because he loved her), he
went on seeking her and expecting her in the same way. That day in the
public gardens there had been a lady in a lilac veil, whom he had
watched with a throbbing heart, believing it to be her as she came
toward them along the path. The lady had not come up to them, but
had disappeared somewhere. That day, more intensely than ever,
Seriozha felt a rush of love for her, and now, waiting for his father,
he forgot everything, and cut all round the edge of the table with his
penknife, staring straight before him with sparkling eyes, and
thinking of her.

"Here is your papa," Vassilii Lukich diverted him.

Seriozha jumped up and went up to his father, and, kissing his hand,
looked at him intently, trying to discover signs of his joy at
receiving the Alexandre Nevsky.

"Did you have a good walk?" said Alexei Alexandrovich, sitting
down in his easy chair, pulling the volume of the Old Testament to him
and opening it. Although Alexei Alexandrovich had more than once
told Seriozha that every Christian ought to know Scripture history
thoroughly, he often referred to the Bible himself during the
lesson, and Seriozha observed this.

"Yes, it was very good indeed, papa," said Seriozha, sitting
sideways on his chair and rocking it, which was forbidden. "I saw
Nadinka" (Nadinka was a niece of Lidia Ivanovna's who was being
brought up in her house). "She told me you'd been given a new star.
Are you glad, papa?"

"First of all, don't rock your chair, please," said Alexei
Alexandrovich. "And secondly, it's not the reward that's precious, but
the work itself. And I could have wished you had understood that. If
you now are going to work, to study, in order to win a reward, then
the work will seem hard to you; but when you work" (Alexei
Alexandrovich, as he spoke, thought of how he had been sustained by
a sense of duty through the wearisome labor of the morning, consisting
of signing one hundred and eighty papers), "loving your work, you will
find your reward for it."

Seriozha's eyes hitherto shining with gaiety and tenderness, grew
dull and dropped before his father's gaze. This was the same
long-familiar tone his father always took with him, and Seriozha had
learned by now to fall in with it. His father always talked to him- so
Seriozha felt- as though he were addressing some boy of his own
imagination, one of those boys who exist in books, utterly unlike
himself. And Seriozha always tried, before his father, to pretend
being this storybook boy.

"You understand that, I hope?" said his father.

"Yes, papa," answered Seriozha, acting the part of the imaginary
boy.

The lesson consisted of learning by heart several verses out of
the Evangel and the repetition of the beginning of the Old
Testament. The verses from the Evangel Seriozha knew fairly well,
but at the moment when he was saying them he became so absorbed in
watching the sharply protruding, bony knobbiness of his father's
forehead, that he lost the thread, and he transposed the end of one
verse and the beginning of another. It was evident to Alexei
Alexandrovich that he did not understand what he was saying, and
this irritated him.

He frowned, and began explaining what Seriozha had heard many
times before and never could remember, because he understood it too
well, just as that "suddenly" is an adverb of manner of action.
Seriozha looked with scared eyes at his father, and could think of
nothing but whether his father would make him repeat what he had said,
as he sometimes did. And this thought so alarmed Seriozha that he
now understood nothing. But his father did not make him repeat it, and
passed on to the lesson out of the Old Testament. Seriozha recounted
the events themselves well enough, but when he had to answer questions
as to what certain events prefigured, he knew nothing, though he had
already been punished over this lesson. The passage at which he was
utterly unable to say anything, and began fidgeting and cutting the
table and swinging his chair, was where he had to tell of the
patriarchs before the Flood. He did not know one of them, except
Enoch, who had been taken up alive to heaven. Last time he had
remembered their names, but now he had forgotten them utterly, chiefly
because Enoch was the personage he liked best in the whole of the
Old Testament, and Enoch's translation to heaven was connected in
his mind with a whole long train of thought, in which he became
absorbed now while he gazed with fascinated eyes at his father's watch
chain and a half-unbuttoned button on his waistcoat.

In death, of which they talked to him so often, Seriozha disbelieved
entirely. He did not believe that those he loved could die, above
all that he himself would die. That was to him something utterly
inconceivable and impossible. But he had been told all men die; he had
asked people, indeed, whom he trusted, and they, too, had confirmed
it; his old nurse, too, said the same, though reluctantly. But Enoch
had not died, and so it followed that everyone did not die. "And why
cannot anyone else so serve God and be taken alive to heaven?" thought
Seriozha. Bad people- that is, those Seriozha did not like- might die,
but the good might all be like Enoch.

"Well, what are the names of the patriarchs?"

"Enoch, Enos-"

"But you have said that already. This is bad. Seriozha, very bad. If
you don't try to learn what is most necessary of all for a Christian,"
said his father, getting up, "whatever can interest you? I am
displeased with you, and Piotr Ignatich" (this was the chief
pedagogue) "is displeased with you.... I shall have to punish you."

His father and his teacher were both displeased with Seriozha, and
he certainly did learn his lessons very badly. But still it could
not be said he was a stupid boy. On the contrary, he was far
cleverer than the boys his teacher held up as examples to Seriozha. In
his father's opinion, he did not want to learn what he was taught.
In reality he could not learn that. He could not, because the claims
of his own soul were more binding on him that those claims his
father and his teacher made upon him. Those claims were in opposition,
and he was in direct conflict with his governors.

He was nine years old; he was a child; but he knew his own soul,
it was precious to him; he guarded it as the eyelid guards the eye,
and without the key of love he let no one into his soul. His
teachers complained that he would not learn, while his soul was
brimming over with thirst for knowledge. And he learned from
Kapitonich, from his nurse, from Nadinka, from Vassilii Lukich- but
not from his teachers. The spring his father and his teachers reckoned
upon to turn their mill wheels had long oozed at another place, and
its waters did their work there.

His father punished Seriozha by not letting him go to see Nadinka,
Lidia Ivanovna's niece; but this punishment turned out happily for
Seriozha. Vassilii Lukich was in a good humor, and showed him how to
make windmills. The whole evening passed over this work and in
dreaming how to make a windmill on which he could turn himself-
clutching at the wings or tying himself on and whirling round. Of
his mother Seriozha did not think all the evening, but, when he had
gone to bed, he suddenly remembered her, and prayed in his own words
that tomorrow his mother, in time for his birthday, might leave off
hiding herself and come to him.

"Vassilii Lukich, do you know what I prayed for tonight- extra
beside the regular things?"

"That you might learn your lessons better?"

"No."

"Toys?"

"No. You'll never guess. A splendid thing- but it's a secret. When
it comes to pass I'll tell you. Can't you guess?"

"No, I can't guess. You tell me," said Vassilii Lukich with a smile,
which was rare with him. "Come, lie down, I'm putting out the candle."

"Without the candle I can see better what I see and what I prayed
for. There! I was almost telling the secret!" said Seriozha,
laughing gaily.

When the candle was taken away, Seriozha heard his mother and felt
her presence. She stood over him, and her loving gaze caressed him.
But then came windmills- a penknife- everything became confused, and
he fell asleep.

                           XXVIII.


On arriving in Peterburg, Vronsky and Anna stayed at one of the best
hotels; Vronsky apart in a lower story, Anna above with her child, its
nurse, and her maid, in a large suite of four rooms.

On the day of his arrival Vronsky went to his brother's. There he
found his mother, who had come from Moscow on business. His mother and
sister-in-law greeted him as usual: they asked him about his stay
abroad, and talked of their common acquaintances, but did not let drop
a single word in allusion to his connection with Anna. His brother
came next morning to see Vronsky, and of his own accord asked him
about her, and Alexei Vronsky told him directly that he looked upon
his connection with Madame Karenina as marriage; that he hoped to
arrange a divorce, and then to marry her, and until then he considered
her as much a wife as any other wife, and he begged him to tell
their mother and his wife so.

"If the world disapproves, I don't care," said Vronsky; "but if my
relations want to be on terms of relationship with me, they will
have to be on the same terms with my wife."

The elder brother, who had always a respect for his younger
brother's judgment, could not well tell whether he was right or not
till the world had decided the question; for his part he had nothing
against it, and with Alexei he went up to see Anna.

Before his brother, as before everyone, Vronsky addressed Anna
with a certain formality, treating her as he might a very intimate
friend, but it was understood that his brother knew their real
relations, and they talked about Anna's going to Vronsky's estate.

In spite of all his social experience Vronsky was, in consequence of
the new position in which he was placed, laboring under a strange
misapprehension. One would have thought he must have understood that
society was closed for him and Anna; but now some vague ideas had
sprung up in his brain that this was only the case in old-fashioned
days, and that now, with the rapidity of modern progress (he had
unconsciously become by now a partisan of every sort of progress), the
views of society had changed, and that the question of their reception
by society was far from decided. "Of course," he thought, "she would
not be received at Court, but intimate friends can, and must, look
at it in the proper light."

One may sit for several hours at a stretch with one's legs crossed
in the same position, if one knows that there's nothing to prevent
one's changing one's position; but if a man knows that he must
remain sitting so with crossed legs, then cramps come on, the legs
begin to twitch and to strain toward the spot to which one would
like to draw them. This was what Vronsky was experiencing in regard to
the world. Though at the bottom of his heart he knew that the world
was shut on them, he put it to the test whether the world had not
changed by now and would not receive them. But he very quickly
perceived that though the world was open for him personally, it was
closed for Anna. Just as in the game of cat and mouse, the hands
raised for him were dropped to bar the way for Anna.

One of the first ladies of Peterburg society whom Vronsky saw was
his cousin Betsy.

"At last!" she greeted him joyfully. "And Anna? How glad I am! Where
are you stopping? I can fancy after your delightful travels you must
find our poor Peterburg horrid. I can fancy your honeymoon in Rome.
How about the divorce? Is that all over?"

Vronsky noticed that Betsy's enthusiasm waned when she learned
that no divorce had as yet taken place.

"People will cast a stone at me, I know," she said, "but I shall
come and see Anna; yes, I shall certainly come. You won't be here
long, I suppose?"

And she did certainly come to see Anna the same day, but her tone
was not at all the same as in former days. She unmistakably prided
herself on her courage, and wished Anna to appreciate the fidelity
of her friendship. She only stayed ten minutes, talking of society
news, and on leaving she said:

"You've never told me when the divorce is to be? Supposing I'm ready
to fling my cap over the mill, other starchy people will give you
the cold shoulder until you're married. And that's so simple nowadays.
Ca se fait. So you're going on Friday? Sorry we shan't see each
other again."

From Betsy's tone Vronsky might have grasped what he had to expect
from the world; but he made another effort in his own family. His
mother he did not reckon upon. He knew that his mother, who had been
so enthusiastic over Anna at their first acquaintance, would have no
mercy on her now for having ruined her son's career. But he had more
hope of Varia, his brother's wife. He fancied she would not cast a
stone, and would go simply and directly to see Anna, and would receive
her in her own house.

The day after his arrival Vronsky went to her, and finding her
alone, expressed his wishes directly.

"You know, Alexei," she said after hearing him, "how fond I am of
you, and how ready I am to do anything for you; but I have not spoken,
because I knew I could be of no use to you and to Anna Arkadyevna,"
she said, articulating the name "Anna Arkadyevna" with particular
care. "Don't suppose, please, that I judge her. Never! Perhaps in
her place I should have done the same. I don't and can't enter into
that," she said, glancing timidly at his gloomy face. "But one must
call things by their names. You want me to go and see her, to ask
her here, and to rehabilitate her in society; but do understand that I
cannot do so. I have daughters growing up, and I must live in the
world for my husband's sake. Well, I'm ready to come and see Anna
Arkadyevna- she will understand that I can't ask her here, or I should
have to do so in such a way that she would not meet people who look at
things differently; that would offend her. I can't raise her..."

"Oh, I don't regard her as having fallen more than hundreds of women
you do receive!" Vronsky interrupted her still more gloomily, and he
got up in silence, understanding that his sister-in-law's decision was
not to be shaken.

"Alexei! Don't be angry with me. Please understand that I'm not to
blame," began Varia, looking at him with a timid smile.

"I'm not angry with you," he said still as gloomily; "but this is
doubly painful to me. I'm sorry, too, that this means breaking up
our friendship- if not breaking up, at least weakening it. You will
understand that for me, too, it cannot be otherwise."

And with that he left her.

Vronsky knew that further efforts were useless, and that he had to
spend these few days in Peterburg as though in a strange town,
avoiding every sort of relation with his own old circle in order not
to be exposed to the annoyances and humiliations which were so
intolerable to him. One of the most unpleasant features of his
position in Peterburg was that Alexei Alexandrovich and his name
seemed to meet him everywhere. He could not begin to talk of
anything without the conversation turning on Alexei Alexandrovich,
he could not go anywhere without risk of meeting him. So at least it
seemed to Vronsky, just as it seems to a man with a sore finger that
he is continually, as though on purpose, grazing his sore finger
against everything.

Their stay in Peterburg was the more painful to Vronsky because he
perceived all the time a sort of new mood he could not understand in
Anna. At one time she would seem in love with him, and the next she
would become cold, irritable, and impenetrable. She was worrying
over something, and keeping something back from him, and did not
seem to notice the humiliations which poisoned his existence, and
which for her, with her delicate intuition, must have been still
more unbearable.

                           XXIX.


One of Anna's objects in coming back to Russia had been to see her
son. From the day she left Italy the thought of seeing him had never
ceased to agitate her. And, as she got nearer to Peterburg, the
delight and importance of this meeting grew ever greater in her
imagination. She did not even put to herself the problem of how to
arrange it. It seemed to her natural and simple to see her son when
she should be in the same town with him. But on her arrival in
Peterburg she was suddenly made distinctly aware of her present
position in society, and she grasped the fact that to arrange this
meeting was no easy matter.

She had now been two days in Peterburg. The thought of her son never
left her for a single instant, but she had not yet seen him. To go
straight to the house, where she might meet Alexei Alexandrovich- that
she felt she had no right to do. She might be refused admittance and
insulted. To write and so enter into relations with her husband- the
thought of doing that made her miserable; she could only be at peace
when she did not think of her husband. To get a glimpse of her son out
walking, finding out where and when he went out, was not enough for
her; she had so looked forward to this meeting, she had so much she
must say to him, she so longed to embrace him, to kiss him. Seriozha's
old nurse might be a help to her and show her what to do. But the
nurse was not now living in Alexei Alexandrovich's house. In this
uncertainty, and in efforts to find the nurse, two days had slipped
by.

Hearing of the close intimacy between Alexei Alexandrovich and
Countess Lidia Ivanovna, Anna decided on the third day to write her
a letter, which cost her great pains, and in which she intentionally
said that permission to see her son must depend on her husband's
magnanimity. She knew that if the letter were shown to her husband, he
would keep up his role of magnanimity, and would not refuse her
request.

The commissionaire who took the letter had brought her back the most
cruel and unexpected answer- that there was no answer. She had never
felt so humiliated as at the moment when, sending for
commissionaire, she heard from him the exact account of how he had
waited, and how afterward he had been told there was no answer. Anna
felt humiliated, insulted, but she saw that from her point of view
Countess Lidia Ivanovna was right. Her suffering was the more poignant
since she had to bear it in solitude. She could not and would not
share it with Vronsky. She knew that to him, although he was the
primary cause of her distress, the question of her seeing her son
would seem a matter of very little consequence. She knew that he would
never be capable of understanding all the depth of her suffering, that
for his cool tone at any allusion to it she would begin to hate him.
And she dreaded that more than anything in the world, and so she hid
from him everything that related to her son.

Spending the whole day at home she considered ways of seeing her
son, and had reached a decision to write to her husband. She was
just composing this letter when she was handed the letter from Lidia
Ivanovna. The Countess's silence had subdued and depressed her, but
the letter, all that she read between the lines in it, so
exasperated her, this malice was so revolting beside her passionate,
legitimate tenderness for her son, that she turned against other
people and left off blaming herself.

"This coldness is simulation of feeling!" she said to herself. "They
must needs insult me and torture the child, and I am to submit to
it! Not on any consideration! She is worse than I am. I don't lie,
anyway." And she decided on the spot that next day, Seriozha's
birthday, she would go straight to her husband's house, bribe the
servants, deceive the people, but at any cost see her son and overturn
the hideous deception with which they were encompassing the unhappy
child.

She went to a toyshop, bought toys, and thought over a plan of
action. She would go early in the morning at eight o'clock, when
Alexei Alexandrovich would be certain not to be up. She would have
money in her hand to give the hall porter and the footman, so that
they should let her in, and, without raising her veil, she would say
that she had come from Seriozha's godfather to congratulate him, and
that she had been charged to leave the toys at his bedside. She had
prepared everything but the words she should say to her son. Often she
dreamed of it, she could never think of anything.

The next day, at eight o'clock in the morning, Anna got out of a
hired coach and rang at the front entrance of her former home.

"Run and see what's wanted. Some lady," said Kapitonich, who, not
yet dressed, in his overcoat and galoshes, had peeped out of the
window and seen a lady in a veil standing close up to the door. His
assistant, a lad Anna did not know, had no sooner opened the door to
her than she came in, and pulling a three-rouble note out of her
muff put it hurriedly into his hand.

"Seriozha- Sergei Alexeich," she said, and was going on.
Scrutinizing the note, the porter's assistant stopped her at the
second glass door.

"Whom do you want?" he asked.

She did not hear his words and made no answer.

Noticing the embarrassment of the unknown lady, Kapitonich went
out to her, opened the second door for her, and asked her what she was
pleased to want.

"From Prince Skorodumov for Sergei Alexeich," she said.

"He's not up yet," said the porter, looking at her attentively.

Anna had not anticipated that the absolutely unchanged hall of the
house where she had lived for nine years would so greatly affect
her. Memories sweet and painful rose one after another in her heart,
and for a moment she forgot what she was here for.

"Would you kindly wait?" said Kapitonich, taking off her fur cloak.

As he took off the cloak, Kapitonich glanced at her face, recognized
her, and made her a low bow in silence.

"Please walk in, Your Excellency," he said to her.

She tried to say something, but her voice refused to utter any
sound; with a guilty and imploring glance at the old man she went with
light, swift steps up the stairs. Bent double, and his galoshes
catching in the steps, Kapitonich ran after her, trying to overtake
her.

"The tutor's there; maybe he's not dressed. I'll let him know."

Anna still mounted the familiar staircase, not understanding what
the old man was saying.

"This way, to the left, if you please. Excuse its not being tidy.
He's in the former smoking room now," the hall porter said, panting.
"Excuse me, wait a little, Your Excellency; I'll just see," he said,
and overtaking her, he opened the high door and disappeared behind it.
Anna stood still waiting. "He's only just awake," said the hall
porter, coming out.

And at the very instant the porter said this, Anna caught the
sound of a childish yawn. From the sound of this yawn alone she knew
her son and seemed to see him living before her eyes.

"Let me in; go away!" she said and went in through the high doorway.
On the right of the door stood a bed, and sitting up in the bed was
the boy. His little body bent forward, his nightshirt unbuttoned, he
was stretching and still yawning. The instant his lips came together
they curved into a blissfully sleepy smile, and with that smile he
slowly and deliciously rolled back again.

"Seriozha!" she whispered, walking noiselessly up to him.

When she was parted from him, and all this latter time when she
had been feeling a fresh rush of love for him, she had pictured him as
he was at four years old, when she had loved him most of all. Now he
was not even the same as when she had left him; he was farther than
ever from the four-year-old baby, more grown and thinner. How thin his
face was, how short his hair was! What long hands! How he had
changed since she left him! But it was he with his head, his lips, his
soft neck and broad little shoulders.

"Seriozha!" she repeated, in the child's very ear.

He raised himself again on his elbow, turned his tousled head from
side to side, as though looking for something, and opened his eyes.
Quietly and inquiringly he looked for several seconds at his mother
standing motionless before him, then all at once he smiled a
blissful smile, and shutting his eyes again, rolled not backward but
toward her, into her arms.

"Seriozha! My darling boy!" she said, breathing hard and putting her
arms around his plump little body.

"Mother!" he said, wriggling about in her arms so as to touch her
hands with different parts of him.

Smiling sleepily still, with closed eyes, he flung his fat little
arms round her shoulders, rolled toward her, with the delicious sleepy
warmth and fragrance that is only found in children, and began rubbing
his face against her neck and shoulders.

"I knew," he said, opening his eyes. "It's my birthday today. I knew
you'd come. I'll get up directly."

And saying that he dropped asleep.

Anna looked at him hungrily; she saw how he had grown and changed in
her absence. She knew, and did not know, the bare legs so long now,
that were thrust out below the quilt; she knew those short-cropped
curls on his neck in which she had so often kissed him. She touched
all this and could say nothing; tears choked her.

"What are you crying for, mother?" he said, waking up completely.
"Mother, what are you crying for?" he cried in a tearful voice.

"I?... I won't cry... I'm crying for joy. It's so long since I've
seen you. I won't, I won't," she said, gulping down her tears and
turning away. "Come, it's time for you to dress now," she added, after
a pause, and, never letting go his hands, she sat down by his
bedside on the chair, where his clothes were put ready for him.

"How do you dress without me? How..." she made an attempt to talk
simply and cheerfully, but she could not, and again she turned away.

"I don't have a cold bath- papa didn't order it. And you've not seen
Vassilii Lukich? He'll come in soon. Why, you're sitting on my
clothes!"

And Seriozha went off into a peal of laughter. She looked at him and
smiled.

"Mother, darling, sweet one!" he shouted, flinging himself on her
again and hugging her. It was as if only now, on seeing her smile,
he fully grasped what had happened. "I don't want that on," he said,
taking off her hat. And, as it were, seeing her afresh without her
hat, he fell to kissing her again.

"But what did you think about me? You didn't think I was dead?"

"I never believed it."

"You didn't believe it, my sweet?"

"I knew, I knew!" he repeated his favorite phrase, and snatching the
hand that was stroking his hair, he pressed the open palm to his mouth
and kissed it.

                           XXX.


Meanwhile Vassilii Lukich had not at first understood who this
lady was, and had learned from their conversation that it was no other
person than the mother who had left her husband, and whom he had not
seen, as he had entered the house after her departure. He was in doubt
whether to go in or not, or whether to communicate with Alexei
Alexandrovich. Reflecting finally that his duty was to get Seriozha up
at the hour fixed, and that it was therefore not his business to
consider who was there, the mother or anyone else, but simply to do
his duty, he finished dressing, went to the door and opened it.

But the embraces of the mother and child, the sound of their voices,
and what they were saying, made him change his mind. He shook his
head, and with a sigh he closed the door. "I'll wait another ten
minutes," he said to himself, clearing his throat and wiping away
tears.

Among the servants of the household there was intense excitement all
this time. All had heard that their mistress had come, and that
Kapitonich had let her in, and that she was even now in the nursery,
and everyone knew that their master always went in person to the
nursery at nine o'clock, and everyone fully comprehended that it was
impossible for the husband and wife to meet, and that they must
prevent it. Kornei, the valet, going down to the hall porter's room,
asked who had let her in, and how it was he had done so, and
ascertaining that Kapitonich had admitted her and shown her up, he
gave the old man a talking-to. The hall porter was doggedly silent,
but when Kornei told him he ought to be sent packing Kapitonich darted
up to him, and, shaking his hands in Kornei's face, began:

"Oh yes, to be sure you'd not have let her in! After ten years'
service, and never a word but of kindness, and there you'd up and say,
'Be off, go along, get away with you!' Oh yes, you're a shrewd one
at politics, I dare say! You don't need to be taught how to swindle
the master, and to filch raccoon fur coats!"

"Soldier!" said Kornei contemptuously, and he turned to the nurse
who was coming in. "Here, what do you think, Maria Efimovna: he let
her in without a word to anyone," Kornei said addressing her.
"Alexei Alexandrovich will be down immediately- and will go into the
nursery!"

"A pretty business, a pretty business!" said the nurse, "You, Kornei
Vassilyevich- you'd best detain the master some way or other, while
I'll run and get her away somehow. A pretty business!"

When the nurse went into the nursery, Seriozha was telling his
mother how he and Nadinka had had a fall in tobogganing downhill,
and had turned over three times. She was listening to the sound of his
voice, watching his face and the play of expression on it, touching
his hand, but she did not follow what he was saying. She must go,
she must leave him- this was the only thing she was thinking and
feeling. She heard the steps of Vassilii Lukich coming up to the
door and coughing; she heard, too, the steps of the nurse as she
came near; but she sat like one turned to stone, incapable of speaking
or rising.

"Mistress, darling!" began the nurse, going up to Anna and kissing
her hands and shoulders. "God has brought joy indeed to our boy on his
birthday. You haven't changed one bit."

"Oh, nurse dear, I didn't know you were in the house," said Anna,
rousing herself for a moment.

"I'm not living here- I'm living with my daughter. I came for the
birthday, Anna Arkadyevna, darling!"

The nurse suddenly burst into tears, and fell to kissing her hand
again.

Seriozha, with radiant eyes and smiles, holding his mother by one
hand and his nurse by the other, pattered on the rug with his chubby
little bare feet. The tenderness shown by his beloved nurse to his
mother threw him into an ecstasy.

"Mother! She often comes to see me, and when she comes..." he was
beginning, but he stopped, noticing that the nurse was saying
something in a whisper to his mother, and that in his mother's face
there was a look of dread and something like shame, which was so
strangely unbecoming to her.

She went up to him.

"My sweet!" she said.

She could not say good-by, but the expression on her face said it,
and he understood. "Darling, darling Kootik!" she used the name by
which she had called him when he was little "you won't forget me?
You..." but she could not say more.

How often afterward she thought of words she might have said. But
now she did not know what to say, and could say nothing. But
Seriozha knew all she wanted to say to him. He understood that she was
unhappy and loved him. He understood even what the nurse had
whispered. He had caught the words "Always at nine o'clock," and he
knew that this was said of his father, and that his father and
mother could not meet. That he understood, but one thing he could
not understand- why there should be a look of dread and shame in her
face?... She was not at fault, but she was afraid of his father and
ashamed of something. He would have liked to put a question that would
have set at rest this doubt, but he did not dare; he saw that she
was miserable, and he pitied her. Silently he pressed close to her and
whispered:

"Don't go yet. He won't come just yet."

The mother held him away from her to see whether he was thinking,
what he said to her, and in his frightened face she read not only that
he was speaking of his father, but, as it were, asking her what he
ought to think about his father.

"Seriozha, my darling," she said, "love him; he's better and
kinder than I am, and I have done him wrong. When you grow up you will
judge."

"There's no one better than you!..." he cried in despair through his
tears, and, clutching her by the shoulders, he began squeezing her
with all his force to him, his arms trembling with the strain.

"My sweet, my little one!" said Anna, and she cried as weakly and
childishly as he.

At that moment the door opened; Vassilii Lukich came in. At the
other door there was the sound of steps, and the nurse in a scared
whisper said, "He's coming," and gave Anna her hat.

Seriozha sank on the bed and sobbed, hiding his face in his hands.
Anna removed his hands, once more kissed his wet face, and with
rapid steps went to the door. Alexei Alexandrovich walked in,
meeting her. Seeing her, he stopped short and bowed his head.

Although she had just said he was better and kinder than she, in the
rapid glance she flung at him, taking in his whole figure in all its
details, feelings of repulsion and hatred for him, and jealousy for
her son, took possession of her. With a swift gesture she put down her
veil, and, quickening her pace, almost ran out of the room.

She had not time to undo, and so carried back with her, the parcel
of toys she had chosen the day before in a toyshop with such love
and sorrow.

                           XXXI.


Intensely as Anna had longed to see her son, and long as she had
been thinking of it and preparing herself for it, she had not in the
least expected that seeing him would affect her so deeply. On
getting back to her lonely rooms in the hotel she could not for a long
while understand why she was there. "Yes, it's all over, and I am
again alone," she said to herself, and, without taking off her hat she
sat down in a low chair by the hearth. Fixing her eyes on a bronze
clock standing on a table between the windows, she tried to think.

The French maid brought from abroad came in to suggest she should
dress. She gazed at her wonderingly and said, "Later on." A footman
offered her coffee. "Later on," she said.

The Italian nurse, after taking the baby out in her best, came in
with her, and brought her to Anna. The plump, well-fed little baby, on
seeing her mother, as she always did, held out her chubby little
hands, and with a smile on her toothless mouth, began, like a fish
with a float, bobbing her fingers up and down the starched folds of
her embroidered pinafore, making them rustle. It was impossible not to
smile, not to kiss the baby, impossible not to hold out a finger for
her to clutch, crowing and prancing all over; impossible not to
offer her a lip which she sucked into her little mouth by way of a
kiss. And all this Anna did, and took her in her arms and made her
dance, and kissed her fresh little cheek and bare little elbows; but
at the sight of this child it was plainer than ever to her that the
feeling she had for her could not be called love in comparison with
what she felt for Seriozha. Everything in this baby was charming,
but for some reason all this did not go deep to her heart. On her
first child, though the child of an unloved father, had been
concentrated all the love that had never found satisfaction. Her
baby girl had been born in the most painful circumstances and had
not had a hundredth part of the care and thought which had been
concentrated on her first child. Besides, in the little girl
everything was still in the future, while Seriozha was by now almost a
personality, and a personality dearly loved. In him there was a
conflict of thoughts, and of feelings; he understood her, he loved
her, he judged her, she thought, recalling his words and his eyes. And
she was forever- not physically only but spiritually- divided from
him, and it was impossible to set this right.

She gave the baby back to the nurse, let her go, and opened the
locket in which there was Seriozha's portrait when he was almost of
the same age as the girl. She got up, and, taking off her hat, took up
from a little table an album in which there were photographs of her
son at different ages. She wanted to compare them, and began taking
them out of the album. She took them all out except one, the latest
and best photograph. In it he was in a white smock, sitting astride
a chair, with frowning eyes and smiling lips. It was his best, most
singular expression. With her little supple hands, her white, delicate
fingers, that moved with a peculiar intensity today, she pulled at a
corner of the photograph, but the photograph had caught somewhere
and she could not get it out. There was no paper knife on the table,
and, pulling out the photograph that was next to her son's (it was a
photograph of Vronsky taken at Rome in a round hat and with long
hair), she used it to push out her son's photograph. "Oh, here he is!"
she said, glancing at the portrait of Vronsky, and she suddenly
recalled that he was the cause of her present misery. She had not once
thought of him all the morning. But now, coming all at once upon
that manly, noble face, so familiar and so dear to her, she felt a
sudden rush of love for him.

"But where is he? How is it he leaves me alone in my misery?" she
thought all at once with a feeling of reproach, forgetting she had
herself kept from him everything concerning her son. She sent to ask
him to come to her immediately; with a throbbing heart she awaited
him, rehearsing to herself the words in which she would tell him
all, and the expressions of love with which he would console her.
The messenger returned with the answer that he had a visitor with him,
but that he would come immediately, and that he asked whether she
would let him bring with him Prince Iashvin, who had just arrived in
Peterburg. "He's not coming alone, and since dinner yesterday he has
not seen me," she thought; "he's not coming so that I could tell him
everything, but coming with Iashvin." And all at once a strange idea
came to her: What if he had ceased to love her?

And going over the events of the last few days, it seemed to her
that she saw in everything a confirmation of this terrible idea: the
fact that he had not dined at home yesterday, and the fact that he had
insisted on their taking separate sets of rooms at Peterburg, and that
even now he was not coming to her alone, as though he were trying to
avoid meeting her face to face.

"But he ought to tell me so. I must know that it is so. If I knew
it, then I'd know what I should do," she said to herself, utterly
unable to picture to herself the position she would be in if she
were convinced of his not caring for her. She thought he had ceased to
love her, she felt close upon despair, and consequently she felt
exceptionally alert. She rang for her maid and went to her dressing
room. As she dressed, she took more care over her appearance than
she had done all these days, as though he might, if he had grown
cold to her, fall in love with her again because she had dressed and
arranged her hair in the way most becoming to her.

She heard the bell ring before she was ready.

When she went into the drawing room it was not he, but Iashvin,
who met her eyes. Vronsky was looking through the photographs of her
son, which she had forgotten on the table, and he made no haste to
look round at her.

"We have met already," she said, putting her little hand into the
huge hand of Iashvin, whose bashfulness was so queerly out of
keeping with his immense frame and coarse face. "We met last year at
the races. Give them to me," she said, with a rapid movement snatching
from Vronsky the photographs of her son, and glancing significantly at
him with flashing eyes. "Were the races good this year? Instead of
them I saw the races in the Corso in Rome. But you don't care for life
abroad," she said with a cordial smile. "I know you and all your
tastes, though I have seen so little of you."

"I'm awfully sorry for that, for my tastes are mostly bad," said
Iashvin, gnawing at his left mustache.

Having talked a little while, and noticing that Vronsky glanced at
the clock, Iashvin asked her whether she would be staying much
longer in Peterburg, and unbending his huge figure, reached after
his cap.

"Not long, I think," she said hesitatingly, glancing at Vronsky.

"So then we shan't meet again?" said Iashvin getting up and
turning to Vronsky. "Where do you have your dinner?"

"Come and dine with me," said Anna resolutely, angry it seemed
with herself for her embarrassment, but flushing as she always did
when she defined her position before a fresh person. "The dinner
here is not good, but at least you will see him. There is no one of
his old friends in the regiment Alexei cares for as he does for you."

"Delighted," said Iashvin with a smile, from which Vronsky could see
that he liked Anna very much.

Iashvin said good-by, and went away; Vronsky stayed behind.

"Are you going too?" she said to him.

"I'm late already," he answered. "Run along! I'll catch up in a
moment," he called to Iashvin.

She took him by the hand, and without taking her eyes off him, gazed
at him while she ransacked her mind for the words to say that would
keep him.

"Wait a minute, there's something I want to say to you," and
taking his broad hand she pressed it on her neck. "Oh, was it right my
asking him to dinner?"

"You did quite right," he said with a serene smile that showed his
close teeth, and he kissed her hand.

"Alexei, you have not changed to me?" she said, pressing his hand in
both of hers. "Alexei, I am miserable here. When are we going away?"

"Soon, soon. You wouldn't believe how disagreeable our way of living
here is to me too," he said, and he drew away his hand.

"Well, go, go!" she said, offended, and she walked quickly away from
him.

                           XXXII.


When Vronsky returned home, Anna was not yet home. Soon after he had
left, some lady, so they told him, had come to see her, and she had
gone out with her. That she had gone out without leaving word where
she was going, that she had not yet come back, and that all the
morning she had been going about somewhere without a word to him-
all this, together with the strange look of excitement in her face
in the morning, and the recollection of the hostile tone with which
she had before Iashvin almost snatched her son's photographs out of
his hands, made him serious. He decided he absolutely must speak
openly with her. And he waited for her in her drawing room. But Anna
did not return alone, but brought with her her old unmarried aunt,
Princess Oblonskaia. This was the lady who had come in the morning,
and with whom Anna had gone out shopping. Anna appeared not to
notice Vronsky's worried and inquiring expression, and began a
lively account of her morning's shopping. He saw that there was
something working within her; in her flashing eyes, when they rested
for a moment on him, there was an intense concentration, and in her
words and movements there was that nervous rapidity and grace which,
during the early period of their intimacy, had so fascinated him,
but which now so disturbed and alarmed him.

The dinner was laid for four. All were gathered together and about
to go into the little dining room when Tushkevich made his
appearance with a message from Princess Betsy. Princess Betsy begged
her to excuse her not having come to say good-by; she had been
indisposed, but begged Anna to come to her between half-past six and
half-past eight o'clock. Vronsky glanced at Anna at the precise
limit of time, so suggestive of steps having been taken that she
should meet no one; but Anna appeared not to notice it.

"Very sorry that I can't come just between half-past six and
nine," she said with a faint smile.

"The Princess will be very sorry."

"And so shall I."

"You're going, no doubt, to hear Patti?" said Tushkevich.

"Patti? You give me an idea. I would go if it were possible to get a
box."

"I can get one," Tushkevich offered his services.

"I should be very, very grateful to you," said Anna. "But won't
you dine with us?"

Vronsky gave a hardly perceptible shrug. He was at a complete loss
to understand what Anna was about. What had she brought the old
Princess Oblonskaia home for, what had she made Tushkevich stay to
dinner for, and, most amazing of all, why was she sending him for a
box? Could she possibly think in her position of going to Patti's
benefit, where all the circle of her acquaintances would be? He looked
at her with serious eyes, but she responded with that defiant,
half-mirthful, half-desperate look, the meaning of which he could
not comprehend. At dinner Anna was in aggressively high spirits- she
almost flirted both with Tushkevich and with Iashvin. When they got up
from dinner and Tushkevich had gone to get a box at the opera, Iashvin
went to smoke, and Vronsky went down with him to his own rooms.
After sitting there for some time he ran upstairs. Anna was already
dressed in a low-necked gown of light silk and velvet that she had had
made in Paris, and with costly white lace on her head, framing her
face, and particularly becoming, showing up her dazzling beauty.

"Are you really going to the theater?" he said, trying not to look
at her.

"Why do you ask with such alarm?" she said, wounded again at his not
looking at her. "Why shouldn't I go?"

She appeared not to understand the meaning of his words.

"Oh, of course there's no reason whatever," he said frowning.

"That's just what I say," she said, willfully refusing to see the
irony of his tone, and quietly turning back her long, perfumed glove.

"Anna, for God's sake! What is the matter with you?" he said,
watching her exactly as once her husband had done.

"I don't understand what you are asking."

"You know that it's out of the question to go."

"Why so? I'm not going alone. Princess Varvara has gone to dress-
she is going with me."

He shrugged his shoulders with an air of perplexity and despair.

"But do you mean to say you don't know?..." he began.

"But I don't care to know!" she almost shrieked. "I don't care to.
Do I regret what I have done? No, no, no! If it were all to do again
from the beginning, it would be the same. For us, for you and for
me, there is only one thing that matters, whether we love each
other. Other people we need not consider. Why are we living here apart
and not seeing each other? Why can't I go? I love you, and I don't
care for anything," she said in Russian, glancing at him with a
peculiar, obscure for him, gleam in her eyes, "if you have not changed
to me.... Why don't you look at me?"

He looked at her. He saw all the beauty of her face and full
dress, always so becoming to her. But now her beauty and elegance were
just what irritated him.

"My feeling cannot change, you know, but I beg you, I entreat
you," he said again in French, with a note of tender supplication in
his voice, but with coldness in his eyes.

She did not hear his words, but she saw the coldness of his eyes,
and answered with irritation:

"And I beg you to explain why I should not go."

"Because it might cause you..." He hesitated.

"I don't understand. Iashvin n'est compromettant, and Princess
Varvara is no worse than others. Oh, here she is!"

                           XXXIII.


Vronsky for the first time experienced a feeling of anger against
Anna, almost a hatred for her intentional refusal to understand her
own position. This feeling was aggravated by his being unable to
tell her plainly the cause of his anger. If he had told her directly
what he was thinking, he would have said: "In that dress, with a
Princess only too well known to everyone, to show yourself at the
theater is equivalent not merely to acknowledging your position as a
fallen woman, but is flinging down a challenge to society- that is
to say, cutting yourself off from it forever."

He could not say that to her. "But how can she fail to see it, and
what is going on within her?" he said to himself He felt at the same
time that his respect for her was diminished while his sense of her
beauty was intensified.

He went back scowling to his rooms, and, sitting down beside
Iashvin, who, with his long legs stretched out on a chair, was
drinking cognac and Seltzer water, he ordered a glass of the same
for himself.

"You were talking of Lankovsky's Powerful. That's a fine horse,
and I would advise you to buy him," said Iashvin, glancing at his
comrade's gloomy face. "His hindquarters aren't quite first-rate,
but the legs and head- one couldn't wish for anything better."

"I think I will take him," answered Vronsky.

Their conversation about horses interested him, but he did not for
an instant forget Anna, and could not help listening to the sound of
steps in the corridor and looking at the clock on the chimney piece.

"Anna Arkadyevna gave orders to announce that she has gone to the
theater."

Iashvin, tipping another glass of cognac into the bubbling water,
drank it and got up, buttoning his coat.

"Well, let's go," he said, faintly smiling under his mustache, and
showing by this smile that he knew the cause of Vronsky's
gloominess, and did not attach any significance to it.

"I'm not going," Vronsky answered gloomily.

"Well, I must- I promised to. Good-by then. If you do, come to the
stalls; you can take Krassinsky's stall," added Iashvin as he went
out.

"No, I'm busy."

"A wife is a care, but it's worse when she's not a wife," thought
Iashvin, as he walked out of the hotel.

Vronsky, left alone, got up from his chair and began pacing up and
down the room.

"And what's today? The fourth series.... Iegor and his wife are
there, and my mother, most likely. Of course all Peterburg's there.
Now she's gone in, taken off her cloak and come into the glare.
Tushkevich, Iashvin, Princess Varvara," he pictured them to
himself.... "What about me? Either that I'm frightened, or have
given up to Tushkevich the right to protect her? From every point of
view- stupid, stupid!... And why is she putting me in such a
position?" he said with a gesture of despair.

With that gesture he knocked against the table, on which there was
standing the Seltzer water and the decanter of cognac, and almost
upset it. He tried to catch it, let it slip, and angrily kicked the
table over and rang.

"If you care to be in my service," he said to the valet who came in,
"you had better remember your duties. This shouldn't be here. You
ought to have cleared away."

The valet, conscious of his own innocence, would have defended
himself, but, glancing at his master, he saw from his face that the
only thing to do was to be silent, and hurriedly threading his way
in and out, dropped down on the carpet and began gathering up the
whole and broken glasses and bottles.

"That's not your duty; send the waiter to clear away, and get my
dress coat out."


Vronsky arrived at the theater at half-past eight The performance
was in full swing. The little old boxkeeper, recognizing Vronsky as he
helped him off with his fur coat, called him "Your Excellency," and
suggested he should not take a check but should simply call Fiodor. In
the brightly lighted corridor there was no one but the box opener
and two footmen with fur cloaks on their arms listening at the
doors. Through the closed doors came the sounds of the discreet
staccato accompaniment of the orchestra, and a single female voice
rendering distinctly a musical phrase. The door opened to let the
box opener slip through, and the phrase drawing to the end reached
Vronsky's hearing clearly. But the doors were closed again at once,
and Vronsky did not hear the end of the phrase and the cadence of
the accompaniment, though he knew from the thunder of applause that it
was over. When he entered the hall, brilliantly lighted with
chandeliers and gas jets, the noise was still going on. On the stage
the singer, bowing and smiling, flashing with bare shoulders and
with diamonds, was, with the help of the tenor who had given her his
arm, gathering up the bouquets that were clumsily flying over the
footlights. Then she went up to a gentleman with glossy pomaded hair
parted down the middle, who was stretching across the footlights
holding out something to her, and all the public in the stalls as well
as in the boxes was in excitement, craning forward, shouting and
clapping. The conductor in his high chair assisted in passing the
offering, and straightened his white tie. Vronsky walked into the
middle of the stalls, and, standing still, began looking about him.
That day less than ever was his attention turned upon the familiar,
habitual surroundings, the stage, the noise, all the familiar,
uninteresting, particolored herd of spectators in the packed theater.

There were, as always, the same ladies of some sort with officers of
some sort in the back of the boxes; the same gaily dressed women-
God knows who- and uniforms and black coats; the same dirty crowd in
the upper gallery, and among the crowd, in the boxes and in the
front rows, were some forty of the real people, men and women. And
to those oases Vronsky at once directed his attention, and with them
he entered at once into relation.

The act was over when he went in, and so he did not go straight to
his brother's box, but going up to the first row of stalls stopped
at the footlights with Serpukhovskoy, who, standing with one knee,
raised and his heel on the footlights, caught sight of him in the
distance and beckoned to him, smiling.

Vronsky had not yet seen Anna. He purposely avoided looking in her
direction. But he knew by the direction of people's eyes where she
was. He looked round discreetly, but he was not seeking her; expecting
the worst, his eyes sought for Alexei Alexandrovich. To his relief
Alexei Alexandrovich was not in the theater that evening.

"How little of the military man there is left in you!" Serpukhovskoy
was saying to him. "A diplomat, an artist, something of that sort, one
would say."

"Yes, it was like going back home when I put on a dress coat,"
answered Vronsky, smiling and slowly taking out his opera glasses.

"Well, I'll own I envy you there. When I come back from abroad and
put on this," he touched his shoulder knot, "I regret my freedom."

Serpukhovskoy had long given up all hope of Vronsky's career, but he
liked him as before, and was now particularly cordial to him.

"What a pity you were not in time for the first act!"

Vronsky, listening with half an ear, moved his opera glasses from
the stalls and scanned the boxes. Near a lady in a turban and a bald
old man, who seemed to blink angrily in the moving opera glasses,
Vronsky suddenly caught sight of Anna's head, proud, strikingly
beautiful, and smiling in its frame of lace. She was in the fifth box,
twenty paces from him. She was sitting in front, and, slightly
turning, was saying something to Iashvin. The setting of her head on
her handsome, broad shoulders, and the restrained excitement and
brilliance of her eyes and her whole face reminded him of her just
as he had seen her at the ball in Moscow. But he felt utterly
different toward her beauty now. In his feeling for her now there
was no element of mystery, and so her beauty, though it attracted
him even more intensely than before, gave him now a sense of injury.
She was not looking in his direction, but Vronsky felt that she had
seen him already.

When Vronsky turned the opera glasses again in that direction, he
noticed that Princess Varvara was particularly red, and kept
laughing unnaturally and looking round at the next box. Anna,
folding her fan and tapping it on the red velvet, was gazing away
and did not see, and obviously did not wish to see, what was taking
place in the next box. Iashvin's face wore the expression which was
common when he was losing at cards. Scowling, he sucked the left tip
of his mustache further and further into his mouth, and cast
sidelong glances at the next box.

In that box on the left were the Kartassovs. Vronsky knew them,
and knew that Anna was acquainted with them. Madame Kartassova, a thin
little woman, was standing up in her box, and, her back turned upon
Anna, she was putting on a mantle that her husband was holding for
her. Her face was pale and angry, and she was talking excitedly.
Kartassov, a fat, bald man, was continually looking round at Anna,
while he attempted to soothe his wife. When the wife had gone out, the
husband lingered a long while, and tried to catch Anna's eye,
obviously anxious to bow to her. But Anna, with unmistakable
intention, avoided noticing him, and talked to Iashvin, whose
cropped head was bent down to her. Kartassov went out without making
his salutation, and the box was left empty.

Vronsky could not understand exactly what had passed between the
Kartassovs and Anna, but he saw that something humiliating for Anna
had happened. He knew this both from what he had seen, and most of all
from the face of Anna, who, he could see, was taxing every nerve to
carry through the part she had taken up. And in maintaining this
attitude of external composure she was completely successful. Anyone
who did not know her and her circle, who had not heard all the
utterances of the women expressive of commiseration, indignation and
amazement, that she should show herself in society, and show herself
so conspicuously with her lace and her beauty, would have admired
the serenity and loveliness of this woman without a suspicion that she
was undergoing the sensations of a man in the stocks.

Knowing that something had happened, but not knowing precisely what,
Vronsky felt a thrill of agonizing anxiety, and hoping to find out
something, he went toward his brother's box. Purposely choosing the
way round farthest from Anna's box, he jostled as he came out
against the colonel of his old regiment, talking to two acquaintances.
Vronsky heard the name of Karenin, and noticed how the colonel
hastened to address Vronsky loudly by name, with a meaning glance at
his companions.

"Ah, Vronsky! When are you coming to the regiment? We can't let
you off without a supper. You're our- one of the most thorough,"
said the colonel of his regiment.

"I can't stop, awfully sorry, another time," said Vronsky, and he
ran upstairs toward his brother's box.

The old countess, Vronsky's mother, with her steel-gray curls, was
in his brother's box. Varia with the young Princess Sorokina met him
in the corridor.

Leaving the Princess Sorokina with her mother, Varia held out her
hand to her brother-in-law, and began immediately to speak of what
interested him. She was more excited than he had ever seen her.

"I think it's mean and hateful, and Madame Kartassova had no right
to do it. Madame Karenina..." she began.

"But what is it? I don't know."

"What? You haven't heard?"

"You know I should be the last person to hear of it."

"There isn't a more spiteful creature than that Madame Kartassova!"

"But what did she do?"

"My husband told me.... She has insulted Madame Karenina. Her
husband began talking to her across the box, and Madame Kartassova
made a scene. She said something aloud, they say, something insulting,
and went away."

"Count, your maman is asking for you," said the young Princess
Sorokina, peeping out of the door of the box.

"I've been expecting you all the while," said his mother, smiling
sarcastically. "You were nowhere to be seen."

Her son saw that she could not suppress a smile of delight.

"Good evening, maman. I have come to you," he said coldly.

"Why aren't you going to faire la cour a Madame Karenina?" she
went on, when Princess Sorokina had moved away. "Elle fait
sensation. On oublie la Patti pour elle."

"Maman, I have asked you not to say anything to me of that," he
answered, scowling.

"I'm only saying what everyone's saying."

Vronsky made no reply, and saying a few words to Princess
Sorokina, he went away. At the door he met his brother.

"Ah, Alexei!" said his brother. "How disgusting! Idiot of a woman,
nothing else.... I wanted to go straight to her. Let's go together."

Vronsky did not hear him. With rapid steps he went downstairs; he
felt that he must do something, but he did not know what. Anger with
her for having put herself and him in such a false position,
together with pity for her suffering, filled his heart. He went
down, and made straight for Anna's box. At her box stood Stremov,
talking to her.

"There are no more tenors. Le moule en est brise!"

Vronsky bowed to her and stopped to greet Stremov.

"You came in late, I think, and have missed the best song," Anna
said to Vronsky, glancing ironically, he thought, at him.

"I am a poor judge of music," he said, looking sternly at her.

"Like Prince Iashvin," she said smiling, "who considers that Patti
sings too loud.- Thank you," she said, her little hand in its long
glove taking the playbill Vronsky picked up, and suddenly at that
instant her lovely face quivered. She got up and went into the
interior of the box.

Noticing in the next act that her box was empty, Vronsky, rousing
many an indignant "Hush!" in the silent audience, went out in the
middle of a solo and drove home.

Anna was already at home. When Vronsky went up to her, she was in
the same dress she had worn at the theater. She was sitting in the
first armchair against the wall, looking straight before her. She
looked at him, and at once resumed her former position.

"Anna," he said.

"You, you are to blame for everything!" she cried, with tears of
despair and hatred in her voice, getting up.

"I begged, I implored you not to go; I knew it would be
unpleasant..."

"Unpleasant?" she cried. "Hideous! As long as I live I shall never
forget it. She said it was a disgrace to sit beside me."

"A silly woman's chatter," he said, "but why risk it, why
provoke?..."

"I hate your calm. You ought not to have brought me to this. If
you had loved me..."

"Anna! How does the question of my love come in?..."

"Oh, if you loved me, as I love, if you were tortured as I am..."
she said, looking at him with an expression of terror.

He was sorry for her, and angry notwithstanding. He assured her of
his love because he saw that this was the only means of soothing
her, and he did not reproach her in words, but in his heart he
reproached her.

And the asseverations of his love, which seemed to him so trivial
that he was ashamed to utter them, she drank in eagerly, and gradually
became calmer. The next day, completely reconciled, they left for
the country.

                       PART SIX


                           I.


Darya Alexandrovna spent the summer with her children at Pokrovskoe,
at her sister Kitty Levin's. The house on her own estate was quite
in ruins, and Levin and his wife had persuaded her to spend the summer
with them. Stepan Arkadyevich greatly approved of the arrangement.
He said he was very sorry his official duties prevented him from
spending the summer in the country with his family, which would have
been the greatest happiness for him; and remaining in Moscow, he
came down to the country from time to time for a day or two. Besides
the Oblonskys, with all their children and their governess, the old
Princess, too, came to stay that summer with the Levins, as she
considered it her duty to watch over her inexperienced daughter in her
interesting condition. Moreover, Varenka, Kitty's friend abroad,
kept her promise to come to Kitty when she was married, and stayed
with her friend. All of these were friends or relations of Levin's
wife. And though he liked them all, he rather regretted his own
Levin world and ways, which was smothered by this influx of the
"Shcherbatsky element," as he called it to himself. Of his own
relations there stayed with him only Sergei Ivanovich, but he too
was a man of the Koznishev and not the Levin stamp, so that the
Levin spirit was utterly obliterated.

In the Levins' house, so long deserted, there were now so many
people that almost all the rooms were occupied, and almost every day
it happened that the old Princess, sitting down to table, counted them
all over, and put the thirteenth grandson or granddaughter at a
separate table. And Kitty, with her careful housekeeping, had no
little trouble to get all the chickens, turkeys and geese, of which so
many were needed to satisfy the summer appetites of the visitors and
children.

The whole family were sitting at dinner. Dolly's children, with
their governess and Varenka, were making plans for going to look for
mushrooms. Sergei Ivanovich, who was looked up to by all the party for
his intellect and learning, with a respect that almost amounted to
awe, surprised everyone by joining in the conversation about
mushrooms.

"Take me with you. I am very fond of picking mushrooms," he said,
looking at Varenka; "I think it's a very fine occupation."

"Oh, we shall be delighted," answered Varenka coloring. Kitty
exchanged meaning glances with Dolly. The proposal of the learned
and intellectual Sergei Ivanovich to go looking for mushrooms with
Varenka confirmed certain theories of Kitty's with which her mind
had been very busy of late. She made haste to address some remark to
her mother, so that her look should not be noticed. After dinner
Sergei Ivanovich sat with his cup of coffee at the drawing-room
window, and while he took part in a conversation he had begun with his
brother, he watched the door through which the children would start on
the mushroom-picking expedition. Levin was sitting on the window
sill near his brother.

Kitty stood beside her husband, evidently awaiting the end of a
conversation that had no interest for her, in order to tell him
something.

"You have changed in many respects since your marriage, and for
the better," said Sergei Ivanovich, smiling to Kitty, and obviously
little interested in the conversation, "but you have remained true
to your passion for defending the most paradoxical theories."

"Katia, it's not good for you to stand," her husband said to her,
drawing up a chair for her and looking significantly at her.

"Oh, and there's no time either," added Sergei Ivanovich, seeing the
children running out.

At the head of them all Tania galloped sideways, in her tightly
drawn stockings, and waving a basket and Sergei Ivanovich's hat, she
ran straight up to him.

Boldly running up to Sergei Ivanovich with smiling eyes, so like her
father's fine eyes, she handed him his hat and made as though she
would put it on for him, softening her freedom by a shy and friendly
smile.

"Varenka's waiting," she said, carefully putting his hat on,
seeing from Sergei Ivanovich's smile that she might do so.

Varenka was standing at the door, dressed in a yellow print gown,
with a white kerchief on her head.

"I'm coming, I'm coming, Varvara Andreevna," said Sergei
Ivanovich, finishing his cup of coffee, and putting into their
separate pockets his handkerchief and cigar case.

"And how sweet my Varenka is! Eh?" said Kitty to her husband, as
soon as Sergei Ivanovich rose. She spoke so that Sergei Ivanovich
could hear, and it was clear that she meant him to do so. "And how
good-looking she is- such a refined beauty! Varenka!" Kitty shouted.
"Shall you be in the mill forest? We'll come out to you."

"You certainly forget your condition, Kitty," said the old Princess,
hurriedly coming out at the door. "You mustn't shout like that."

Varenka, hearing Kitty's voice and her mother's reprimand, went with
light, rapid steps up to Kitty. The rapidity of her movement, her
flushed and eager face, everything betrayed that something out of
the common was going on in her. Kitty knew what this thing was and had
been watching her intently. She called Varenka at that moment merely
in order mentally to give her a blessing for the important event
which, as Kitty fancied, was bound to come to pass that day after
dinner in the forest.

"Varenka, I should be very happy if a certain something were to
happen," she whispered as she kissed her.

"And are you coming with us?" Varenka said to Levin in confusion,
pretending not to have heard what had been said.

"I am coming, but only as far as the threshing floor, and there I
shall stop."

"Why, what do you want there?" said Kitty.

"I must go to have a look at the new wagons, and to make my
calculations," said Levin; "and where will you be?"

"On the terrace."

                           II.


On the terrace were assembled all the ladies of the party. They
always liked sitting there after dinner, and that day they had work to
do there too. Besides the sewing of baby's chemises and knitting of
swaddles, with which all of them were busy, that afternoon jam was
being made on the terrace by a method new to Agathya Mikhailovna,
without the addition of water. Kitty had introduced this new method,
which had been in use in her home. Agathya Mikhailovna, to whom the
task of jam making had always been intrusted, considering that what
had been done in the Levin household could not be amiss, had
nevertheless put water with the strawberries, maintaining that the jam
could not be made without it. She had been caught in the act, and
was now making raspberry jam before everyone, and it was to be
proved to her conclusively that jam could be very well made without
water.

Agathya Mikhailovna, her face heated and angry, her hair untidy, and
her thin arms bare to the elbows, was swaying the preserving pan in
a circular motion over the charcoal stove, looking darkly at the
raspberries and devoutly hoping they would stick and not cook
properly. The Princess, conscious that Agathya Mikhailovna's wrath
must be chiefly directed against her, as the person responsible for
the raspberry jam making, tried to appear to be absorbed in other
things and not interested in the raspberries, talking of other
matters, but cast stealthy glances in the direction of the stove.

"I always buy my maids' dresses myself, at the bargain sale," the
Princess said, continuing the previous conversation. "Isn't it time to
skim it, my dear?" she added, addressing Agathya Mikhailovna. "There's
not the slightest need for you to do it, and it's hot for you," she
said, stopping Kitty.

"I'll do it," said Dolly, and, getting up, she carefully passed
the spoon over the frothing sugar, and from time to time shook off the
clinging jam from the spoon by knocking it on a plate that was covered
with yellow-red scum and blood-colored syrup. "How they'll lick this
at teatime!" she thought of her children, remembering how she
herself as a child had wondered how it was the grown-up people did not
eat what was best of all- the scum of the jam.

"Stiva says it's much better to give money," Dolly took up meanwhile
the weighty subject under discussion- of what presents should be
made to servants. "But..."

"Money's out of the question!" the Princess and Kitty exclaimed with
one voice. "They appreciate a present..."

"Well, last year, for instance, I bought our Matriona Semionovna,
not a poplin, but something of that sort," said the Princess.

"I remember she was wearing it on your name day."

"A charming pattern- so simple and refined- I should have liked it
myself, if she hadn't had it. Something like Varenka's. So pretty
and inexpensive."

"Well, now I think it's done," said Dolly, dropping the syrup from
the spoon.

"When it sets as it drops, it's ready. Cook it a little longer,
Agathya Mikhailovna."

"The flies!" said Agathya Mikhailovna angrily. "It'll be just the
same," she added.

"Ah! How sweet it is! Don't frighten it!" Kitty said suddenly,
looking at a sparrow that had settled on the step and was pecking at
the center of a raspberry.

"Yes, but you keep a little further from the stove," said her
mother.

"A propos de Varenka," said Kitty, speaking in French, as they had
been doing all the while, so that Agathya Mikhailovna should not
understand them, "you know, maman, I somehow expect things to be
settled today. You know what I mean. How splendid it would be!"

"But what a famous matchmaker she is!" said Dolly. "How carefully
and cleverly she throws them together!..."

"No- tell me, mamma, what do you think?"

"Why, what is one to think? He" ('he' meant Sergei Ivanovich) "might
at any time have been one of the best matches in Russia; now, of
course, he's not quite a young man, still I know ever so many girls
would be glad to marry him, even now.... She's a very nice girl, but
he might..."

"Oh, no, mamma, do understand why, for him and for her too,
nothing better could be imagined. In the first place, she's charming!"
said Kitty, crooking one of her fingers.

"He thinks her very attractive, that's certain," assented Dolly.

"Then he occupies such a position in society that he has no need
to look for either fortune or position in his wife. All he needs is
a good, sweet wife- a restful one."

"Well, with her he would certainly be restful," Dolly assented.

"Thirdly, that she should love him. And so it is... that is, it
would be so splendid!... I look forward to seeing them coming out of
the forest- and everything settled. I shall see at once by their eyes.
I should be so delighted! What do you think, Dolly?"

"But don't excite yourself. It's not at all the thing for you to
be excited," said her mother.

"Oh, I'm not excited, mamma. I fancy he will propose to her today."

"Ah, that's so strange- how and when a man proposes!... There is a
sort of barrier, and all at once it's broken down," said Dolly,
smiling pensively and recalling her past with Stepan Arkadyevich.

"Mamma, how did papa propose to you?" Kitty asked suddenly.

"There was nothing out of the way- it was very simple," answered the
Princess, but her face beamed all over at the recollection.

"Oh, but how was it? You loved him, at any rate, before you were
allowed to speak?"

Kitty felt a peculiar pleasure in being able now to talk to her
mother on equal terms about those questions of such paramount interest
in a woman's life.

"Of course I did; he had come to stay with us in the country."

"But how was it settled between you, mamma?"

"You imagine, I dare say, that you invented something quite new?
It's always just the same: it was settled by the eyes, by smiles..."

"How well you said that, mamma! It's just by the eyes, by smiles
that it's done," Dolly assented.

"But what words did he say?"

"What did Kostia say to you?"

"He wrote it in chalk. It was wonderful.... How long ago it
seems!" she said.

And the three women all fell to musing on the same thing. Kitty
was the first to break the silence. She remembered all that last
winter before her marriage, and her passion for Vronsky.

"There's one thing... that old love affair of Varenka's," she
said, a natural chain of ideas bringing her to this point. "I should
have liked to say something to Sergei Ivanovich, to prepare him.
They're all- all men, I mean,"- she added, "awfully jealous over our
past."

"Not all," said Dolly. "You judge by your own husband. It makes
him miserable even now to remember Vronsky. Eh? that's true, isn't
it?"

"Yes", Kitty answered, a pensive smile in her eyes.

"But I really don't know," the mother put in in defense of her
motherly care of her daughter, "what there was in your past that could
worry him? That Vronsky paid you attentions- that happens to every
girl."

"Oh, yes, but we didn't mean that," Kitty said, flushing a little

"No, let me speak," her mother went on, "why, you yourself would not
let me have a talk with Vronsky. Don't you remember?"

"Oh, mamma!" said Kitty, with an expression of suffering.

"There's no keeping you young people in check nowadays.... Your
friendship could not have gone beyond what was suitable. I should
myself have called upon him to explain himself. But, my darling,
it's not right for you to be agitated. Please remember that, and
calm yourself."

"I'm perfectly calm, maman."

"How happy it was for Kitty that Anna came then," said Dolly, "and
how unhappy for her. It turned out quite the opposite," she said,
struck by her own ideas. "Then Anna was so happy, and Kitty thought
herself unhappy. Now it is just the opposite. I often think of her."

"A fine person to think about! Horrid, repulsive woman- no heart,"
said her mother, who could not forget that Kitty had married not
Vronsky, but Levin.

"What do you want to talk of it for?" Kitty said with annoyance.
"I never think about it, and I don't want to think of it.... And I
don't want to think of it," she said, catching the sound of her
husband's familiar step on the steps of the terrace.

"What's that you don't want to think about?" inquired Levin,
coming onto the terrace.

But no one answered him, and he did not repeat the question.

"I'm sorry I've broken in on your feminine kingdom," he said,
looking round on everyone discontentedly, and perceiving that they had
been talking of something which they would not talk about before him.

For a second he felt that he was sharing the feeling of Agathya
Mikhailovna, vexation at their making jam without water, and, on the
whole, at the outside, Shcherbatsky authority. He smiled, however, and
went up to Kitty.

"Well, how are you?" he asked her, looking at her with the
expression with which everyone looked at her now.

"Oh, very well," said Kitty, smiling, "and how have things gone with
you?"

"The wagon held three times as much as the telega did. Well, are
we going for the children? I've ordered the horses to be put in."

"What! You want to take Kitty in the wide droshky?" her mother
said reproachfully.

"Yes- at walking pace, Princess."

Levin never called the princess "maman" as men often do call their
mothers-in-law, and the Princess disliked his not doing so. But though
he liked and respected the Princess, Levin could not call her so
without a sense of profaning his feeling for his dead mother.

"Come with us, maman," said Kitty.

"I don't like to see such imprudence."

"Well, I'll walk then, I'm so well." Kitty got up and went to her
husband and took his hand.

"You may be well, but everything in moderation," said the Princess.

"Well, Agathya Mikhailovna, is the jam done?" said Levin, smiling to
Agathya Mikhailovna, and trying to cheer her up. "Is it all right in
the new way?"

"I suppose it's all right. According to our notions it's boiled
too long."

"It'll be all the better, Agathya Mikhailovna, it won't turn sour,
even though the ice in our icehouse has begun to melt already, so that
we've no cool place to store it," said Kitty, at once divining her
husband's motive, and addressing the old housekeeper with the same
feeling; "but your pickles are so good, that mamma says she never
tasted any like them," she added, smiling, and putting her kerchief
straight.

Agathya Mikhailovna looked sulkily at Kitty.

"You needn't try to console me, mistress. I need only to look at you
with him, and I feel happy," she said, and something in the rough
familiarity of that with him touched Kitty.

"Come along with us to look for mushrooms, you will show us the best
places."

Agathya Mikhailovna smiled and shook her head, as though to say:
"I would even like to be angry with you, but I can't."

"Do it, please, according to my recipe," said the Princess; "put
some paper over the jam, and moisten it with a little rum, and, even
without ice, it will never grow moldy."

                           III.


Kitty was particularly glad of a chance of being alone with her
husband, for she had noticed the shade of mortification that had
passed over his face- always so quick to reflect every feeling- at the
moment when he had come onto the terrace and asked what they were
talking of, and had got no answer.

When they had set off on foot ahead of the others, and had gotten
out of sight of the house onto the beaten, dusty road, sprinkled
with ears of rye and with separate grains, she clung faster to his arm
and pressed it closer to her. He had quite forgotten the momentary
unpleasant impression, and alone with her he felt, now that the
thought of her approaching motherhood was never for a moment absent
from his mind, a new and delicious bliss, quite pure from all alloy of
sense, in being near to the woman he loved. There was no need of
speech, yet he longed to hear the sound of her voice, which, like
her eyes, had changed since she had become pregnant. In her voice,
as in her eyes, there was that softness and gravity which is found
in people continually concentrated on some cherished pursuit.

"So you're not tired? Lean more on me," said he.

"No, I'm so glad of a chance of being alone with you, and I must
own, though I'm happy with them, I sigh for our winter evenings
alone."

"That was good, but this is even better. Both are better," he
said, squeezing her hand.

"Do you know what we were talking about when you came in?"

"About jam?"

"Oh, yes, about jam too; but, afterward, about how men propose."

"Ah!" said Levin, listening more to the sound of her voice than to
her words, and all the while paying attention to the road, which
passed now through the forest, and avoiding places where she might
make a false step.

"And about Sergei Ivanovich and Varenka. You've noticed?... I'm very
anxious for it," she went on. "What do you think about it?" And she
peeped into his face.

"I don't know what to think," Levin answered, smiling. "Sergei seems
very strange to me in that way. I told you, you know..."

"Yes, that he was in love with that girl who died...."

"That was when I was a child; I know about it from hearsay and
tradition. I remember him then. He was wonderfully sweet. But I've
watched him since with women; he is friendly, some of them he likes,
but one feels that to him they're simply people, not women."

"Yes, but now with Varenka... I fancy there's something..."

"Perhaps there is.... But one has to know him.... He's a peculiar,
wonderful person. He lives a spiritual life only. He's too pure, too
exalted a nature."

"Why? Would this lower him, then?"

"No, but he's so used to a spiritual life that he can't reconcile
himself with actual fact, and Varenka is after all fact."

Levin had grown used by now to uttering his thought boldly,
without taking the trouble of clothing it in exact language. He knew
that his wife, in such moments of loving tenderness as now, would
understand what he meant to say from a hint, and she did understand
him.

"Yes, but there's not so much of that actual fact about her as about
me. I can see that he would never have cared for me. She is altogether
spiritual."

"Oh, no, he is so fond of you, and I am always so glad when my
people like you...."

"Yes, he's very good to me; but..."

"It's not as it was with poor Nikolenka.... You really cared for
each other," Levin finished. "Why not speak of him?" he added. "I
sometimes blame myself for not doing so; it ends in one's
forgetting. Ah, how terrible and dear he was!... Yes, what were we
talking about?" Levin said, after a pause.

"You think he can't fall in love," said Kitty, translating into
her own language.

"It's not so much that he can't fall in love," Levin said,
smiling, "but he has not the weakness necessary.... I've always envied
him, and even now, when I'm so happy, I still envy him."

"You envy him for not being able to fall in love?"

"I envy him for being better than me," said Levin. "He does not live
for himself. His whole life is subordinated to his duty. And that's
why he can be calm and contented."

"And you?" Kitty asked, with an ironical and loving smile.

She could never have explained the chain of thought that made her
smile; but the last link in it was that her husband, in exalting his
brother and abasing himself, was not quite sincere. Kitty knew that
this insincerity came from his love for his brother, from his sense of
shame at being too happy, and, above all, from his unflagging
craving to be better- she loved this trait in him, and so she smiled.

"And you? What are you dissatisfied with?" she asked, with the
same smile.

Her disbelief in his self-dissatisfaction delighted him, and
unconsciously he tried to draw her into giving utterance to the
grounds of her disbelief.

"I am happy, but dissatisfied with myself..." he said.

"Why, how can you be dissatisfied with yourself if you are happy?"

"Well, how shall I say?... In my heart I really care for nothing
whatever but that you should not stumble- see? Oh, but really you
mustn't skip about like that!" he cried, breaking off to scold her for
too agile a movement in stepping over a branch that lay in the path.
"But when I think about myself, and compare myself with others,
especially with my brother, I feel I'm a poor creature."

"But in what way?" Kitty pursued with the same smile. "Don't you,
too, work for others? What about your farmsteading, and your
agriculture, and your book?..."

"Oh, but I feel, and particularly just now- it's your fault," he
said, pressing her hand- "that all that doesn't count. I do it, in a
way, halfheartedly. If I could care for all that as I care for you!...
Instead of that, I do it in these days like a task that is set me."

"Well, what would you say about papa?" asked Kitty. "Is he a poor
creature then, as he does nothing for the public good?"

"He? No! But then, one must have the simplicity, the
straight-forwardness, the goodness of your father: and I haven't got
that. I do nothing, and I fret about it. It's all your doing. Before
you- and this too," he added with a glance toward her waist that she
understood- "I put all my energies into work; now I can't, and I'm
ashamed; I do it just as though it were a task set me; I'm
pretending...."

"Well, but would you like to change this minute with Sergei
Ivanovich?" said Kitty. "Would you like to do this work for the
general good, and to love the task set you, as he does, and nothing
else?"

"Of course not," said Levin. "But I'm so happy that I don't
understand anything. So you think he'll propose to her today?" he
added after a brief silence.

"I think so, and I don't think so. Only, I'm awfully anxious for it.
Here, wait a minute." She stooped down and picked a wild daisy at
the edge of the path. "Come, count: he will, he won't," she said,
giving him the flower.

"He will, he won't," said Levin, tearing off the white petals.

"No, no!" Kitty, snatching at his hand, stopped him. She had been
watching his fingers with agitation. "You picked off two."

"Oh, but see, this little one shan't count to make up," said
Levin, tearing off a little half-grown petal. "Here's the droshky
overtaking us."

"Aren't you tired, Kitty?" called the Princess.

"Not in the least."

"If you are you can get in, as the horses are quiet and walking."

But it was not worth-while to get in; they were quite near the
place, and all walked on together.

                           IV.


Varenka, with her white kerchief on her black hair, surrounded by
the children, gaily and good-humoredly looking after them, and at
the same time visibly excited at the possibility of receiving a
declaration from the man she cared for, was very attractive. Sergei
Ivanovich walked beside her, and never left off admiring her.
Looking at her, he recalled all the delightful things he had heard
from her lips, all the good he knew about her, and became more and
more conscious that the feeling he had for her was something special
that he had felt long, long ago, and only once, in his early youth.
The feeling of happiness in being near her continually grew, and at
last reached such a point that, as he put a huge, slender-stalked
mushroom with rolled brims, in her basket, he looked straight into her
face, and noticing the flush of glad and alarmed excitement that
overspread her face, he was confused himself, and smiled to her in
silence a smile that said too much.

"If so," he said to himself, "I ought to think it over and make up
my mind, and not give way like a boy to the impulse of a moment."

"I'm going to pick by myself apart from all the rest, or else my
efforts will make no show," he said, and he left the edge of the
forest where they were walking on low silky grass between old birch
trees standing far apart, and went more into the heart of the wood,
where between the white birch trunks there were gray trunks of aspen
and dark bushes of hazel. Walking some forty paces away, Sergei
Ivanovich, knowing he was out of sight, stood still behind a bushy
spindle tree in full flower with its rosy-red catkins. It was
perfectly still all round him. Only overhead, in the birches under
which he stood, the flies, like a swarm of bees, buzzed unceasingly,
and from time to time the children's voices floated across to him. All
at once he heard, not far from the edge of the wood, the sound of
Varenka's contralto voice, calling Grisha, and a smile of delight
passed over Sergei Ivanovich's face. Conscious of this smile, he shook
his head disapprovingly at his own state and, taking out a cigar, he
began lighting it. For a long while he could not get a match to
light against the trunk of a birch tree. The soft pellicle of the
white bark stuck around the phosphorus, and the light went out. At
last one of the matches burned, and the fragrant cigar smoke, hovering
uncertainly in flat, wide coils, stretched away forward and upward
over a bush under the overhanging branches of a birch tree. Watching
the streak of smoke, Sergei Ivanovich walked gently on, deliberating
on his position.

"Why not?" he thought. "If it were only a flash in the pan, or a
passion, if it were only this attraction- this mutual attraction (I
can call it a mutual attraction), yet if I felt that it was in
contradiction with the whole bent of my life; if I felt that in giving
way to this attraction I should be false to my vocation and my duty...
But it's not so. The only thing I can say against it is that, when I
lost Marie, I said to myself that I would remain faithful to her
memory. That's the only thing I can say against my feeling....
That's a great thing," Sergei Ivanovich said to himself, feeling at
the same time that this consideration had not the slightest importance
for him personally, but would only perhaps detract from his romantic
character in the eyes of others. "But apart from that, however much
I searched, I should never find anything to say against my feeling. If
I were choosing by considerations of intellect alone, I could not have
found anything better."

However many women and girls he thought of whom he knew, he could
not think of a girl who united to such a degree all- positively all-
the qualities he would wish to see in his wife. She had all the
charm and freshness of youth, but she was not a child; and if she
loved him, she loved him consciously, as a woman ought to love; that
was one thing. Another point: she was not only far from being worldly,
but had an unmistakable distaste for worldly society, and at the
same time she knew the world, and had all the ways of a woman of the
best society, which were absolutely essential to Sergei Ivanovich's
conception of the woman who was to share his life. Thirdly: she was
religious, and not like a child, unconsciously religious and good,
as Kitty, for example, was, but her life was founded on religious
principles. Even in trifling matters, Sergei Ivanovich found in her
all that he wanted in his wife: she was poor and alone in the world,
so she would not bring with her a mass of relations and their
influence into her husband's house, as he saw now in Kitty's case. She
would owe everything to her husband, which was what he had always
desired, too, for his future family life. And this girl, who united
all these qualities, loved him. He was a modest man, but he could
not help seeing it. And he loved her. There was one consideration
against it- his age. But he came of a long-lived family, he had not
a single gray hair, no one would have taken him for forty, and he
remembered Varenka's saying that it was only in Russia that men of
fifty thought themselves old, and that in France a man of fifty
considers himself dans la force de l'age, while a man of forty is un
jeune homme. But what did the mere reckoning of years matter when he
felt as young in heart as he had been twenty years ago? Was it not
youth to feel as he felt now, when coming from the other side to the
edge of the wood he saw in the glowing light of the slanting
sunbeams the graceful figure of Varenka in her yellow gown with her
basket, walking lightly by the trunk of an old birch tree, and when
this impression of the sight of Varenka blended so harmoniously with
the beauty of the view, of the yellow oat field lying bathed in the
slanting sunshine, and, beyond it, the distant ancient forest, flecked
with yellow and melting into the blue of the distance? His heart
throbbed joyously. A softened feeling came over him. He felt that he
had made up his mind. Varenka, who had just crouched down to pick a
mushroom, rose with a supple movement and looked round. Flinging
away the cigar, Sergei Ivanovich advanced with resolute steps toward
her.

                           V.


"Varvara Andreevna, when I was very young, I set before myself the
ideal of the woman I loved and should be happy to call my wife. I have
lived through a long life, and now for the first time I have met
what I sought- in you. I love you, and offer you my hand."

Sergei Ivanovich was saying this to himself while he was ten paces
from Varenka. Kneeling down, with her hands over the mushrooms to
guard them from Grisha, she was calling little Masha.

"Come here, little ones! There are so many!" she was saying in her
sweet, deep voice.

Seeing Sergei Ivanovich approaching, she did not get up and did
not change her position, but everything told him that she felt his
presence and was glad of it.

"Well, did you find some?" she asked from under the white
kerchief, turning her handsome, gently smiling face to him.

"Not one," said Sergei Ivanovich. "Did you?"

She did not answer, busy with the children who thronged about her.

"That one too, near the twig," she pointed out to little Masha a
little fungus, split in half across its rosy cap by the dry grass from
under which it thrust itself. Varenka got up while Masha picked the
fungus, breaking it into two white halves. "This brings back my
childhood," she added, moving apart from the children, to Sergei
Ivanovich's side.

They walked on for a few steps in silence. Varenka saw that he
wanted to speak; she guessed of what, and felt faint with joy and
panic. They had walked so far away that no one could hear them now,
but still he did not begin. It would have been better for Varenka to
be silent. After a silence it would have been easier for them to say
what they wanted to say, than after talking about mushrooms. But
against her own will, as it were accidentally, Varenka said:

"So you found nothing? In the middle of the wood there are always
fewer, though."

Sergei Ivanovich sighed and made no answer. He was annoyed that
she had spoken about the mushrooms. He wanted to bring her back to the
first words she had uttered about her childhood; but after a pause
of some length, as though against his own will, he made an observation
in response to her last words.

"I have heard that the white edible fungi are found principally at
the edge of the wood, though I can't tell them apart."

Some minutes more passed; they moved still farther away from the
children, and were quite alone. Varenka's heart throbbed so that she
heard it beating, and felt that she was turning red, and pale, and red
again.

To be the wife of a man like Koznishev, after her position with
Madame Stahl, was to her imagination the height of happiness. Besides,
she was almost certain that she was in love with him. And this
moment it would have to be decided. She felt frightened. She dreaded
both his speaking and his not speaking.

Now or never it must be said- Sergei Ivanovich felt that too.
Everything in the expression, the flushed cheeks and the downcast eyes
of Varenka betrayed a painful suspense. Sergei Ivanovich saw it, and
felt sorry for her. He felt even that to say nothing now would be a
slight to her. Rapidly in his own mind he ran over all the arguments
in support of his decision. He even said over to himself the words
in which he meant to put his proposal, but instead of those words,
some utterly unexpected reflection that occurred to him made him ask:

"What is the difference between the 'birch' mushroom and the 'white'
mushroom?"

Varenka's lips quivered with emotion as she answered:

"In the top part there is scarcely any difference- it's in the
stalk."

And as soon as these words were uttered, both he and she felt that
it was over, that what was to have been said would not be said; and
their emotion, which up to then had been continually growing more
intense, began to subside.

"The birch mushroom's stalk suggests a dark man's chin after two
days without shaving," said Sergei Ivanovich, speaking quite calmly
now.

"Yes, that's true," answered Varenka smiling, and unconsciously
the direction of their walk changed. They began to turn toward the
children. Varenka felt both hurt and ashamed; at the same time she
felt a sense of relief.

When he had got home again, and went over the whole set of
arguments, Sergei Ivanovich thought his previous decision had been a
mistaken one. He could not be false to the memory of Marie.

"Gently, children, gently!" Levin shouted quite angrily to the
children, standing before his wife to protect her when the crowd of
children flew with shrieks of delight to meet them.

Behind the children Sergei Ivanovich and Varenka walked out of the
forest. Kitty had no need to ask Varenka; she saw from the calm and
somewhat crestfallen faces of both that her plans had not come off.

"Well?" her husband questioned her as they were going home again.

"No bites," said Kitty, her smile and manner of speaking recalling
her father, a likeness Levin often noticed with pleasure.

"No bites, how?"

"I'll show you," she said, taking her husband's hand, lifting it
to her mouth, and just faintly brushing it with closed lips. "Like a
kiss on a priest's hand."

"Which one didn't bite?" he said, laughing.

"Both. But it should have been like this..."

"There are some peasants coming..."

"Oh, they didn't see."

                           VI.


During the time of the children's tea the grownups sat on the
balcony and talked as though nothing had happened though they all,
especially Sergei Ivanovich and Varenka, were very well aware that
there had happened an event which, though negative, was of very
great importance. They both had the same feeling, rather like that
of a schoolboy after an unlucky examination, which has left him in the
same class or shut him out of school forever. Everyone present, also
feeling that something had happened, talked eagerly about extraneous
subjects. Levin and Kitty were particularly happy and conscious of
their love that evening. And their happiness in their love seemed to
imply a disagreeable reference to those who would have liked to feel
the same and could not- and they felt a prick of conscience.

"Mark my words, Alexandre will not come," said the old Princess.

That evening they were expecting Stepan Arkadyevich to come down
by train, and the old Prince had written that possibly he might come
too.

"And I know why," the Princess went on; "he says that newly
married couples ought to be left alone for a while at first."

"But papa has left us alone. We've never seen him," said Kitty.
"Besides, we're not newly married!- we're old married people by now.

"Only if he doesn't come, I shall say good-by to you, children,"
said the Princess, sighing mournfully.

"What nonsense, mamma!" both the daughters fell upon her at once.
"How do you suppose he is feeling? Why, now..."

And suddenly there was an unexpected quiver in the Princess's voice.
Her daughters were silent, and looked at one another. "Maman always
finds something to be miserable about," they said in that glance. They
did not know that happy as the Princess was in her daughter's house,
and useful as she felt herself to be there, she had been extremely
miserable, both on her own account and her husband's, ever since
they had married off their last and favorite daughter, and their
family nest had been left empty.

"What is it, Agathya Mikhailovna?" Kitty asked suddenly of Agathya
Mikhailovna, who was standing with a mysterious air, and a face full
of meaning.

"About supper."

"Well, that's right," said Dolly; "you go and arrange about it,
and I'll go and hear Grisha repeat his lesson, or else he will have
done nothing all day."

"That's my duty! No, Dolly, I'm going," said Levin, jumping up.

Grisha, who was by now at a high school, had to go over the
lessons of the term in the summer holidays. Darya Alexandrovna, who
had been studying Latin with her son in Moscow before, had made it a
rule on coming to the Levins' to go over with him, at least once a
day, the most difficult lessons of Latin and arithmetic. Levin had
offered to take her place, but the mother, having once overheard
Levin's lesson, and noticing that it was not given exactly as the
teacher in Moscow had given it, said resolutely, though with much
embarrassment and anxiety not to mortify Levin, that they must keep
strictly to the book as the teacher had done, and that she had
better undertake it again herself. Levin was amazed both at Stepan
Arkadyevich, who, by neglecting his duty, threw upon the mother the
supervision of studies of which she had no comprehension, and at the
teachers for teaching the children so badly. But he promised his
sister-in-law to give the lessons exactly as she wished. And he went
on teaching Grisha, not in his own way, but by the book, and so took
little interest in it, and often forgot the hour of the lesson. So
it had been today.

"No, I'm going, Dolly, you sit still," he said. "We'll do it all
properly, according to the book. Only when Stiva comes, and we go
out shooting, then we shall have to miss it."

And Levin went to Grisha.

Varenka was saying the same thing to Kitty. Even in the happy,
well-ordered household of the Levins, Varenka had succeeded in
making herself useful.

"I'll see to the supper, you sit still," she said, and got up to
go to Agathya Mikhailovna.

"Yes, yes, most likely they've not been able to get chickens. If so,
our..."

"Agathya Mikhailovna and I will see about it," and Varenka
vanished with her.

"What a fine girl!" said the Princess.

"Not merely fine, maman; she's an exquisite girl; there's no one
else like her."

"So you are expecting Stepan Arkadyevich today?" said Sergei
Ivanovich, evidently not disposed to pursue the conversation about
Varenka. "It would be difficult to find two sons-in-law more unlike
than yours," he said with a subtle smile. "One mobility itself, only
living in society, like a fish in water; the other our Kostia, lively,
alert, quick in everything, but, as soon as he is in society, he
either sinks into apathy, or struggles helplessly like a fish on
land."

"Yes, he's very heedless," said the Princess, addressing Sergei
Ivanovich. "I've intended, indeed, to ask you to tell him that it's
out of the question for her" (she indicated Kitty) "to stay here; that
she positively must come to Moscow. He talks of getting a doctor
down..."

"Maman, he'll do everything; he has agreed to everything," Kitty
said, angry with her mother for appealing to Sergei Ivanovich to judge
in such a matter.

In the middle of their conversation they heard the snorting of
horses and the sound of wheels on the gravel.

Dolly had not time to get up to go and meet her husband, when from
the window of the room below, where Grisha was having his lesson,
Levin leaped out and helped Grisha out after him.

"It's Stiva!" Levin shouted from under the balcony. "We've finished,
Dolly, don't be afraid!" he added, and started running like a boy to
meet the carriage.

"Is, ea, id, ejus, ejus, ejus!" shouted Grisha, skipping along the
avenue.

"And someone else too! Papa, of course!" cried Levin, stopping at
the entrance of the avenue. "Kitty, don't come down the steep
staircase- go around."

But Levin had been mistaken in taking the person sitting in the
carriage for the old Prince. As he got nearer to the carriage he saw
beside Stepan Arkadyevich not the Prince, but a handsome, stout
young man in a Scotch cap, with long ends of ribbon behind. This was
Vassenka Veslovsky, a distant cousin of the Shcherbatskys, a brilliant
young gentleman in Peterburg and Moscow society- a capital fellow, and
a keen sportsman," as Stepan Arkadyevich said, introducing him.

Not a whit abashed by the disappointment caused by his having come
in place of the old Prince, Veslovsky greeted Levin gaily, claiming
acquaintance with him in the past, and snatching up Grisha into the
carriage, lifted him over the pointer that Stepan Arkadyevich had
brought with him.

Levin did not get into the carriage, but walked behind. He was
rather vexed at the nonarrival of the old Prince, whom he liked more
and more the more he saw him, and also the arrival of this Vassenka
Veslovsky, a quite alien and superfluous person. He seemed to him
still more alien and superfluous when, on approaching the steps
where the whole party, children and grownups, were gathered together
in much animation, Levin saw Vassenka Veslovsky, with a particularly
warm and gallant air, kissing Kitty's hand.

"Your wife and I are cousins and very old friends," said Vassenka
Veslovsky, once more shaking Levin's hand with great warmth.

"Well, are there plenty of birds?" Stepan Arkadyevich said to Levin,
hardly leaving time for everyone to exchange greetings. "We've come
with the most savage intentions. Why, maman, they've not been in
Moscow since! Look, Tania, here's something for you! Get it, please,
it's in the carriage, behind!" he talked in all directions. "How
pretty you've grown, Dollenka," he said to his wife, once more kissing
her hand, holding it in one of his, and patting it with the other.

Levin, who a minute before had been in the happiest frame of mind,
now looked darkly at everyone, and everything displeased him.

"Who was it he kissed yesterday with these lips?" he thought,
looking at Stepan Arkadyevich's tender demonstrations to his wife.
He looked at Dolly, and he did not like her either.

"She doesn't believe in his love. So what is she pleased about?
Revolting!" thought Levin.

He looked at the Princess, who had been so dear to him a minute
before, and he did not like the manner in which she welcomed this
Vassenka, with his ribbons, just as though she were in her own house.

Even Sergei Ivanovich, who had come out too on the steps, seemed
to him unpleasant with the show of cordiality with which he met Stepan
Arkadyevich, though Levin knew that his brother neither liked nor
respected Oblonsky.

And Varenka- even she seemed hateful, with her air sainte nitouche
making the acquaintance of this gentleman, while all the while she was
thinking of nothing but getting married.

And more hateful than anyone was Kitty, for falling in with the tone
of gaiety with which this gentleman regarded his visit in the country,
as though it were a holiday for himself and everyone else. And, more
unpleasant than everything else, was that peculiar smile with which
she responded to his smile.

Noisily talking, they all went into the house; but as soon as they
were all seated, Levin turned and went out.

Kitty saw something was wrong with her husband. She tried to seize a
moment to speak to him alone, but he made haste to get away from
her, saying he was wanted at the countinghouse. It was long since
his own work on the estate had seemed to him so important as at that
moment. "It's all holiday for them," he thought; "but these are no
holiday matters, they won't wait, and there's no living without them."

                           VII.


Levin came back to the house only when they sent to summon to
supper. On the stairs were standing Kitty and Agathya Mikhailovna,
consulting about wines for supper.

"But why are you making all this fuss? Have what we usually do."

"No, Stiva doesn't drink... Kostia, stop, what's the matter?"
Kitty began, hurrying after him, but he strode ruthlessly away to
the dining room without waiting for her, and at once joined in the
lively general conversation which was being maintained there by
Vassenka Veslovsky and Stepan Arkadyevich.

"Well, what do you say, are we going shooting tomorrow?" said Stepan
Arkadyevich.

"Please, do let's go," said Veslovsky, moving to another chair,
where he sat down sideways, with one fat leg crossed under him.

"I shall be delighted, we will go. And have you had any shooting yet
this year?" said Levin to Veslovsky, looking intently at his leg,
but speaking with that forced amiability that Kitty knew so well in
him, and that was so out of keeping with him. "I can't answer for
our finding double snipe, but there are plenty of jacksnipe. Only we
ought to start early. You're not tired? Aren't you tired, Stiva?"

"Me tired? I've never been tired yet. Suppose we stay up all
night. Let's go for a walk!"

"Yes, really, let's not go to bed at all! Capital!" Veslovsky chimed
in.

"Oh, we all know you can do without sleep, and keep other people
up too," Dolly said to her husband, with that faint note of irony in
her voice which she almost always had now with her husband. "But to my
thinking, it's time for bed now... I'm going, I don't want supper."

"No, do stay a little, Dollenka," said Stepan Arkadyevich, going
round to her side behind the table where they were having supper.
"I've so much still to tell you."

"Nothing really, I suppose."

"Do you know Veslovsky has been at Anna's, and he's going to them
again? You know they're hardly seventy verstas from you, and I too
must certainly go over there. Veslovsky, come here!"

Vassenka crossed over to the ladies, and sat down beside Kitty.

"Ah, do tell me, please; you have visited her? How was she?" Darya
Alexandrovna appealed to him.

Levin was left at the other end of the table, and though never
pausing in his conversation with the Princess and Varenka, he saw that
there was an eager and mysterious conversation going on between Stepan
Arkadyevich, Dolly, Kitty, and Veslovsky. And that was not all. He saw
on his wife's face an expression of real feeling as she gazed with
fixed eyes on the handsome face of Vassenka, who was telling them
something with great animation.

"It's exceedingly nice at their place," Veslovsky was telling them
about Vronsky and Anna. "I can't, of course, take it upon myself to
judge, but in their house you feel the real feeling of home."

"What do they intend doing?"

"I believe they think of going to Moscow for the winter."

"How jolly it would be for us all to go over to them together!
When are you going there?" Stepan Arkadyevich asked Vassenka.

"I'm spending July there."

"Will you go?" Stepan Arkadyevich said to his wife.

"I've been wanting to a long while; I shall certainly go," said
Dolly. "I am sorry for her, and I know her. She's a splendid woman.
I will go alone, when you go back, and then I shall be in no one's
way. And it will be better indeed without you."

"To be sure," said Stepan Arkadyevich. "And you, Kitty?"

"I? Why should I go?" Kitty said, flushing all over, and she glanced
round at her husband.

"Do you know Anna Arkadyevna, then?" Veslovsky asked her. "She's a
very fascinating woman?"

"Yes," she answered Veslovsky, crimsoning still more. She got up and
walked across to her husband.

"Are you going shooting, then, tomorrow?" she said.

His jealousy had in these few moments, especially at the flush
that had overspread her cheeks while she was talking to Veslovsky,
gone far indeed. Now as he heard her words, he construed them in his
own fashion. Strange as it was to him afterward to recall it, it
seemed to him at the moment clear that in asking whether he was
going shooting, all she cared to know was whether he would give that
pleasure to Vassenka Veslovsky, with whom, as he fancied, she was in
love.

"Yes, I'm going," he answered her in an unnatural voice,
disagreeable to himself.

"No, better spend the day here tomorrow, or Dolly won't see anything
of her husband, and set off the day after," said Kitty.

The motive of Kitty's words was interpreted by Levin thus: "Don't
separate me from him. I don't care about your going, but do let me
enjoy the society of this delightful young man."

"Oh, if you wish, we'll stay here tomorrow," Levin answered, with
peculiar amiability.

Vassenka meanwhile, utterly unsuspecting the misery his presence had
occasioned, got up from the table after Kitty, and watching her with
smiling and admiring eyes, he followed her.

Levin saw that look. He turned white, and for a minute he could
hardly breathe. "How dare he look at my wife like that!" was the
feeling that boiled within him.

"Tomorrow, then? Do, please, let us go," said Vassenka, sitting down
on a chair, and again crossing his leg as his habit was.

Levin's jealousy went further still. Already he saw himself a
deceived husband, looked upon by his wife and her lover as simply
necessary to provide them with the conveniences and pleasures of
life.... But in spite of that he made polite and hospitable
inquiries of Vassenka about his shooting, his gun, and his boots,
and agreed to go shooting next day.

Happily for Levin, the old Princess cut short his agonies by getting
up herself and advising Kitty to go to bed. But even at this point
Levin could not escape another agony. As he said good night to his
hostess, Vassenka would again have kissed her hand, but Kitty,
reddening, drew back her hand and said with a naive bluntness, for
which the old Princess scolded her afterward:

"We don't like that fashion."

In Levin's eyes she was to blame for having allowed such relations
to arise, and still more to blame for showing so awkwardly that she
did not like them.

"Why, how can one want to go to bed!" said Stepan Arkadyevich,
who, after drinking several glasses of wine at supper, was now in
his most charming and lyrical humor. "Look, Kitty," he said,
pointing to the moon, which had just risen behind the linden trees,
"how exquisite! Veslovsky, this is the time for a serenade. You
know, he has a splendid voice; we practised songs together along the
road. He has brought some lovely songs with him- two new ones. Varvara
Andreevna and he must sing some duets."


When the party had broken up, Stepan Arkadyevich walked a long while
about the avenue with Veslovsky; their voices could be heard singing
one of the new songs.

Levin, hearing these voices, sat scowling in an easy chair in his
wife's bedroom, and maintained an obstinate silence when she asked him
what was wrong. But when at last with a timid glance she hazarded
the question: "Was there perhaps something you disliked about
Veslovsky?"- it all burst out, and he told her all. He was hurt
himself by what he was saying, and that exasperated him all the more.

He stood facing her with his eyes glittering menacingly under his
scowling brows, and he squeezed his strong arms across his chest, as
though he were straining every nerve to hold himself in. The
expression of his face would have been grim, and even cruel, if it had
not at the same time had a look of suffering which touched her. His
jaws were twitching, and his voice kept breaking.

"You must understand that I'm not jealous, that's a nasty word. I
can't be jealous, and believe that... I can't say what I feel, but
this is awful... I'm not jealous, but I'm wounded, humiliated that
anybody dare think, that anybody dare look at you with eyes like
that...."

"Eyes like what?" said Kitty, trying as conscientiously as
possible to recall every word and gesture of that evening and every
shade implied in them.

At the very bottom of her heart she did think there had been
something, precisely at the moment when he had crossed over after
her to the other end of the table; but she dared not own it even to
herself, and would have been even more unable to bring herself to
say so to him, and so increase his suffering.

"And what can there possibly be attractive about me as I am now?..."

"Ah!" he cried, clutching at his head, "You shouldn't say that!...
If you had been attractive, then..."

"Oh, no, Kostia, oh, wait a minute, oh, do listen!" she said,
looking at him with an expression of pained commiseration. "Why,
what can you be thinking about! When for me there's no one in the
world, no one, no one!... Would you like me never to see anyone?

For the first minute she had been offended at his jealousy; she
was angry that the slightest amusement, even the most innocent, should
be forbidden her; but now she would readily have sacrificed, not
merely such trifles, but everything, for his peace of mind, to save
him from the agony he was suffering.

"You must understand the horror and comedy of my position," he
went on in a desperate whisper; "that he's in my house, that he's done
nothing positively improper- one can take exception only to his free
and easy airs and the way he tucks his legs in under him. He thinks
it's the best possible form, and so I'm obliged to be civil to him."

"But, Kostia, you're exaggerating," said Kitty, at the bottom of her
heart rejoicing at the depth of his love for her, shown now in his
jealousy.

"The most awful part of it all is that you're just as you always
are, and especially now when to me you're something sacred, and
we're so happy, so particularly happy- and all of a sudden a little
wretch... He's not a little wretch; why should I abuse him? I have
nothing to do with him. But why should my, and your, happiness..."

"Do you know, I understand now what it all came from," Kitty was
beginning.

"Well, what? What?"

"I saw how you looked while we were talking at supper."

"Well, well!" Levin said in dismay.

She told him what they had been talking about. And as she told
him, she was breathless with emotion. Levin was silent for a space,
then he scanned her pale and distressed face, and suddenly he clutched
at his head.

"Katia, I've been worrying you! Darling, forgive me! It's madness!
Katia, I'm a criminal. And how could you be so distressed at such
idiocy?"

"Oh, I was sorry for you."

"For me? For me? How mad I am!... But why make you miserable? It's
awful to think that any outsider can shatter our happiness."

"It's humiliating too, of course."

"Oh, then I'll keep him here all the summer, and will overwhelm
him with civility," said Levin, kissing her hands. "You shall see.
Tomorrow... oh, yes, we are going tomorrow."

                           VIII.


Next day, before the ladies were up, the carriages for the
shooting party, the droshky and a trap, were at the door, and Laska,
aware since early morning that they were going shooting, after much
whining and darting to and fro, had sat herself down in the droshky
beside the coachman, and, disapproving of the delay, was excitedly
watching the door from which the sportsmen still did not issue. The
first to come out was Vassenka Veslovsky, in new high boots that
reached halfway up his thick thighs, in a green blouse, with a new
cartridge belt, redolent of leather, and in his Scotch cap with
ribbons, with a brand-new English gun without a sling. Laska flew up
to him, welcomed him, and, jumping up, asked him in her own way
whether the others were coming soon; but getting no answer from him,
she returned to her post of observation and sank into repose again,
her head on one side, and one ear pricked up to listen. At last the
door opened with a creak, and Stepan Arkadyevich's spot-and-tan
pointer Krak flew out, running round and round and turning over in the
air. Stepan Arkadyevich himself followed with a gun in his hand and
a cigar in his mouth. "Soho, soho, Krak!" he cried encouragingly to
the dog, who put his paws up on his chest, catching at his gamebag.
Stepan Arkadyevich was dressed in brogues and puttees, in torn
trousers and a short coat. On his head there was a wreck of a hat of
indefinite form, but his gun of a new patent was a perfect gem, and
his gamebag and cartridge belt, though worn, were of the very best
quality.

Vassenka Veslovsky had had no notion before that it was truly chic
for a sportsman to be in tatters, but to have his shooting outfit of
the best quality. He saw it now as he looked at Stepan Arkadyevich,
radiant in his rags, graceful, well-fed, and joyous, a typical Russian
nobleman. And he made up his mind that next time he went shooting he
would certainly adopt the same getup.

"Well, and what about our host?" he asked.

"A young wife," said Stepan Arkadyevich, smiling.

"Yes, and such a charming one!"

"He came down dressed. No doubt he's run up to her again."

Stepan Arkadyevich guessed right. Levin had run up again to his wife
to ask her once more if she forgave him for his idiocy yesterday, and,
moreover, to beg her in Christ's name to be more careful. The great
thing was for her to keep away from the children- they might any
minute jostle against her. Then he had once more to hear her declare
that she was not angry with him for going away for two days, and to
beg her to be sure to send a note next morning by a servant on
horseback, to write him, if it were but two words only, to let him
know that all was well with her.

Kitty was distressed, as she always was, at parting for a couple
of days from her husband, but when she saw his eager figure, looking
big and strong in his shooting boots and his white blouse, and a
sort of sportsman elation and excitement incomprehensible to her,
she forgot her own chagrin for the sake of his pleasure, and said
good-by to him cheerfully.

"Pardon, gentlemen!" he said, running out on the steps. "Have you
put the lunch in? Why is the chestnut on the right? Well, it doesn't
matter. Laska, down; go and lie down!"

"Put them with the herd of heifers," he said to the herdsman who was
waiting for him at the steps to ask him what was to be done with the
geld oxen. "Excuse me, here comes another villain."

Levin jumped out of the droshky, in which he had already taken his
seat, to meet the carpenter, who came toward the steps with a rule
in his hand.

"You didn't come to the countinghouse yesterday, and now you're
detaining me. Well, what is it?"

"Would your honor let me make another turning? There's only three
steps to add. And we make it just fit at the same time. It will be
much more convenient."

"You should have listened to me," Levin answered with annoyance.
"I said: Put the lines and then fit in the steps. Now there's no
setting it right. Do as I told you, and make a new staircase."

The point was that in the wing that was being built the carpenter
had spoiled the staircase, fitting it together without calculating the
space it was to fill, so that the steps were all sloping when it was
put in place. Now the carpenter wanted to keep the same staircase,
by adding three steps.

"It will be much better."

"But where's your staircase coming out with its three steps?"

"Why, upon my word, sir," the carpenter said with a contemptuous
smile. "It comes out right at the very spot. It starts here," he said,
with a persuasive gesture, "then it'll go up, and go up and come out."

"But three steps will add to the length too... where is it to come
out?"

"Why, to be sure, it'll go up, and come out," the carpenter said
obstinately and convincingly.

"It'll reach the ceiling and the wall."

"Upon my word! Why, it'll go up, and go up, and come out like this."

Levin took out a ramrod and began sketching him the staircase in the
dust.

"There, do you see?"

"As your honor likes," said the carpenter, with a sudden gleam in
his eyes, obviously understanding the thing at last. "It seems it'll
be best to make a new one."

"Well, then, do it as you're told," Levin shouted, seating himself
in the droshky. "Down! Hold the dogs, Philip!"

Levin felt now at leaving behind all his family and household
cares such an eager sense of joy in life and expectation that he was
not disposed to talk. Besides that, he had that feeling of
concentrated excitement that every sportsman experiences as he
approaches the scene of action. If he had anything on his mind at that
moment, it was only the doubt whether they would start anything in the
Kolpensky marsh, whether Laska would show to advantage in comparison
with Krak, and whether he would shoot well that day himself. Not to
disgrace himself before a new spectator- not to be outdone by
Oblonsky- that too was a thought that crossed his brain.

Oblonsky was feeling the same, and he too was not talkative.
Vassenka Veslovsky alone kept up a ceaseless flow of cheerful chatter.
As he listened to him now, Levin felt ashamed to think how unfair he
had been to him the day before. Vassenka was really a fine fellow,
simple, goodhearted, and very good-humored. If Levin had met him
before he was married, he would have made friends with him. Levin
rather disliked his holiday attitude to life and a sort of free and
easy assumption of elegance. It was as though he assumed a high degree
of importance in himself that could not be disputed, because he had
long nails and a stylish cap, and everything else to correspond; but
this could be forgiven for the sake of his good nature and good
breeding. Levin liked him for his good education, for speaking
French and English with such an excellent accent, and for being a
man of his world.

Vassenka was extremely delighted with the left outrigger, a horse of
the Don steppes. He kept praising him enthusiastically. "How fine it
must be galloping over the steppes on a steppe horse! Eh? Isn't it?"
he said. He had imagined riding on a steppe horse as something wild
and romantic, and it turned out nothing of the sort. But his
simplicity, particularly in conjunction with his good looks, his
amiable smile, and the grace of his movements, was very attractive.
Either because his nature was sympathetic to Levin, or because Levin
was trying to atone for his sins of the previous evening by seeing
nothing but what was good in him- at any rate, he liked his society.

After they had driven three verstas from home, Veslovsky all at once
felt for a cigar and his pocketbook, and did not know whether he had
lost them or left them on the table. In the pocketbook there were
three hundred and seventy roubles, and so the matter could not be left
in uncertainty.

"Do you know what, Levin, I'll gallop home on that outrigger. That
will be splendid. Eh?" he said, preparing to get out.

"No, why should you?" answered Levin, calculating that Vassenka
could hardly weigh less than six poods. "I'll send the coachman."

The coachman rode back on the outrigger, and Levin himself drove the
remaining pair.

                           IX.


"Well, now, what's our plan of campaign? Tell us all about it," said
Stepan Arkadyevich.

"Our plan is this. Now we're driving to Gvozdiov. In Gvozdiov
there's a double snipe marsh on this side, and beyond Gvozdiov come
some magnificent jacksnipe marshes, where there are double snipe
too. It's hot now, and we'll get there- it's twenty verstas- toward
evening, and have some evening shooting; we'll spend the night there
and go on tomorrow to the bigger moors."

"And is there nothing on the way?"

"Yes; but we'll save ourselves; besides, it's hot. There are two
good little places, but I doubt there being anything to shoot."

Levin would himself have liked to go into these little places, but
they were near home; he could shoot them over any time, and they
were only little places- there would hardly be room for three to
shoot. And so, with some insincerity, he said that he doubted there
being anything to shoot. When they reached a little marsh Levin
would have driven by, but Stepan Arkadyevich, with the experienced eye
of a sportsman, at once detected a soggy spot visible from the road.

"Shan't we try that?" he said, pointing to the little marsh.

"Levin, do, please! How delightful!" Vassenka Veslovsky began
begging, and Levin could not but consent.

Before they had time to stop, the dogs had flown one before the
other into the marsh.

"Krak! Laska!..."

The dogs came back.

"There won't be room for three. I'll stay here," said Levin,
hoping they would find nothing but pewits, which had been startled
by the dogs, and, turning over in their flight, were plaintively
wailing over the marsh.

"No! Come along, Levin, let's go together!" Veslovsky called.

"Really, there's no room. Laska, back, Laska! You won't want another
dog, will you?"

Levin remained with the droshky, and looked enviously at the
sportsmen. They walked across the marsh. Except one moor hen and
pewits, of which Vassenka killed one, there was nothing in the marsh.

"Come, you see now that it was not that I grudged the marsh," said
Levin, "only it's wasting time."

"Oh, no, it was jolly all the same. Did you see us?" said Vassenka
Veslovsky, clambering awkwardly into the droshky with his gun and
his pewit in his hands. "How splendidly I shot this bird! Didn't I?
Well, shall we soon be getting to the real place?"

The horses started off suddenly, Levin knocked his head against
the stock of someone's gun, and there was the report of a shot. The
gun did actually go off first, but that was how it seemed to Levin. It
appeared that Vassenka Veslovsky making the cocks safe had pressed one
trigger, and had held back the other cock. The charge flew into the
ground without doing harm to anyone. Stepan Arkadyevich shook his head
and laughed reprovingly at Veslovsky. But Levin had not the heart to
reprove him. In the first place, any reproach would have seemed to
be called forth by the danger he had incurred and the bump that had
come up on Levin's forehead. And besides, Veslovsky was at first so
naively distressed, and then laughed so good-humoredly and
infectiously at their general dismay, that one could not but laugh
with him.

When they reached the second marsh, which was fairly large, and
would inevitably take some time to shoot over, Levin tried to persuade
them to pass it by. But Veslovsky again talked him over. Again, as the
marsh was narrow, Levin, like a good host, remained with the
carriages.

Krak made straight for hummocks; Vassenka Veslovsky was the first to
run after the dog. Before Stepan Arkadyevich had time to come up, a
double snipe flew out. Veslovsky missed it and it flew into an
unmown meadow. This double snipe was left for Veslovsky to follow
up. Krak found it again and pointed, and Veslovsky shot it and went
back to the carriages.

"Now you go and I'll stay with the horses," he said.

Levin had begun to feel the pangs of a sportsman's envy. He handed
the reins to Veslovsky and walked into the marsh.

Laska, who had been plaintively whining and fretting against the
injustice of her treatment, flew straight ahead to an unfailing place,
covered with mossy hummocks, that Levin knew well, and that Krak had
not yet come upon.

"Why don't you stop her?" shouted Stepan Arkadyevich.

"She won't scare them," answered Levin, sympathizing with his
bitch's pleasure and hurrying after her.

As she came nearer and nearer to the familiar hummocks there was
more and more earnestness in Laska's exploration. A little marsh
bird did not divert her attention for more than an instant. She made
one circuit round the hummocks, was beginning a second, and suddenly
quivered with excitement and stood stock-still.

"Come, come, Stiva!" shouted Levin, feeling his heart beginning to
beat more violently; and all of a sudden, as though some sort of
shutter had been drawn back from his straining ears, all sounds,
confused but loud, began to beat on his hearing, losing all sense of
distance. He heard the steps of Stepan Arkadyevich, mistaking them for
the tramp of the horses in the distance; he heard the brittle sound of
the tussock which came off with its roots when he had trodden on a
hummock, and he took this sound for the flight of a double snipe. He
heard too, not far behind him, a splashing in the water, which he
could not explain to himself.

Picking his steps, he moved up to the dog.

"Fetch it!"

Not a double but a jacksnipe flew up from beside the dog. Levin
had lifted his gun, but at the very instant when he was taking aim,
the sound of splashing grew louder, came closer, and was joined with
the sound of Veslovsky's voice, shouting something with strange
loudness. Levin saw he had his gun pointed behind the snipe, but still
he fired.

When he had made sure he had missed, Levin looked round and saw
the horses and the droshky not on the road but in the marsh.

Veslovsky, eager to see the shooting, had driven into the marsh, and
got the horses stuck in the mud.

"Damn the fellow!" Levin said to himself, as he went back to the
carriage that had sunk in the mire. "What did you drive in for?" he
said to him dryly, and, calling the coachman he began pulling the
horses out.

Levin was vexed both at being hindered from shooting and at his
horses getting stuck in the mud, and still more at the fact that
neither Stepan Arkadyevich nor Veslovsky helped him and the coachman
to unharness the horses and get them out, since neither of them had
the slightest notion of harnessing. Without answering a syllable to
Vassenka's protestations that it had been quite dry there, Levin
worked in silence with the coachman at extricating the horses. But
then, as he got warm at the work and saw how assiduously Veslovsky was
tugging at the droshky by one of the splashboards, so that he broke it
indeed, Levin blamed himself for having under the influence of
yesterday's feelings been too cold to Veslovsky, and tried to be
particularly genial so as to smooth over his chilliness. When
everything had been put right, and the vehicles had been brought
back to the road, Levin had the lunch served.

"Bon appetit- bonne conscience! Ce poulet va tomber jusqu'au fond de
mes bottes," Vassenka, who had recovered his spirits, quoted the
French saying as he finished his second chicken. "Well, now our
troubles are over, now everything's going to go well. Only, to atone
for my sins, I'm bound to sit on the box. That's so? Eh? No, no!
I'll be your Automedon. You shall see how I'll get you along," he
answered, without letting go the rein, when Levin begged him to let
the coachman drive. "No, I must atone for my sins, and I'm very
comfortable on the box." And he drove.

Levin was a little afraid he would exhaust the horses, especially
the left of them, the chestnut, whom he did not know how to hold in;
but unconsciously he fell under the influence of his gaiety and
listened to the songs he sang all the way on the box, or the
descriptions and representations he gave of driving in the English
fashion, four-in-hand; and it was in the very best of spirits that
after lunch they drove to the Gvozdiov marsh.

                           X.


Vassenka drove the horses so fast that they reached the marsh too
early, while it was still hot.

As they drew near this more important marsh, the chief aim of
their expedition, Levin could not help considering how he could get
rid of Vassenka and be free in his movements. Stepan Arkadyevich
evidently had the same desire, and on his face Levin saw the look of
anxiety always present in a true sportsman when beginning shooting,
together with a certain good-humored slyness peculiar to him.

"How shall we go? It's a splendid marsh, I see, and there are
hawks," said Stepan Arkadyevich, pointing to two great birds
hovering over the sedge. "Where there are hawks, there is sure to be
game."

"Now, gentlemen," said Levin, pulling up his boots and examining the
lock of his gun with a somewhat somber expression, "do you see that
sedge?" He pointed to an oasis of blackish green in the huge half-mown
wet meadow that stretched along the right bank of the river. "The
marsh begins here, straight in front of us, do you see- where it is
greener? From here it runs to the right where the horses are; there
are hummocks there, and double snipe, and all round that sedge as
far as that alder tree, and right up to the mill. Over there, do you
see, where the creek is? That's the best place. There I once shot
seventeen jacksnipe. We'll separate with the dogs and go in
different directions, and then meet over there at the mill."

"Well, who'll go left, and who to the right?" asked Stepan
Arkadyevich. "It's wider to the right; you two go that way and I'll
take the left," he said with apparent carelessness.

"Capital! We'll make the bigger bag! Yes, come along, come along!"
Vassenka exclaimed.

Levin could do nothing but agree, and they divided.

As soon as they entered the marsh, the two dogs began hunting
about together and made toward the rust-colored spot. Levin knew
Laska's method, wary and indefinite; he knew the place too, and
expected a whole covey of snipe.

"Veslovsky, walk beside me- beside me!" he said in a faint voice
to his companion splashing in the water behind him. Levin could not
help feeling an interest in the direction his gun was pointed, after
that casual shot near the Kolpensky marsh.

"Oh, I won't get in your way, don't trouble about me."

But Levin could not help troubling, and recalled Kitty's words at
parting: "Mind you don't shoot one another." The dogs came nearer
and nearer, passed each other, each pursuing its own scent. The
expectation of snipe was so intense that to Levin the smacking sound
of his own heel, as he drew it up out of the rusty mire, seemed to
be the call of a snipe, and he clutched and pressed the butt of his
gun.

Bang! bang! sounded almost in his ear. Vassenka had fired at a flock
of ducks which was hovering over the marsh and flying at that moment
toward the sportsmen, far out of range. Before Levin had time to
look round, there was the whir of one snipe, another, a third, and
some eight more rose one after another.

Stepan Arkadyevich hit one at the very moment when it was
beginning its zigzag movements, and the snipe fell as a clod into
the quagmire. Oblonsky aimed deliberately at another, still flying low
toward the sedge, and together with the report of the shot, that snipe
too fell, and it could be seen fluttering out where the sedge had been
cut, its unhurt wing showing white beneath.

Levin was not so lucky: he aimed at his first bird too low, and
missed; he aimed at it again, just as it was rising, but at that
instant another snipe flew up at his very feet, distracting him so
that he missed again.

While they were reloading their guns, another snipe rose, and
Veslovsky, who had had time to reload again, sent two charges of small
shot into the water. Stepan Arkadyevich picked up his snipe, and
with sparkling eyes looked at Levin.

"Well, now let us separate," said Stepan Arkadyevich, and limping on
his left foot, holding his gun in readiness and whistling to his
dog, he walked off in one direction. Levin and Veslovsky walked off in
the other.

It always happened with Levin that when his first shots were a
failure he got heated and out of temper, and shot badly the whole day.
So was it that day. The snipe showed themselves in numbers. They
kept flying up from just under the dogs, from under the sportsmen's
legs, and Levin might have retrieved his ill luck. But the more he
shot, the more he felt disgraced in the eyes of Veslovsky, who kept
popping away merrily and indiscriminately, killing nothing, and not in
the slightest abashed by his ill success. Levin, in feverish haste,
could not restrain himself, got more and more out of temper, and ended
by shooting almost without a hope of hitting. Laska, indeed, seemed to
understand this. She began searching more listlessly, and gazed back
at the sportsmen with apparent perplexity or reproach in her eyes.
Shots followed shots in rapid succession. The smoke of the powder hung
about the sportsmen, while in the great roomy net of the gamebag there
were only three light, small snipe. And of these one had been killed
by Veslovsky alone, and one by both of them together. Meanwhile,
from the other side of the marsh, came the sound of Stepan
Arkadyevich's shots, not frequent, but, as Levin fancied, well
directed, for almost after each they heard "Krak, Krak, apporte!"

This excited Levin still more. The snipe were floating continually
in the air over the sedge. Their whirring wings close to the earth,
and their harsh cries high in the air, could be heard on all sides;
the snipe that had risen first and flown up into the air, settled
again before the sportsmen. Instead of two hawks there were now dozens
of them hovering with shrill cries over the marsh.

After walking through the larger half of the marsh, Levin and
Veslovsky reached the place where the peasants' mowing grass was
divided into long strips reaching to the sedge, marked off in one
place by the trampled grass, in another by a path mown through it.
Half of these strips had already been mown.

Though there was not so much hope of finding birds in the uncut part
as the cut part, Levin had promised Stepan Arkadyevich to meet him,
and so he walked on with his companion through the cut and uncut
patches.

"Hi, hunters!" shouted one of a group of peasants, sitting on an
unharnessed telega: "Come and have some lunch with us! Have a drop
of wine!"

Levin looked round.

"Come along, it's all right!" shouted a good-humored-looking bearded
peasant with a red face, showing his white teeth in a grin, and
holding up a greenish bottle that flashed in the sunlight.

"Qu'est-ce qu'ils disent?" asked Veslovsky.

"They invite you to have some vodka. Most likely they've been
dividing the meadow into lots. I should have some," said Levin, not
without some guile, hoping Veslovsky would be tempted by the vodka,
and would go off to them.

"Why do they offer it?"

"Oh, they're merrymaking. Really, you should join them. You would be
interested."

"Allons, c'est curieux."

"You go, you go, you'll find the way to the mill!" cried Levin,
and looking round he perceived with satisfaction that Veslovsky,
bent and stumbling with weariness, holding his gun out at arm's
length, was making his way out of the marsh toward the peasants.

"You come too!" the peasant shouted to Levin. "Never fear! Taste our
pie!"

Levin felt a strong inclination for a drink of vodka and a bite of
bread. He was exhausted, and felt it a great effort to drag his
staggering legs out of the mire, and for a minute he hesitated. But
Laska was pointing. And immediately all his weariness vanished, and he
walked lightly through the swamp toward the dog. A snipe flew up at
his feet; he fired and killed it. Laska still pointed.- "Fetch it!"
Another bird flew up close to the dog. Levin fired. But it was an
unlucky day for him; he missed it, and when he went to look for the
one he had shot, he could not find that either. He wandered all
about the sedge, but Laska did not believe he had shot it, and when he
sent her to find it, she pretended to hunt for it, but did not
really do so.

And in the absence of Vassenka, on whom Levin threw the blame of his
failure, things went no better. There was plenty of snipe still, but
Levin made one miss after another.

The slanting rays of the sun were still hot; his clothes, soaked
through with perspiration, stuck to his body; his left boot full of
water weighed heavily on his leg and squelched at every step; the
sweat ran in drops down his powder-grimed face, his mouth was full
of a bitter taste, his nose of the smell of powder and stagnant water,
his ears were ringing with the incessant whir of the snipe; he could
not touch the barrel of his gun, it was so hot; his heart beat with
short, rapid throbs; his hands shook with excitement, and his weary
legs stumbled and staggered over the hummocks and in the swamp, but
still he walked on and still he shot. At last, after a disgraceful
miss, he flung his gun and his hat on the ground.

"No, I must control myself," he said to himself. Picking up his
gun and his hat, he called Laska, and went out of the swamp. When he
got onto dry ground he sat down on a hummock, pulled off his boot
and emptied it, then walked to the marsh, drank some rust-tasting
water, moistened the burning hot barrel of his gun, and washed his
face and hands. Feeling refreshed, he went back to the spot where a
snipe had settled, firmly resolved to keep cool.

He tried to be calm, but it was the same again. His finger pressed
the trigger before he had taken a good aim at the bird. It got worse
and worse.

He had only five birds in his gamebag when he walked out of the
marsh toward the alders, where he was to rejoin Stepan Arkadyevich.

Before he caught sight of Stepan Arkadyevich he saw his dog. Krak,
black all over with the stinking mire of the marsh, darted out from
behind the twisted root of an alder, and, with the air of a conqueror,
sniffed Laska. Behind Krak there came into view in the shade of the
alder tree the shapely figure of Stepan Arkadyevich. He came to meet
him, red and perspiring, with unbuttoned neckband, still limping in
the same way.

"Well? You have been popping away!" he said, smiling good-humoredly.

"How have you got on?" queried Levin. But there was no need to
ask, for he had already seen the full gamebag.

"Oh, pretty fair."

He had fourteen birds.

"A splendid marsh! I've no doubt Veslovsky got in your way. It's
awkward too, shooting with one dog," said Stepan Arkadyevich, to
soften his triumph.

                           XI.


When Levin and Stepan Arkadyevich reached the peasant's hut where
Levin always used to stay, Veslovsky was already there. He was sitting
in the middle of the hut, clinging with both hands to the bench from
which he was being pulled by a soldier, the brother of the peasant's
wife, who was helping him off with his miry boots. Veslovsky was
laughing his infectious, good-humored laugh.

"I've only just come. Ils ont ete charmants. Just fancy they gave me
drink, and fed me! Such bread- it was exquisite! Dilicieux! And the
vodka- I never tasted any better. And they would not take a penny
for anything. And they kept saying: 'Excuse our homely ways.'"

"What should they take anything for? They were entertaining you,
to be sure. Do you suppose they keep vodka for sale?" said the
soldier, succeeding at last in pulling the soaked boot off, together
with the blackened stocking.

In spite of the dirtiness of the hut, which was all muddied by their
boots and the filthy dogs licking themselves clean, and the smells
of the marsh and the powder that filled the room, and the absence of
knives and forks, the party drank their tea and ate their supper
with a relish only known to sportsmen. Washed and clean, they went
into a hay barn swept ready for them, where the coachmen had been
making up beds for the gentlemen.

Though it was dusk, not one of them wanted to go to sleep.

After wavering among reminiscences and anecdotes of guns, of dogs,
and of former shooting parties, the conversation rested on a topic
that interested all of them. After Vassenka had several times over
expressed his appreciation of this delightful sleeping place among the
fragrant hay, this delightful broken telega (he supposed it to be
broken because the shafts had been taken out), of the good nature of
the peasants who had treated him to vodka, of the dogs who lay at
the feet of their respective masters, Oblonsky began telling them of a
delightful shooting party at Malthus's where he had stayed the
previous summer. Malthus was a well-known capitalist, who had made his
money by speculation in railway shares. Stepan Arkadyevich described
what snipe moors this Malthus had taken on lease in the Tver province,
and how they were preserved, and of the carriages and dogcarts in
which the shooting party had been driven, and the luncheon pavilion
that had been rigged up at the marsh.

"I don't understand you," said Levin, sitting up in the hay; "how is
it such people don't disgust you? I can understand a lunch with
Lafitte is all very pleasant, but don't you dislike just that very
sumptuousness? All these people, just like our tax farmers in the
old days, get their money in a way that gains them the contempt of
everyone. They don't care for their contempt, and then they use
their dishonest gains to buy off the contempt they have deserved."

"Perfectly true!" chimed in Vassenka Veslovsky. "Perfectly!
Oblonsky, of course, goes out of bonhomie, but other people say:
'Well, Oblonsky stays with them.'"

"Not a bit of it." Levin could hear that Oblonsky was smiling as
he spoke. "I simply don't consider him more dishonest than any other
wealthy merchant or nobleman. They've all made their money alike- by
their work and their intelligence."

"Oh, by what work? Do you call it work to get hold of concessions
and speculate with them?"

"Of course it's work. Work in this sense, that if it were not for
him and others like him, there would have been no railways."

"But that's not work, like the work of a peasant, or in a learned
profession."

"Granted, but it's work in the sense that his activity produces a
result- the railways. But of course you think the railways useless."

"No, that's another question; I am disposed to admit that they're
useful. But all profit that is out of proportion to the labor expended
is dishonest."

"But who is to define what is proportionate?"

"Making profit by dishonest means, by trickery," said Levin,
conscious that he could not draw a distinct line between honesty and
dishonesty. "Such as banking, for instance," he went on. "It's an
evil- the amassing of huge fortunes without labor, just the same thing
as with the tax farmers- it's only the form that's changed. Le roi est
mort, vive le roi! No sooner were the tax farmers abolished than the
railways came up, and banking companies; that, too, is profit
without work."

"Yes, that may all be very true and clever.... Lie down, Krak!"
Stepan Arkadyevich called to his dog, who was scratching and turning
over all the hay. He was obviously convinced of the correctness of his
position, and so talked serenely and without haste. "But you have
not drawn the line between honest and dishonest work. That I receive a
bigger salary than my chief clerk, though he knows more about the work
than I do- that's dishonest, I suppose?"

"I can't say."

"Well, but I can tell you: your receiving some five thousand,
let's say, for your work on the land, while our host, the peasant
here, however hard he works, can never get more than fifty roubles, is
just as dishonest as my earning more than my chief clerk, and
Malthus getting more than a railway expert. No, quite the contrary;
I see that society takes up a sort of antagonistic attitude to these
people, which is utterly baseless, and I fancy there's envy at the
bottom of it...."

"No, that's unfair," said Veslovsky; "how could envy come in?
There is something unclean about that sort of business."

"You say," Levin went on, "that it's unjust for me to receive five
thousand, while the peasant has fifty roubles; that's true. It is
unfair, and I feel it, but..."

"It really is. Why is it we spend our time riding, drinking,
shooting, doing nothing while they are forever at work?" said Vassenka
Veslovsky, obviously for the first time in his life reflecting on
the question, and consequently considering it with perfect sincerity.

"Yes, you feel it, but you don't give him your property," said
Stepan Arkadyevich, intentionally, as it seemed, provoking Levin.

There had arisen of late something like a secret antagonism
between the two brothers-in-law; as though, since they had married
sisters, a kind of rivalry had sprung up between them as to which
was ordering his life best, and now this hostility showed itself in
the conversation, as it began to take a personal note.

"I don't give it away, because no one demands that from me, and if I
wanted to, I could not give it away," answered Levin, "and have no one
to give it to."

"Give it to this peasant, he would not refuse it."

"Yes, but how am I to give it up? Am I to go to him and make a title
deed?"

"I don't know; but if you are convinced that you have no right..."

"I'm not at all convinced. On the contrary, I feel have no right
to give it up, that I have duties both to the land and to my family."

"No, excuse me, but if you consider this inequality is unjust, why
is it you don't act accordingly?..."

"Well, I do act negatively on that idea, so far as not trying to
increase the difference of position existing between him and me."

"No, excuse me, that's a paradox."

"Yes, there's something of a sophistry about that," Veslovsky
agreed. "Ah! Our host!" he said to the peasant who came into the barn,
opening the creaking door. "How is it you're not asleep yet?"

"No, how's one to sleep! I thought our gentlemen would be asleep,
but I heard them chattering. I want to get a hook from here. She won't
bite?" he added, stepping cautiously with his bare feet.

"And where are you going to sleep?"

"We are going out for night watching."

"Ah, what a night!" said Veslovsky, looking out at the edge of the
hut and the unharnessed droshky that could be seen in the faint
light of the evening glow in the great frame of the open doors. "But
listen, there are women's voices singing, and, on my word, not badly
too! Who's that singing, my friend?"

"That's the housemaids from hard by here."

"Let's go- let's take a walk! We shan't go to sleep, you know.
Oblonsky, come along!"

"If one could only do both, lie here and go," answered Oblonsky,
stretching. "It's capital lying here."

"Well, I shall go by myself," said Veslovsky, getting up eagerly,
and putting on his boots and stockings. "Good-by, gentlemen. If it's
fun, I'll fetch you. You've treated me to some good sport, and I won't
forget you."

"He really is a capital fellow, isn't he?" said Stepan Arkadyevich
when Veslovsky had gone out and the peasant had closed the door
after him.

"Yes, capital," answered Levin, still thinking of the subject of
their conversation just before. It seemed to him that he had clearly
expressed his thoughts and feelings to the best of his capacity, and
yet both of them, straightforward men and not fools, had said with one
voice that he was comforting himself with sophistries. This
disconcerted him.

"It's just this, my dear boy. One must do one of two things:
either admit that the existing order of society is just, and then
stick up for one's rights in it; or acknowledge that you are
enjoying unjust privileges, as I do, and then enjoy them and be
satisfied."

"No, if it were unjust, you could not enjoy these advantages and
be satisfied- at least I could not. The great thing for me is to
feel that I'm not to blame."

"What do you say- why not go after all?" said Stepan Arkadyevich,
evidently weary of the strain of thought. "We shan't go to sleep,
you know. Come, let's go!"

Levin did not answer. What they had said in the conversation that he
acted justly only in a negative sense absorbed his thoughts. "Can it
be that it's only possible to be just negatively?" he was asking
himself.

"How strong the smell of the fresh hay is, though," said Stepan
Arkadyevich, getting up. "There's not a chance of sleeping. Vassenka
has been getting up some fun there. Do you hear the laughter and his
voice? Hadn't we better go? Come along!"

"No, I'm not coming," answered Levin.

"Surely that's not a matter of principle too," said Stepan
Arkadyevich, smiling, as he felt about in the dark for his cap.

"It's not a matter of principle, but why should I go?"

"But do you know you are preparing trouble for yourself," said
Stepan Arkadyevich, finding his cap and getting up.

"How so?"

"Do you suppose I don't see the line you've taken up with your wife?
I heard how it's a question of the greatest consequence, whether or
not you're to be away for a couple of days' shooting. That's all
very well as an idyllic episode, but for your whole life that won't
answer. A man must be independent; he has his masculine interests. A
man has to be manly," said Oblonsky, opening the door.

"In what way? To go running after servant girls?" said Levin.

"Why not, if it amuses him? Ca ne tire pas a consequence. It won't
do my wife any harm, and it'll amuse me. The great thing is to respect
the sanctity of the home. There should be nothing in the home. But
don't tie your own hands."

"Perhaps so," said Levin dryly, and he turned on his side.
"Tomorrow, early, I want to go shooting, and I won't wake anyone,
and shall set off at daybreak."

"Messieurs, venez vite!" they heard the voice of Veslovsky coming
back. "Charmante! I've made such a discovery. Charmante! A perfect
Gretchen, and I've already made friends with her. Really,
exceedingly pretty," he declared in a tone of approval, as though
she had been made pretty entirely on his account, and he were
expressing his satisfaction with the entertainment that had been
provided for him.

Levin pretended to be asleep, while Oblonsky, putting on his
slippers, and lighting a cigar, walked out of the barn, and soon their
voices were lost.

For a long while Levin could not get to sleep. He heard his horses
munching hay, then he heard the peasant and his elder boy getting
ready, and then going off for the night watching, then he heard the
soldier arranging his bed on the other side of the barn, with his
nephew, the younger son of their peasant host. He heard the boy in his
shrill little voice telling his uncle what he thought about the
dogs, who seemed to him huge and terrible creatures, and asking what
the dogs were going to hunt next day, and the soldier in a husky,
sleepy voice, telling him the sportsmen were going in the morning to
the marsh, and would shoot with their guns; and then, to check the
boy's questions, he said, "Go to sleep, Vaska; go to sleep or you'll
catch it," and soon after he began snoring himself, and everything was
still. He could only hear the neigh of the horses, and the guttural
cry of a snipe. "Is it really only negative? he repeated to himself.
"Well, what of it? It's not my fault." And he began thinking about the
next day.

"Tomorrow I'll go out early, and I'll make a point of keeping
cool. There are lots of snipe; and there are double snipe too. When
I come back there'll be the note from Kitty. Yes, Stiva may be
right, I'm not manly with her, I'm tied to her apron strings.... Well,
it can't be helped! Negative again...."

Half asleep, he heard the laughter and mirthful talk of Veslovsky
and Stepan Arkadyevich. For an instant he opened his eyes: the moon
was up, and in the open doorway, brightly lighted up by the moonlight,
they were standing talking. Stepan Arkadyevich was saying something of
the freshness of one girl, comparing her to a freshly peeled nut,
and Veslovsky with his infectious laugh was repeating some words,
probably said to him by a peasant: "Ah, you'd better get round your
own wife!" Levin, half asleep, said:

"Gentlemen, tomorrow before daylight!" and fell asleep.

                           XII.


Waking up at earliest dawn, Levin tried to wake his companions.
Vassenka, lying on his stomach, with one leg in a stocking thrust out,
was sleeping so soundly that he could elicit no response. Oblonsky,
half asleep, declined to get up so early. Even Laska, who was
asleep, curled up in the hay, got up unwillingly, and lazily stretched
out and straightened her hind legs one after the other. Getting on his
boots, taking his gun, and carefully opening the creaking door of
the barn, Levin went out into the road. The coachmen were sleeping
near their carriages; the horses were dozing. Only one was lazily
eating oats, scattering them in the manger when snorting. It was still
gray out-of-doors.

"Why are you up so early, my dear?" the old woman, their hostess,
said, coming out of the hut and addressing him affectionately as an
old friend.

"Going shooting, auntie. Do I go this way to the marsh?"

"Straight out at the back; by our threshing floor, my dear, and hemp
patches; there's a little footpath."

Stepping carefully with her sunburned, bare feet, the old woman
conducted Levin, and moved back the gate for him by the threshing
floor.

"Straight ahead, and you'll come to the marsh. Our lads drove the
horses there yesterday evening."

Laska ran eagerly forward along the little path. Levin followed
her with a light, rapid step, continually looking at the sky. He hoped
the sun would not be up before he reached the marsh. But the sun did
not delay. The moon, which had been bright when he went out, by now
shone only like a crescent of quicksilver. The rosy flush of dawn,
which one could not help seeing before, now had to be sought to be
discerned at all. What before had been undefined, vague blurs in the
distant countryside, could now be distinctly seen. They were sheaves
of rye. The dew, not visible till the sun was up, wetted Levin's
legs and his blouse above his belt in the high-growing, fragrant
hemp patch, from which the male plants had already been gathered in.
In the transparent stillness of morning the smallest sounds were
audible. A bee flew by Levin's ear with the whizzing sound of a
bullet. He looked carefully, and saw a second and a third. They were
all flying from the beehives behind the hedge, and they disappeared
over the hemp patch in the direction of the marsh. The path led
straight to the marsh. The marsh could be recognized by the mist which
rose from it, thicker in one place and thinner in another, so that the
sedge and willow bushes swayed like islands in this mist. At the
edge of the marsh and the road peasant boys and men, who had been
herding for the night, were lying, and in the dawn all were asleep
under their coats. Not far from them were three hobbled horses. One of
them clanked a chain. Laska walked beside her master, pressing a
little forward and looking round. Passing the sleeping peasants and
reaching the first reeds, Levin examined his percussion caps and
unleashed his dog. One of the horses, a sleek, dark-brown
three-year-old, seeing the dog, started away, switched its tail and
snorted. The other horses too were frightened, and splashing through
the water with their hobbled legs, and drawing their hoofs out of
the thick mud with a squelching sound, they bounded out of the
marsh. Laska stopped, looking ironically at the horses and inquiringly
at Levin. Levin patted Laska, and whistled as a sign that she might
begin.

Laska ran joyfully and anxiously through the quagmire that quaked
under her.

Running into the marsh among the familiar scents of roots, marsh
plants, and dross, and the extraneous smell of horse manure, Laska
detected at once a smell that pervaded the whole marsh, the scent of
that strong-smelling bird that always excited her more than any other.
Here and there among the moss and marsh plants this scent was very
strong, but it was impossible to determine in which direction it
grew stronger or fainter. To find the direction, she had to get
farther away from the wind. Not feeling the motion of her legs,
Laska bounded with a still gallop, so that at each bound she could
stop short, to the right, away from the wind that blew from the east
before sunrise, and turned facing the wind. Sniffing in the air with
dilated nostrils, she felt at once that not their traces only, but
they themselves, were here before her- not one, but many. Laska
slackened her speed. They were here, but where precisely she could not
yet determine. To find the very spot, she began to make a circle, when
suddenly her master's voice drew her off. "Laska! Here!" he said,
pointing her to a different direction. She stopped, asking him if
she had better not go on doing as she had begun. But he repeated his
command in an angry voice, pointing to a hummock spot covered with
water, where there could not be anything. She obeyed him, pretending
she was searching so as to please him, went round it, and went back to
her former position, and was at once aware of the scent again. Now
when he was not hindering her, she knew what to do, and, without
looking at what was under her feet, and to her vexation stumbling over
a hummock into the water, but righting herself with her strong, supple
legs, she began making the circuit which was to make all clear to her.
The scent of them reached her, stronger and stronger, and more and
more defined, and all at once it became perfectly clear to her that
one of them was here, behind this hummock, five paces in front of her;
she stopped, and her whole body was still and rigid. On her short legs
she could see nothing in front of her, but by the scent she knew it
was sitting not more than five paces off. She stood still, feeling
more and more conscious of it, and enjoying it in anticipation. Her
tail was stretched straight and tense, and only wagged at the
extreme tip. Her mouth was slightly open, her ears raised. One ear had
been turned wrong side out as she ran up, and she breathed heavily but
warily, and still more warily she turned around, but more with her
eyes than her head, to her master. He was coming along with the face
she knew so well, though the eyes were always terrible to her. He
stumbled over the hummocks as he came, and moved, as she thought,
extraordinarily slowly. She thought he came slowly, but he was
running.

Noticing Laska's special attitude as she crouched on the ground,
as it were, scratching big prints with her hind paws, and with her
mouth slightly open, Levin knew she was pointing at double snipe,
and with an inward prayer for luck, especially with the first bird, he
ran up to her. Coming quite close up to her, he could from his
height look beyond her, and he saw with his eyes what she was seeing
with her nose. In a space between two little hummocks, at a couple
of yards' distance, he could see a double snipe. Turning its head,
it was listening. Then lightly preening and folding its wings, it
disappeared round a corner with a clumsy wag of its tail.

"Fetch it, fetch it!" shouted Levin, giving Laska a shove from
behind.

"But I can't go," thought Laska. "Where am I to go? From here I feel
them, but if I move forward I shall know nothing of where they are, or
who they are." But then he shoved her with his knee, and in an excited
whisper said, "Fetch it, Lassochka, fetch it."

"Well, if that's what he wishes, I'll do it, but I can't answer
for myself now," she thought, and darted forward as fast as her legs
would carry her between the hummocks. She scented nothing now; she
could only see and hear, without understanding anything.

Ten paces from her former place a double snipe rose with a
guttural cry and the peculiar convex sound of its wings. And
immediately after the shot it splashed heavily with its white breast
on the wet mire. Another bird did not linger, but rose behind Levin,
without the dog's offices.

When Levin turned toward it, it was already some way off. But his
shot caught it. Flying twenty paces farther, the second double snipe
rose upward, and, whirling round like a ball, dropped heavily on a dry
place.

"Come, this is going to be some good!" thought Levin, packing the
warm and fat snipe into his gamebag. "Eh, Laska, will it be good?"

When Levin, after reloading his gun, moved on, the sun had fully
risen, though unseen behind clouds. The moon had lost all of its
luster, and was like a white cloud in the sky. Not a single star could
be seen. The soggy places, silvery with dew before, now shone like
gold. The rusty pools were all like amber. The blue of the grass had
changed to yellow green. The marsh birds twittered and swarmed about
the brook and upon the bushes that glittered with dew and cast long
shadows. A hawk woke up and settled on a haycock, turning its head
from side to side and looking discontentedly at the marsh. Crows
were flying about the field, and a barelegged boy was driving the
horses to an old man, who had got up from under his long coat and
was combing his hair. The smoke from the gun was white as milk over
the green of the grass.

One of the boys ran up to Levin.

"Uncle, there were ducks here yesterday!" he shouted to him, and
he walked a little way off behind him.

And Levin was doubly pleased, in sight of the boy, who expressed his
approval, at killing three jacksnipe, one after another, straight off.