‘We shall never be friends, you know that yourself. As to whether we shall be the happiest or the unhappiest of people—that is in your power.’
She was about to say something, but he interrupted her.
‘There is only one thing I am asking for, after all, and that is the right to hope and to suffer as I am doing now; but if even that is not possible, command me to disappear, and I will disappear. You will not see me if you find my presence difficult.’
‘I don’t want to banish you anywhere.’
‘Only don’t change anything. Leave everything as it is,’ he said in a trembling voice. ‘Here’s your husband.’
Indeed, at that very moment Alexey Alexandrovich was coming into the drawing room with his plodding, awkward gait.
Casting a glance at his wife and Vronsky, he went up to the hostess, sat down with a cup of tea, and started talking in his unhurried, always audible voice, mocking someone in his usual jocular way.
‘Your Rambouillet has a full complement,’ he said, looking round at everyone there; ‘the graces and the muses.’*
But Princess Betsy could not bear that tone of his—his sneering1 as she called it, and being a smart hostess, she immediately led him into a serious conversation on the subject of universal conscription. Alexey Alexandrovich immediately became engrossed in the conversation and started to mount a serious defence of the new decree to Princess Betsy, who had attacked it.
Vronsky and Anna continued to sit at the little table.
‘This is becoming indecorous,’ whispered one lady, indicating Karenina, Vronsky, and her husband with her eyes.
‘What did I tell you?’ answered Anna’s friend.
But not only these ladies, but almost everyone in the drawing room, even Princess Myagkaya and Betsy herself, glanced several times over towards the couple who had withdrawn from the main party, as if it inconvenienced them. Alexey Alexandrovich was the sole person not to look once in their direction or be distracted from the interesting conversation that had started up.
Taking note of the disagreeable impression made on everyone, Princess Betsy deposited another person in her place to listen to Alexey Alexandrovich, and went over to Anna.
‘I’m always amazed at the clarity and precision with which your husband expresses himself,’ she said. ‘I can grasp the most transcendental ideas when he’s speaking.’
‘Oh, yes!’ said Anna with a radiant smile of happiness, and not understanding a word of what Betsy was saying to her. She went over to the big table and took part in the general conversation.
After staying for half an hour, Alexey Alexandrovich went up to his wife and suggested that they go home together; but without looking at him, she replied that she was staying to supper. Alexey Alexandrovich made his bows and left.
The Karenins’ coachman, a rotund old Tatar in a shiny leather coat, was having difficulty restraining the grey horse on the left, which, frozen with cold, was rearing up by the porch. The footman stood holding open the carriage door. The porter stood holding on to the front door. Anna Arkadyevna was detaching the lace on her sleeve from a hook on her fur coat with her small deft hand, and with her head bowed, was listening raptly to what Vronsky was saying as he escorted her out.
‘You haven’t said anything; and let us suppose I ask for nothing,’ he was saying; ‘but you know that it’s not friendship I want, as there’s only one possible happiness in life for me, and it is that word you dislike so much … yes, love …’
‘Love …’ she repeated slowly to herself, and just at the moment when she managed to unhook the lace, she suddenly added: ‘The reason I don’t like that word is because it means too much to me, far more than you can understand,’ and she looked into his face. ‘Goodbye!’
She held out her hand, walked past the porter with her brisk, jaunty step, and disappeared into the carriage.
Her glance, and the touch of her hand, set him on fire. He kissed his palm in the place where she had touched it and set off home, happy in the knowledge that he had come closer to reaching his goal that evening than during the whole of the last two months.
1 [English in the original.]
8
ALEXEY ALEXANDROVICH saw nothing unusual or improper about his wife sitting with Vronsky at a separate table and talking animatedly about something; but he did notice that it seemed unusual and improper to everyone else in the drawing room, and for that reason it seemed improper to him too. He decided he needed to speak to his wife about it.
On arriving home, Alexey Alexandrovich proceeded to his study, as he usually did, sat down in his armchair, opened his book on the Papacy at the place marked by his paper-knife, and read until one o’clock, as he usually did; just occasionally, he rubbed his high forehead and gave his head a shake, as if trying to expel something. At the usual time he got up and prepared for bed. Anna Arkadyevna was still not back. He went upstairs with the book under his arm; but this evening, instead of his usual thoughts and reflections about office matters, his thoughts were filled by his wife and something unpleasant which was happening to her. Contrary to his usual habit, he did not get into bed, but started walking up and down the rooms of the house with his hands clasped behind his back. He could not go to bed, as he felt it was vital for him first to ponder the newly arisen circumstance.
When Alexey Alexandrovich had decided to himself that he needed to have a talk with his wife, it had seemed very easy and simple to him; but now, when he began to ponder this newly arisen circumstance, it seemed very complicated and difficult to him.
Alexey Alexandrovich was not jealous. Jealousy, according to his conviction, was insulting to a wife, and it was necessary to trust one’s wife. Why he should trust her, that is to say, have complete confidence that his young wife would always love him, he did not stop to consider; but he did not experience a feeling of distrust, because he trusted her, and told himself it was necessary to do so. Now, however, although his conviction that jealousy was a despicable feeling and that one should have trust had not been destroyed, he felt he was standing face to face with something illogical and nonsensical, and he did not know what he should do. Alexey Alexandrovich was standing face to face with life, with the possibility of his wife loving someone other than himself, and this seemed to him very nonsensical and incomprehensible because it was life itself. Alexey Alexandrovich had spent his entire life living and working in official spheres which had to do with the reflections of life. And every time he had bumped into life itself he had shied away from it. He was now experiencing a feeling similar to that which would be felt by someone who, calmly crossing a bridge over a precipice, suddenly discovers that this bridge has been taken down, revealing an abyss. This abyss was life itself, while the bridge was the artificial life Alexey Alexandrovich had been leading. For the first time conjectures occurred to him about the possibility of his wife falling in love with somebody, and he was horrified by the idea.
Without undressing, he paced with his even step up and down the echoing parquet of the dining room, lit by a single lamp, then across the carpet of the dark drawing room, where light was reflected only on the large, recently completed portrait of himself hanging above the sofa, and across her boudoir, where there were two candles burning, illuminating the portraits of her relatives and female friends and the beautiful curios on her writing desk he had come to know so well. He walked through her boudoir to the bedroom door and turned round again.
On each stretch of his walk, and mostly on the parquet of the lit dining room, he would stop and say to himself, ‘Yes, it is essential to sort this out and stop it, give my opinion about it and my decision.’ And he would turn back. ‘But give my view on what? What decision?’ he would say to himself in the drawing room and find no answer. ‘And what has actually happened anyway?’ he would ask himself before turning to go into her boudoir. ‘Nothing. She spent a long time talking to him. And what of it? Surely a woman in society can talk to whom she pleases. And then jealousy would mean humiliating both myself and her,’ he would tell himself as he went into her boudoir; but this reasoning, which had always carried so much weight with him before, now carried no weight and meant nothing. And from the bedroom door he would turn round and head towards the drawing room again; but as soon as he went back into the darkened room, there would be some voice telling him it was not so, and that if others had noticed it, there had to be something in it. And he would tell himself again in the dining room: ‘Yes, it is essential to sort this out and stop it, and give my view on it …’ And he would ask himself again in the drawing room before turning round: ‘how do I resolve this?’ Then he would ask himself: ‘What has happened?’ And he would answer: ‘Nothing’, and remember that jealousy was a feeling demeaning to his wife; but in the drawing room he would again be persuaded that something had happened. His thoughts, like his body, had come full circle without stumbling across anything new. He noticed this, wiped his brow, and sat down in her boudoir.