Anna Karenina
Anna Karenina
By Leo Tolstoy

Translated by Constance Garnett
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Part One
Anna Karenina
Chapter

Happy families are
all alike; every unhappy family is un-
happy in its own way.

Everything was in confusion in the Oblonskys’ house.

The wife had discovered that the husband was carrying on

an intrigue with a French girl, who had been a governess in

their family, and she had announced to her husband that

she could not go on living in the same house with him. This

position of affairs had now lasted three days, and not only

the husband and wife themselves, but all the members of

their family and household, were painfully conscious of it.

Every person in the house felt that there was no sense in

their living together, and that the stray people brought to
-
gether by chance in any inn had more in common with one

another than they, the members of the family and house
-
hold of the Oblonskys. The wife did not leave her own room,

the husband had not been at home for three days. The chil
-
dren ran wild all over the house; the English governess

quarreled with the housekeeper, and wrote to a friend ask
-
ing her to look out for a new situation for her; the man-cook

had walked off the day before just at dinner time; the kitch
-
en-maid, and the coachman had given warning.

Three days after the quarrel, Prince Stepan Arkadyevitch

Oblonsky—Stiva, as he was called in the fashionable

world— woke up at his usual hour, that is, at eight o’clock
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in the morning, not in his wife’s bedroom, but on the

leather-covered sofa in his study. He turned over his stout,

well-cared-for person on the springy sofa, as though he

would sink into a long sleep again; he vigorously embraced

the pillow on the other side and buried his face in it; but all

at once he jumped up, sat up on the sofa, and opened his

eyes.

‘Yes, yes, how was it now?’ he thought, going over his

dream. ‘Now, how was it? To be sure! Alabin was giving a

dinner at Darmstadt; no, not Darmstadt, but something

American. Yes, but then, Darmstadt was in America. Yes,

Alabin was giving a dinner on glass tables, and the tables

sang, Il mio tesoro—not Il mio tesoro though, but some
-
thing better, and there were some sort of little decanters on

the table, and they were women, too,’ he remembered.

Stepan Arkadyevitch’s eyes twinkled gaily, and he pon
-
dered with a smile. ‘Yes, it was nice, very nice. There was

a great deal more that was delightful, only there’s no put
-
ting it into words, or even expressing it in one’s thoughts

awake.’ And noticing a gleam of light peeping in beside one

of the serge curtains, he cheerfully dropped his feet over the

edge of the sofa, and felt about with them for his slippers, a

present on his last birthday, worked for him by his wife on

gold-colored morocco. And, as he had done every day for

the last nine years, he stretched out his hand, without get
-
ting up, towards the place where his dressing-gown always

hung in his bedroom. And thereupon he suddenly remem
-
bered that he was not sleeping in his wife’s room, but in his

study, and why: the smile vanished from his face, he knitted
Anna Karenina
his brows.

‘Ah, ah, ah! Oo!...’ he muttered, recalling everything that

had happened. And again every detail of his quarrel with

his wife was present to his imagination, all the hopelessness

of his position, and worst of all, his own fault.

‘Yes, she won’t forgive me, and she can’t forgive me. And

the most awful thing about it is that it’s all my fault—all

my fault, though I’m not to blame. That’s the point of the

whole situation,’ he reflected. ‘Oh, oh, oh!’ he kept repeating

in despair, as he remembered the acutely painful sensations

caused him by this quarrel.

Most unpleasant of all was the first minute when, on

coming, happy and good-humored, from the theater, with a

huge pear in his hand for his wife, he had not found his wife

in the drawing-room, to his surprise had not found her in

the study either, and saw her at last in her bedroom with the

unlucky letter that revealed everything in her hand.

She, his Dolly, forever fussing and worrying over house
-
hold details, and limited in her ideas, as he considered, was

sitting perfectly still with the letter in her hand, looking

at him with an expression of horror, despair, and indigna
-
tion.

‘What’s this? this?’ she asked, pointing to the letter.

And at this recollection, Stepan Arkadyevitch, as is so of
-
ten the case, was not so much annoyed at the fact itself as at

the way in which he had met his wife’s words.

There happened to him at that instant what does happen

to people when they are unexpectedly caught in something

very disgraceful. He did not succeed in adapting his face to
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the position in which he was placed towards his wife by the

discovery of his fault. Instead of being hurt, denying, de
-
fending himself, begging forgiveness, instead of remaining

indifferent even—anything would have been better than

what he did do—his face utterly involuntarily (reflex spi
-
nal action, reflected Stepan Arkadyevitch, who was fond

of physiology)—utterly involuntarily assumed its habitual,

good-humored, and therefore idiotic smile.

This idiotic smile he could not forgive himself. Catching

sight of that smile, Dolly shuddered as though at physical

pain, broke out with her characteristic heat into a flood of

cruel words, and rushed out of the room. Since then she had

refused to see her husband.

‘It’s that idiotic smile that’s to blame for it all,’ thought

Stepan Arkadyevitch.

‘But what’s to be done? What’s to be done?’ he said to

himself in despair, and found no answer.
Anna Karenina
Chapter

Stepan Arkadyevitch was
a truthful man in his rela-
tions with himself. He was incapable of deceiving himself

and persuading himself that he repented of his conduct.

He could not at this date repent of the fact that he, a hand
-
some, susceptible man of thirty-four, was not in love with

his wife, the mother of five living and two dead children,

and only a year younger than himself. All he repented of

was that he had not succeeded better in hiding it from his

wife. But he felt all the difficulty of his position and was sor
-
ry for his wife, his children, and himself. Possibly he might

have managed to conceal his sins better from his wife if he

had anticipated that the knowledge of them would have had

such an effect on her. He had never clearly thought out the

subject, but he had vaguely conceived that his wife must

long ago have suspected him of being unfaithful to her, and

shut her eyes to the fact. He had even supposed that she, a

worn-out woman no longer young or good-looking, and in

no way remarkable or interesting, merely a good mother,

ought from a sense of fairness to take an indulgent view. It

had turned out quite the other way.

‘Oh, it’s awful! oh dear, oh dear! awful!’ Stepan

Arkadyevitch kept repeating to himself, and he could think

of nothing to be done. ‘And how well things were going up

till now! how well we got on! She was contented and happy
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in her children; I never interfered with her in anything; I

let her manage the children and the house just as she liked.

It’s true it’s bad her having been a governess in our house.

That’s bad! There’s something common, vulgar, in flirting

with one’s governess. But what a governess!’ (He vividly re
-
called the roguish black eyes of Mlle. Roland and her smile.)

‘But after all, while she was in the house, I kept myself in

hand. And the worst of it all is that she’s already...it seems

as if ill-luck would have it so! Oh, oh! But what, what is to

be done?’

There was no solution, but that universal solution which

life gives to all questions, even the most complex and in
-
soluble. That answer is: one must live in the needs of the

day—that is, forget oneself. To forget himself in sleep was

impossible now, at least till nighttime; he could not go back

now to the music sung by the decanter-women; so he must

forget himself in the dream of daily life.

Then we shall see,’ Stepan Arkadyevitch said to him
-
self, and getting up he put on a gray dressing-gown lined

with blue silk, tied the tassels in a knot, and, drawing a deep

breath of air into his broad, bare chest, he walked to the

window with his usual confident step, turning out his feet

that carried his full frame so easily. He pulled up the blind

and rang the bell loudly. It was at once answered by the ap
-
pearance of an old friend, his valet, Matvey, carrying his

clothes, his boots, and a telegram. Matvey was followed by

the barber with all the necessaries for shaving.

‘Are there any papers from the office?’ asked Stepan

Arkadyevitch, taking the telegram and seating himself at
Anna Karenina
the looking-glass.

‘On the table,’ replied Matvey, glancing with inquiring

sympathy at his master; and, after a short pause, he added

with a sly smile, ‘They’ve sent from the carriage-jobbers.’

Stepan Arkadyevitch made no reply, he merely glanced

at Matvey in the looking-glass. In the glance, in which their

eyes met in the looking-glass, it was clear that they under
-
stood one another. Stepan Arkadyevitch’s eyes asked: ‘Why

do you tell me that? don’t you know?’

Matvey put his hands in his jacket pockets, thrust out

one leg, and gazed silently, good-humoredly, with a faint

smile, at his master.

‘I told them to come on Sunday, and till then not to trou
-
ble you or themselves for nothing,’ he said. He had obviously

prepared the sentence beforehand.

Stepan Arkadyevitch saw Matvey wanted to make a joke

and attract attention to himself. Tearing open the telegram,

he read it through, guessing at the words, misspelt as they

always are in telegrams, and his face brightened.

‘Matvey, my sister Anna Arkadyevna will be here tomor
-
row,’ he said, checking for a minute the sleek, plump hand

of the barber, cutting a pink path through his long, curly

whiskers.

Thank God!’ said Matvey, showing by this response that

he, like his master, realized the significance of this arrival—

that is, that Anna Arkadyevna, the sister he was so fond of,

might bring about a reconciliation between husband and

wife.

‘Alone, or with her husband?’ inquired Matvey.
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Stepan Arkadyevitch could not answer, as the barber was

at work on his upper lip, and he raised one finger. Matvey

nodded at the looking-glass.

‘Alone. Is the room to be got ready upstairs?’

‘Inform Darya Alexandrovna: where she orders.’

‘Darya Alexandrovna?’ Matvey repeated, as though in

doubt.

‘Yes, inform her. Here, take the telegram; give it to her,

and then do what she tells you.’

‘You want to try it on,’ Matvey understood, but he only

said, ‘Yes sir.’

Stepan Arkadyevitch was already washed and combed

and ready to be dressed, when Matvey, stepping deliberately

in his creaky boots, came back into the room with the tele
-
gram in his hand. The barber had gone.

‘Darya Alexandrovna told me to inform you that she

is going away. Let him do—that is you—do as he likes,’ he

said, laughing only with his eyes, and putting his hands in

his pockets, he watched his master with his head on one

side. Stepan Arkadyevitch was silent a minute. Then a

good-humored and rather pitiful smile showed itself on his

handsome face.

‘Eh, Matvey?’ he said, shaking his head.

‘It’s all right, sir; she will come round,’ said Matvey.

‘Come round?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Do you think so? Who’s there?’ asked Stepan

Arkadyevitch, hearing the rustle of a woman’s dress at the

door.
Anna Karenina
‘It’s I,’ said a firm, pleasant, woman’s voice, and the stern,

pockmarked face of Matrona Philimonovna, the nurse, was

thrust in at the doorway.

‘Well, what is it, Matrona?’ queried Stepan Arkadyevitch,

going up to her at the door.

Although Stepan Arkadyevitch was completely in the

wrong as regards his wife, and was conscious of this him
-
self, almost every one in the house (even the nurse, Darya

Alexandrovna’s chief ally) was on his side.

‘Well, what now?’ he asked disconsolately.

‘Go to her, sir; own your fault again. Maybe God will aid

you. She is suffering so, it’s sad to hee her; and besides, ev
-
erything in the house is topsy-turvy. You must have pity, sir,

on the children. Beg her forgiveness, sir. There’s no help for

it! One must take the consequences...’

‘But she won’t see me.’

‘You do your part. God is merciful; pray to God, sir, pray

to God.’

‘Come, that’ll do, you can go,’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch,

blushing suddenly. ‘Well now, do dress me.’ He turned to

Matvey and threw off his dressing-gown decisively.

Matvey was already holding up the shirt like a horse’s

collar, and, blowing off some invisible speck, he slipped it

with obvious pleasure over the well-groomed body of his

master.
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Chapter

When he was
dressed, Stepan Arkadyevitch sprinkled
some scent on himself, pulled down his shirt-cuffs, distrib
-
uted into his pockets his cigarettes, pocketbook, matches,

and watch with its double chain and seals, and shaking out

his handkerchief, feeling himself clean, fragrant, healthy,

and physically at ease, in spite of his unhappiness, he walked

with a slight swing on each leg into the dining-room, where

coffee was already waiting for him, and beside the coffee,

letters and papers from the office.

He read the letters. One was very unpleasant, from a

merchant who was buying a forest on his wife’s property.

To sell this forest was absolutely essential; but at present,

until he was reconciled with his wife, the subject could not

be discussed. The most unpleasant thing of all was that his

pecuniary interests should in this way enter into the ques
-
tion of his reconciliation with his wife. And the idea that

he might be led on by his interests, that he might seek a

reconciliation with his wife on account of the sale of the

forest—that idea hurt him.

When he had finished his letters, Stepan Arkadyevitch

moved the office-papers close to him, rapidly looked

through two pieces of business, made a few notes with a big

pencil, and pushing away the papers, turned to his coffee.

As he sipped his coffee, he opened a still damp morning pa
-
Anna Karenina
per, and began reading it.

Stepan Arkadyevitch took in and read a liberal paper,

not an extreme one, but one advocating the views held by

the majority. And in spite of the fact that science, art, and

politics had no special interest for him, he firmly held those

views on all these subjects which were held by the majority

and by his paper, and he only changed them when the ma
-
jority changed them—or, more strictly speaking, he did not

change them, but they imperceptibly changed of themselves

within him.

Stepan Arkadyevitch had not chosen his political opin
-
ions or his views; these political opinions and views had

come to him of themselves, just as he did not choose the

shapes of his hat and coat, but simply took those that were

being worn. And for him, living in a certain society—ow
-
ing to the need, ordinarily developed at years of discretion,

for some degree of mental activity—to have views was

just as indispensable as to have a hat. If there was a rea
-
son for his preferring liberal to conservative views, which

were held also by many of his circle, it arose not from his

considering liberalism more rational, but from its being in

closer accordance with his manner of life. The liberal party

said that in Russia everything is wrong, and certainly Ste
-
pan Arkadyevitch had many debts and was decidedly short

of money. The liberal party said that marriage is an insti
-
tution quite out of date, and that it needs reconstruction;

and family life certainly afforded Stepan Arkadyevitch lit
-
tle gratification, and forced him into lying and hypocrisy,

which was so repulsive to his nature. The liberal party said,
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or rather allowed it to be understood, that religion is only

a curb to keep in check the barbarous classes of the peo
-
ple; and Stepan Arkadyevitch could not get through even

a short service without his legs aching from standing up,

and could never make out what was the object of all the ter
-
rible and high-flown language about another world when

life might be so very amusing in this world. And with all

this, Stepan Arkadyevitch, who liked a joke, was fond of

puzzling a plain man by saying that if he prided himself on

his origin, he ought not to stop at Rurik and disown the first

founder of his family—the monkey. And so Liberalism had

become a habit of Stepan Arkadyevitch’s, and he liked his

newspaper, as he did his cigar after dinner, for the slight fog

it diffused in his brain. He read the leading article, in which

it was maintained that it was quite senseless in our day to

raise an outcry that radicalism was threatening to swal
-
low up all conservative elements, and that the government

ought to take measures to crush the revolutionary hydra;

that, on the contrary, ‘in our opinion the danger lies not in

that fantastic revolutionary hydra, but in the obstinacy of

traditionalism clogging progress,’ etc., etc. He read another

article, too, a financial one, which alluded to Bentham and

Mill, and dropped some innuendoes reflecting on the min
-
istry. With his characteristic quickwittedness he caught the

drift of each innuendo, divined whence it came, at whom

and on what ground it was aimed, and that afforded him,

as it always did, a certain satisfaction. But today that satis
-
faction was embittered by Matrona Philimonovna’s advice

and the unsatisfactory state of the household. He read, too,
Anna Karenina
that Count Beist was rumored to have left for Wiesbaden,

and that one need have no more gray hair, and of the sale of

a light carriage, and of a young person seeking a situation;

but these items of information did not give him, as usual,

a quiet, ironical gratification. Having finished the paper, a

second cup of coffee and a roll and butter, he got up, shaking

the crumbs of the roll off his waistcoat; and, squaring his

broad chest, he smiled joyously: not because there was any
-
thing particularly agreeable in his mind—the joyous smile

was evoked by a good digestion.

But this joyous smile at once recalled everything to him,

and he grew thoughtful.

Two childish voices (Stepan Arkadyevitch recognized

the voices of Grisha, his youngest boy, and Tanya, his eldest

girl) were heard outside the door. They were carrying some
-
thing, and dropped it.

‘I told you not to sit passengers on the roof,’ said the little

girl in English; ‘there, pick them up!’

‘Everything’s in confusion,’ thought Stepan Arkadyevitch;

‘there are the children running about by themselves.’ And

going to the door, he called them. They threw down the box,

that represented a train, and came in to their father.

The little girl, her father’s favorite, ran up boldly, em
-
braced him, and hung laughingly on his neck, enjoying as

she always did the smell of scent that came from his whis
-
kers. At last the little girl kissed his face, which was flushed

from his stooping posture and beaming with tenderness,

loosed her hands, and was about to run away again; but her

father held her back.
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‘How is mamma?’ he asked, passing his hand over his

daughter’s smooth, soft little neck. ‘Good morning,’ he said,

smiling to the boy, who had come up to greet him. He was

conscious that he loved the boy less, and always tried to be

fair; but the boy felt it, and did not respond with a smile to

his father’s chilly smile.

‘Mamma? She is up,’ answered the girl.

Stepan Arkadyevitch sighed. ‘That means that she’s not

slept again all night,’ he thought.

‘Well, is she cheerful?’

The little girl knew that there was a quarrel between her

father and mother, and that her mother could not be cheer
-
ful, and that her father must be aware of this, and that he

was pretending when he asked about it so lightly. And she

blushed for her father. He at once perceived it, and blushed

too.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘She did not say we must do our

lessons, but she said we were to go for a walk with Miss

Hoole to grandmamma’s.’

‘Well, go, Tanya, my darling. Oh, wait a minute, though,’

he said, still holding her and stroking her soft little hand.

He took off the mantelpiece, where he had put it yester
-
day, a little box of sweets, and gave her two, picking out her

favorites, a chocolate and a fondant.

‘For Grisha?’ said the little girl, pointing to the choco
-
late.

‘Yes, yes.’ And still stroking her little shoulder, he kissed

her on the roots of her hair and neck, and let her go.

The carriage is ready,’ said Matvey; ‘but there’s some one
Anna Karenina
to see you with a petition.’

‘Been here long?’ asked Stepan Arkadyevitch.

‘Half an hour.’

‘How many times have I told you to tell me at once?’

‘One must let you drink your coffee in peace, at least,’

said Matvey, in the affectionately gruff tone with which it

was impossible to be angry.

‘Well, show the person up at once,’ said Oblonsky, frown
-
ing with vexation.

The petitioner, the widow of a staff captain Kalinin,

came with a request impossible and unreasonable; but Ste
-
pan Arkadyevitch, as he generally did, made her sit down,

heard her to the end attentively without interrupting her,

and gave her detailed advice as to how and to whom to ap
-
ply, and even wrote her, in his large, sprawling, good and

legible hand, a confident and fluent little note to a personage

who might be of use to her. Having got rid of the staff cap
-
tain’s widow, Stepan Arkadyevitch took his hat and stopped

to recollect whether he had forgotten anything. It appeared

that he had forgotten nothing except what he wanted to for
-
get—his wife.

‘Ah, yes!’ He bowed his head, and his handsome face as
-
sumed a harassed expression. ‘To go, or not to go!’ he said

to himself; and an inner voice told him he must not go, that

nothing could come of it but falsity; that to amend, to set

right their relations was impossible, because it was impos
-
sible to make her attractive again and able to inspire love, or

to make him an old man, not susceptible to love. Except de
-
ceit and lying nothing could come of it now; and deceit and
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lying were opposed to his nature.

‘It must be some time, though: it can’t go on like this,’

he said, trying to give himself courage. He squared his

chest, took out a cigarette, took two whiffs at it, flung it

into a mother-of-pearl ashtray, and with rapid steps walked

through the drawing room, and opened the other door into

his wife’s bedroom.
Anna Karenina
Chapter

Darya Alexandrovna, in
a dressing jacket, and with her
now scanty, once luxuriant and beautiful hair fastened up

with hairpins on the nape of her neck, with a sunken, thin

face and large, startled eyes, which looked prominent from

the thinness of her face, was standing among a litter of all

sorts of things scattered all over the room, before an open

bureau, from which she was taking something. Hearing her

husband’s steps, she stopped, looking towards the door, and

trying assiduously to give her features a severe and con
-
temptuous expression. She felt she was afraid of him, and

afraid of the coming interview. She was just attempting

to do what she had attempted to do ten times already in

these last three days—to sort out the children’s things and

her own, so as to take them to her mother’s—and again she

could not bring herself to do this; but now again, as each

time before, she kept saying to herself, ‘that things cannot

go on like this, that she must take some step’ to punish him,

put him to shame, avenge on him some little part at least of

the suffering he had caused her. She still continued to tell

herself that she should leave him, but she was conscious that

this was impossible; it was impossible because she could not

get out of the habit of regarding him as her husband and

loving him. Besides this, she realized that if even here in

her own house she could hardly manage to look after her
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five children properly, they would be still worse off where

she was going with them all. As it was, even in the course of

these three days, the youngest was unwell from being given

unwholesome soup, and the others had almost gone with
-
out their dinner the day before. She was conscious that it

was impossible to go away; but, cheating herself, she went

on all the same sorting out her things and pretending she

was going.

Seeing her husband, she dropped her hands into the

drawer of the bureau as though looking for something, and

only looked round at him when he had come quite up to her.

But her face, to which she tried to give a severe and resolute

expression, betrayed bewilderment and suffering.

‘Dolly!’ he said in a subdued and timid voice. He bent

his head towards his shoulder and tried to look pitiful and

humble, but for all that he was radiant with freshness and

health. In a rapid glance she scanned his figure that beamed

with health and freshness. ‘Yes, he is happy and content!’

she thought; ‘while I.... And that disgusting good nature,

which every one likes him for and praises—I hate that good

nature of his,’ she thought. Her mouth stiffened, the mus
-
cles of the cheek contracted on the right side of her pale,

nervous face.

‘What do you want?’ she said in a rapid, deep, unnatu
-
ral voice.

‘Dolly!’ he repeated, with a quiver in his voice. ‘Anna is

coming today.’

‘Well, what is that to me? I can’t see her!’ she cried.

‘But you must, really, Dolly...’
Anna Karenina
‘Go away, go away, go away!’ she shrieked, not looking at

him, as though this shriek were called up by physical pain.

Stepan Arkadyevitch could be calm when he thought of

his wife, he could hope that she would come round, as Mat
-
vey expressed it, and could quietly go on reading his paper

and drinking his coffee; but when he saw her tortured, suf
-
fering face, heard the tone of her voice, submissive to fate

and full of despair, there was a catch in his breath and a

lump in his throat, and his eyes began to shine with tears.

‘My God! what have I done? Dolly! For God’s sake!.... You

know....’ He could not go on; there was a sob in his throat.

She shut the bureau with a slam, and glanced at him.

‘Dolly, what can I say?.... One thing: forgive...Remember,

cannot nine years of my life atone for an instant....’

She dropped her eyes and listened, expecting what he

would say, as it were beseeching him in some way or other

to make her believe differently.

‘—instant of passion?’ he said, and would have gone

on, but at that word, as at a pang of physical pain, her lips

stiffened again, and again the muscles of her right cheek

worked.

‘Go away, go out of the room!’ she shrieked still more

shrilly, ‘and don’t talk to me of your passion and your loath
-
someness.’

She tried to go out, but tottered, and clung to the back of

a chair to support herself. His face relaxed, his lips swelled,

his eyes were swimming with tears.

‘Dolly!’ he said, sobbing now; ‘for mercy’s sake, think of

the children; they are not to blame! I am to blame, and pun
-
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ish me, make me expiate my fault. Anything I can do, I am

ready to do anything! I am to blame, no words can express

how much I am to blame! But, Dolly, forgive me!’

She sat down. He listened to her hard, heavy breathing,

and he was unutterably sorry for her. She tried several times

to begin to speak, but could not. He waited.

‘You remember the children, Stiva, to play with them;

but I remember them, and know that this means their ruin,’

she said—obviously one of the phrases she had more than

once repeated to herself in the course of the last few days.

She had called him ‘Stiva,’ and he glanced at her with

gratitude, and moved to take her hand, but she drew back

from him with aversion.

‘I think of the children, and for that reason I would do

anything in the world to save them, but I don’t myself know

how to save them. By taking them away from their father, or

by leaving them with a vicious father—yes, a vicious father....

Tell me, after what...has happened, can we live together? Is

that possible? Tell me, eh, is it possible?’ she repeated, rais
-
ing her voice, ‘after my husband, the father of my children,

enters into a love affair with his own children’s governess?’

‘But what could I do? what could I do?’ he kept saying in

a pitiful voice, not knowing what he was saying, as his head

sank lower and lower.

‘You are loathsome to me, repulsive!’ she shrieked, get
-
ting more and more heated. ‘Your tears mean nothing! You

have never loved me; you have neither heart nor honorable

feeling! You are hateful to me, disgusting, a stranger—yes,

a complete stranger!’ With pain and wrath she uttered the