From time to time he stopped, generally on the parquet floor of the lamp-lit dining-room, and thought: ‘Yes, it is necessary to decide and to stop it: to express my opinion of it and my decision.’ Then he turned back again. ‘But express what? What decision?’ he asked himself in the drawing-room, and could find no answer. ‘But after all,’ he reflected before turning into her room, ‘what is it that has happened? Nothing at all. She had a long talk with him — Well? What of that? Are there not plenty of men with whom a woman may talk? Besides … to be jealous is to degrade myself and her,’ he said to himself as he entered her sitting-room. But that consideration which formerly had weighed so much with him now had neither weight nor meaning. At the bedroom door he turned back, and as soon as he re-entered the dark drawing-room a voice seemed to whisper that it was not so, and that if others noticed, that showed that there must have been something for them to notice. And again he repeated to himself in the dining-room: ‘Yes, it is necessary to decide, and stop it, and express my opinion …’ And again in the drawing-room, at the turn into her room, he asked himself: ‘Decide what?’ and then, ‘What has happened?’ and he replied ‘Nothing,’ and remembered that jealousy is a feeling which insults a wife; but in the drawing-room he came again to the conviction that something had happened. His mind as well as his body performed a complete circle each time without arriving at anything new. He noticed this, rubbed his forehead, and sat down in her room.
Here as he looked at her table, at the malachite cover of her blotting-book and an unfinished letter that lay there, his thoughts suddenly underwent a change. He began thinking about her: of what she thought and felt. For the first time he vividly pictured to himself her personal life, her thoughts, her wishes; but the idea that she might and should have her own independent life appeared to him so dreadful that he hastened to drive it away. That was the abyss into which he feared to look. To put himself in thought and feeling into another being was a mental action foreign to Karenin. He considered such mental acts to be injurious and dangerous romancing.
‘And what is most terrible of all,’ thought he, ‘is that, just now, when my work is coming to completion’ (he was thinking of the project he was then carrying through), ‘when I need peace and all my powers of mind, just now this stupid anxiety falls on me. But what is to be done? I am not one of those who suffer anxiety and agitation and have not the courage to look them in the face!’
‘I must think it over, come to a decision, and throw it off,’ he said aloud. ‘The question of her feelings, of what has taken place or may take place in her soul, is not my business; it is the business of her conscience and belongs to religion,’ said he, feeling relieved at having found the formal category to which the newly-arisen circumstances rightly belonged.
‘Well then,’ thought he, ‘the question of her feelings and so on are questions for her conscience, which cannot concern me. My duty is clearly defined. As head of the family I am the person whose duty is to guide her, and who is therefore partly responsible; I must show her the danger which I see, warn her, and even use my authority. I must speak plainly to her.’
What he would say to his wife took clear shape in Karenin’s head. Thinking it over, he regretted having to expend his time and powers of mind on inconspicuous domestic affairs; but nevertheless, clearly and definitely, as though it were an official report, the form and sequence of the speech he had to make shaped itself in his mind. ‘I must make the following quite clear: First, the importance of public opinion and propriety; secondly, the religious meaning of marriage; thirdly, if necessary, I must refer to the harm that may result to our son; fourthly, allude to her own unhappiness.’ And interlacing his fingers, palms downwards, he stretched them and the joints cracked.
That movement — a bad habit of cracking his fingers — always tranquillized him and brought him back to that precision of mind which he now so needed. The sound of a carriage driving up to the front door was heard, and Karenin stood still in the middle of the room.
A woman’s steps were heard ascending the stairs. Karenin, ready to deliver his speech, stood pressing his interlaced fingers together, trying whether some of them would not crack again. One of the joints did crack.
By the sound of her light step on the stair he was aware of her approach and, though he was satisfied with his speech, he felt some apprehension of the coming explanations.
Chapter 9
ANNA walked in with bowed head, playing with the tassels of her hood. Her face shone with a vivid glow, but it was not a joyous glow — it resembled the terrible glow of a conflagration on a dark night. On seeing her husband she lifted her head and, as if awakening from sleep, smiled.
‘You’re not in bed? What a wonder!’ she said, throwing off her hood, and without pausing she went on to her dressing-room. ‘Alexis Alexandrovich, it’s high time!’ she added from beyond the door.
‘Anna, I must have a talk with you.’
‘With me?’ she said with surprise, coming back from the other room and looking at him. ‘What is it? What about?’ she asked, seating herself. ‘Well, let us have a talk, if it is so important. But it would be better to go to bed.’
Anna said what came into her head, and hearing her own words was astonished at her capacity for deception. How simple and natural her words sounded, and how really it seemed as if she were merely sleepy! She felt herself clothed in an impenetrable armour of lies and that some unseen power was helping and supporting her.
‘Anna, I must warn you,’ said he.
‘Warn me?’ she asked; ‘what about?’
She looked so naturally and gaily at him, that one who did not know her as her husband did could not have noticed anything strange in the intonation or the meaning of her words. But for him, who knew her — knew that when he went to bed five minutes late she noticed it and asked the reason — knew that she had always immediately told him all her joys, pleasures and sorrows — for him, her reluctance to notice his state of mind, or to say a word about herself, meant much. He saw that the depths of her soul, till now always open, were closed to him. More than that, he knew from her tone that she was not ashamed of this, but seemed to be saying frankly: ‘Yes, it is closed, and so it should be and will be in future.’ He now felt like a man who on coming home finds his house locked against him. ‘But perhaps the key can still be found,’ thought Karenin.
‘I wish to warn you,’ he said in low tones, ‘that you may, by indiscretion and carelessness, give the world occasion to talk about you. Your too animated conversation tonight with Count Vronsky’ (he pronounced the name firmly and with quiet deliberation) ‘attracted attention.’
As he spoke he looked at her laughing eyes, terrible to him now in their impenetrability, and felt the uselessness and idleness of his words.
‘You are always like that,’ she replied, as if not understanding him at all, and intentionally taking notice only of his last words. ‘One day you dislike my being dull, another day my being happy. I was not dull. Does that offend you?’
Karenin started and bent his hands to crack his fingers.
‘Oh, please don’t crack your fingers! I dislike it so!’ she said.
‘Anna, is this you?’ said he softly, making an effort and refraining from moving his hands.
‘But whatever is the matter?’ she asked in a tone of comical surprise and sincerity. ‘What do you want of me?’
Karenin paused and rubbed his forehead and eyes. He felt that instead of doing what he had meant to do and warning his wife that she was making a mistake in the eyes of the world, he was involuntarily getting excited about a matter which concerned her conscience, and was struggling against some barrier of his imagination.
‘This is what I intended to say,’ he continued coldly and calmly, ‘and I ask you to listen to me. As you know, I consider jealousy an insulting and degrading feeling and will never allow myself to be guided by it; but there are certain laws of propriety which