Anxiety

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'A splendid baby!' said Lizaveta Petrovna. Levin sighed with mortification. This splendid baby excited in him no feeling but disgust and compassion. It was not at all the feeling he had looked forward to. He turned away while Lizaveta Petrovna put the baby to the unaccustomed breast. Suddenly laughter made him look round. The baby had taken the breast. 'Come, that's enough, that's enough!' said Lizaveta Petrovna, but Kitty would not let the baby go. He fell asleep in her arms. 'Look, now,' said Kitty, turning the baby so that he could see it. The aged-looking little face suddenly puckered up still more and the baby sneezed. Smiling, hardly able to restrain his tears, Levin kissed his wife and went out of the dark room. What he felt towards this little creature was utterly unlike what he had expected. There was nothing cheerful and joyous in the feeling; on the contrary, it was a new torture of apprehension. It was the consciousness of a new sphere of liability to pain. And this sense was so painful at first, the apprehension lest this helpless creature should suffer was so intense, that it prevented him from noticing the strange thrill of senseless joy and even pride that he had felt when the baby sneezed. XVII S TEPAN A RKADYEVITCH ' S affairs were in a very bad way. The money for two-thirds of the forest had all been spent already, and he had borrowed from the merchant in advance at ten per cent discount almost all the remaining third. The merchant would not give more, especially as Darya Alexandrovna, for the first time that winter insisting on her right to her own property, had refused to sign the receipt for the payment of the last third of the forest. All his salary went on household expenses and in payment of petty debts that could not be put off. There was positively no money. This was unpleasant and awkward, and in Stepan Arkadyevitch's opinion things could not go on like this. The explanation of the position was, in his view, to be found in the fact that his salary was too small. The post he filled had been unmistakably very good five years ago, but it was so no longer.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  When they were left alone, Katavasov addressed him. 'What different positions they come from, all those fellows who are going off there,' Katavasov said vaguely, not wishing to express his own opinion, and at the same time anxious to find out the old man's views. The old man was an officer who had served on two campaigns. He knew what makes a soldier, and judging by the appearance and the talk of those persons, by the swagger with which they had recourse to the bottle on the journey, he considered them poor soldiers. Moreover, he lived in a district town, and he was longing to tell how one soldier had volunteered from his town, a drunkard and a thief whom no one would employ as a labourer. But knowing by experience that in the present condition of the public temper it was dangerous to express an opinion opposed to the general one, and especially to criticise the volunteers unfavourably, he too watched Katavasov without committing himself. 'Well, men are wanted there,' he said, laughing with his eyes. And they fell to talking of the last war news, and each concealed from the other his perplexity as to the engagement expected next day, since the Turks had been beaten, according to the latest news, at all points. And so they parted, neither giving expression to his opinion. Katavasov went back to his own carriage, and with reluctant hypocrisy reported to Sergey Ivanovitch his observations of the volunteers, from which it would appear that they were capital fellows. At the big station at a town the volunteers were again greeted with shouts and singing, again men and women with collecting-boxes appeared, and provincial ladies brought bouquets to the volunteers and followed them into the refreshment-room; but all this was on a much smaller and feebler scale than in Moscow. IV W HILE the train was stopping at the provincial town, Sergey Ivanovitch did not go to the refreshment-room, but walked up and down the platform. The first time he passed Vronsky's compartment he noticed that the curtain was drawn over the window; but as he passed it the second time he saw the old countess at the window. She beckoned to Koznishev. 'I'm going, you see, taking him as far as Kursk,' she said. 'Yes, so I heard,' said Sergey Ivanovitch, standing at her window and peeping in. 'What a noble act on his part!' he added, noticing that Vronsky was not in the compartment. 'Yes, after his misfortune, what was there for him to do?' 'What a terrible thing it was!' said Sergey Ivanovitch. 'Ah, what I have been through! But do get in. . . . Ah, what I have been through!' she repeated, when Sergey Ivanovitch had got in and sat down beside her. 'You can't conceive it! For six weeks he did not speak to anyone, and would not touch food except when I implored him.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Again, just as at the first moment of hearing of her rupture with her husband, Vronsky, on reading the letter, was unconsciously carried away by the natural sensation aroused in him by his own relation to the betrayed husband. Now while he held his letter in his hands, he could not help picturing the challenge, which he would not likely find at home today or tomorrow, and the duel itself, in which, with the same cold and haughty expression that his face was assuming at this moment, he would await the injured husband's shot, after having himself fired into the air. And at that instant there flashed across his mind the thought of what Serpuhovskoy had just said to him, and what he had himself been thinking in the morning—that it was better not to bind himself—and he knew that this thought he could not tell her. Having read the letter, he raised his eyes to her, and there was no determination in them. She saw at once that he had been thinking about it before by himself. She knew that whatever he might say to her, he would not say all he thought. And she knew that her last hope had failed her. This was not what she had been reckoning on. 'You see the sort of man he is,' she said, with a shaking voice; 'he . . . ' 'Forgive me, but I rejoice at it,' Vronsky interrupted. 'For God's sake, let me finish!' he added, his eyes imploring her to give him time to explain his words. 'I rejoice, because things cannot, cannot possibly remain as he supposes.' 'Why can't they?' Anna said, restraining her tears, and obviously attaching no sort of consequence to what he said. She felt that her fate was sealed. Vronsky meant that after the duel—inevitable, he thought—things could not go on as before, but he said something different. 'It can't go on. I hope that now you will leave him. I hope'—he was confused, and reddened—'that you will let me arrange and plan our life. Tomorrow…' he was beginning. She did not let him go on. 'But my child!' she shrieked. 'You see what he writes! I should have to leave him, and I can't and won't do that.' 'But, for God's sake, which is better?—leave your child, or keep up this degrading position?' 'To whom is it degrading?' 'To all, and most of all to you.' 'You say degrading . . . don't say that. Those words have no meaning for me,' she said in a shaking voice. She did not want him now to say what was untrue. She had nothing left her but his love, and she wanted to love him. 'Don't you understand that from the day I loved you everything has changed for me?

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  XXXIV B EFORE the end of the course of drinking the waters, Prince Shtcherbatsky, who had gone on from Carlsbad to Baden and Kissingen to Russian friends—to get a breath of Russian air, as he said—came back to his wife and daughter. The views of the prince and of the princess on life abroad were completely opposed. The princess thought everything delightful, and in spite of her established position in Russian society, she tried abroad to be like a European fashionable lady, which she was not—for the simple reason that she was a typical Russian gentlewoman; and so she was affected, which did not altogether suit her. The prince, on the contrary, thought everything foreign detestable, got sick of European life, kept to his Russian habits, and purposely tried to show himself abroad less European than he was in reality. The prince returned thinner, with the skin hanging in loose bags on his cheeks, but in the most cheerful frame of mind. His good-humour was even greater when he saw Kitty completely recovered. The news of Kitty's friendship with Madame Stahl and Varenka, and the reports the princess gave him of some kind of change she had noticed in Kitty, troubled the prince and aroused his habitual feeling of jealousy of everything that drew his daughter away from him, and a dread that his daughter might have got out of the reach of his influence into regions inaccessible to him. But these unpleasant matters were all drowned in the sea of kindliness and good-humour which was always within him, and more so than ever since his course of Carlsbad waters. The day after his arrival the prince, in his long overcoat, with his Russian wrinkles and baggy cheeks propped up by a starched collar, set off with his daughter to the spring in the greatest good-humour. It was a lovely morning: the bright, cheerful houses with their little gardens, the sight of the red-faced, red-armed beer-drinking German waitresses, working away merrily, did the heart good. But the nearer they got to the springs the oftener they met sick people; and their appearance seemed more pitiable than ever among the everyday conditions of prosperous German life. Kitty was no longer struck by this contrast.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  And in the whole arsenal of his convictions, so far from finding any satisfactory answers, he was utterly unable to find anything at all like an answer. He was in the position of a man seeking food in toy-shops and tool-shops. Instinctively, unconsciously, with every book, with every conversation, with every man he met, he was on the lookout for light on these questions and their solution. What puzzled and distracted him above everything was that the majority of men of his age and circle had, like him, exchanged their old beliefs for the same new convictions, and yet saw nothing to lament in this, and were perfectly satisfied and serene. So that, apart from the principal question, Levin was tortured by other questions too. Were these people sincere? he asked himself, or were they playing a part? or was it that they understood the answers science gave to these problems in some different, clearer sense than he did? And he assiduously studied both these men's opinions and the books which treated of these scientific explanations. One fact he had found out since these questions had engrossed his mind, was that he had been quite wrong in supposing from the recollections of the circle of his young days at college, that religion had outlived its day, and that it was now practically non-existent. All the people nearest to him who were good in their lives were believers. The old prince, and Lvov, whom he liked so much, and Sergey Ivanovitch, and all the women believed, and his wife believed as simply as he had believed in his earliest childhood, and ninety-nine hundredths of the Russian people, all the working-people for whose life he felt the deepest respect, believed. Another fact of which he became convinced, after reading many scientific books, was that the men who shared his views had no other construction to put on them, and that they gave no explanation of the questions which he felt he could not live without answering, but simply ignored their existence and attempted to explain other questions of no possible interest to him, such as the evolution of organisms, the materialistic theory of consciousness, etc. Moreover, during his wife's confinement, something had happened that seemed extraordinary to him. He, an unbeliever, had fallen into praying, and at the moment he prayed, he believed. But that moment had passed, and he could not make his state of mind at that moment fit into the rest of his life. He could not admit that at that moment he knew the truth, and that now he was wrong; for as soon as he began thinking calmly about it, it all fell to pieces. He could not admit that he was mistaken then, for his spiritual condition then was precious to him, and to admit that it was a proof of weakness would have been to desecrate those moments.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  (These latter days she used these names almost alternately.) 'I didn't expect you! I'm going through my wardrobe to see what's for whom . . . ' 'Oh! that's very nice!' he said gloomily, looking at the maid. 'You can go, Dunyasha, I'll call you presently,' said Kitty. 'Kostya, what's the matter?' she asked, definitely, adopting this familiar name as soon as the maid had gone out. She noticed his strange face, agitated and gloomy, and a panic came over her. 'Kitty, I'm in torture. I can't suffer alone,' he said with despair in his voice, standing before her and looking imploringly into her eyes. He saw already from her loving, truthful face, that nothing could come of what he had meant to say, but yet he wanted her to reassure him herself. 'I've come to say that there's still time. This can all be stopped and set right.' 'What? I don't understand. What is the matter?' 'What I have said a thousand times over, and can't help thinking . . . that I'm not worthy of you. You couldn't consent to marry me. Think a little. You've made a mistake. Think it over thoroughly. You can't love me. . . . If . . . better say so,' he said, not looking at her. 'I shall be wretched. Let people say what they like; anything's better than misery…. Far better now while there's still time….' 'I don't understand,' she answered, panic-stricken; 'you mean you want to give it up . . . don't want it?' 'Yes, if you don't love me.' 'You're out of your mind!' she cried, turning crimson with vexation. But his face was so piteous, that she restrained her vexation, and flinging some clothes off an armchair, she sat down beside him. 'What are you thinking? tell me all.' 'I am thinking you can't love me. What can you love me for?' 'My God! what can I do? .. .' she said, and burst into tears. 'Oh! what have I done?' he cried, and kneeling before her, he fell to kissing her hands. When the princess came into the room five minutes later, she found them completely reconciled. Kitty had not simply assured him that she loved him, but had gone so far—in answer to his question, what she loved him for—as to explain what for. She told him that she loved him because she understood him completely, because she knew what he would like, and because everything he liked was good. And this seemed to him perfectly clear. When the princess came to them, they were sitting side by side on the chest, sorting the dresses and disputing over Kitty's wanting to give Dunyasha the brown dress she had been wearing when Levin proposed to her, while he insisted that that dress must never be given away, but Dunyasha must have the blue one. 'How is it you don't see? She's a brunette, and it won't suit her. .. .

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'What an inclination we all have, though, for these cruel spectacles!' he said. 'I observe …' 'Eh? I don't understand,' said Anna contemptuously. He was offended and at once began to say what he had meant to say. 'I am obliged to tell you,' he began. 'So now we are to have it out,' she thought, and she felt frightened. 'I am obliged to tell you that your behaviour has been unbecoming today,' he said to her in French. 'In what way has my behaviour been unbecoming?' she said aloud, turning her head swiftly and looking him straight in the face, not with the bright expression that seemed covering something, but with a look of determination, under which she concealed with difficulty the dismay she was feeling. 'Mind,' he said, pointing to the open window opposite the coachman. He got up and pulled up the window. 'What did you consider unbecoming?' she repeated. 'The despair you were unable to conceal at the accident to one of the riders.' He waited for her to answer, but she was silent, looking straight before her. 'I have already begged you so to conduct yourself in society that even malicious tongues can find nothing to say against you. There was a time when I spoke of your inward attitude, but I am not speaking of that now. Now I speak only of your external attitude. You have behaved improperly, and I would wish it not to occur again.' She did not hear half of what he was saying; she felt panic-stricken before him, and was thinking whether it was true that Vronsky was not killed. Was it of him they were speaking when they said the rider was unhurt, but the horse had broken its back? She merely smiled with a pretence of irony when he finished, and made no reply, because she had not heard what he said. Alexey Alexandrovitch had begun to speak boldly, but as he realised plainly what he was speaking of, the dismay she was feeling infected him too. He saw the smile, and a strange misapprehension came over him. 'She is smiling at my suspicions. Yes, she will tell me directly what she told me before; that there is no foundation for my suspicions, that it's absurd.' At that moment, when the revelation of everything was hanging over him, there was nothing he expected so much as that she would answer mockingly as before that his suspicions were absurd and utterly groundless. So terrible to him was what he knew that now he was ready to believe anything. But the expression of her face, scared and gloomy, did not now promise even deception. 'Possibly I was mistaken,' said he. 'If so, I beg your pardon.' 'No, you were not mistaken,' she said deliberately, looking desperately into his cold face. 'You were not mistaken. I was, and I could not help being in despair.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Twenty minutes had passed. 'By now he has received the note and is coming back. Not long, ten minutes more.. . . But what if he doesn't come? No, that cannot be. He mustn't see me with tear-stained eyes. I'll go and wash. Yes, yes; did I do my hair or not?' she asked herself. And she could not remember. She felt her head with her hand. 'Yes, my hair has been done, but when I'did it I can't in the least remember.' She could not believe the evidence of her hand, and went up to the pier-glass to see whether she really had done her hair. She certainly had, but she could not think when she had done it. 'Who's that?' she thought, looking in the looking-glass at the swollen face with strangely glittering eyes, that looked in a scared way at her. 'Why, it's I ! ' she suddenly understood, and looking round, she seemed all at once to feel his kisses on her, and twitched her shoulders, shuddering. Then she lifted her hand to her lips and kissed it. 'What is it? Why, I'm going out of my mind!' and she went into her bedroom, where Annushka was tidying the room. 'Annushka,' she said, coming to a standstill before her, and she stared at the maid, not knowing what to say to her. 'You meant to go and see Darya Alexandrovna,' said the girl, as though she understood. 'Darya Alexandrovna? Yes, I'll go. 'Fifteen minutes there, fifteen minutes back. He's coming, he'll be here soon.' She took out her watch and looked at it. 'But how could he go away, leaving me in such a state? How can he live, without making it up with me?' She went to the window and began looking into the street. Judging by the time, he might be back now. But her calculations might be wrong, and she began once more to recall when he had started and to count the minutes. At the moment when she had moved away to the big clock to compare it with her watch, some one drove up. Glancing out of window, she saw his carriage. But no one came upstairs, and voices could be heard below. It was the messenger who had come back in the carriage. She went down to him. 'We didn't catch the count. The count had driven off on the lower city road.' 'What do you say? What! . ..' she said to the rosy, good-humoured Mihail, as he handed her back her note. 'Why, then, he has never received it!' she thought. 'Go with this note to Countess Vronsky's place, you know? and bring an answer back immediately,' she said to the messenger. 'And I, what am I going to do?' she thought. 'Yes, I'm going to Dolly's, that's true, or else I shall go out of my mind.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Where were you meaning to spend the evening?' 'Oh, nowhere specially. I promised Sviazhsky to go to the Society of Agriculture. By all means, let us go,' said Levin. 'Very good; come along. Find out if my carriage is here,' Stepan Arkadyevitch said to the waiter. Levin went up to the table, paid the forty roubles he had lost; paid his bill, the amount of which was in some mysterious way ascertained by the little old waiter who stood at the counter, and swinging his arms he walked through all the rooms to the way out. IX 'O BLONSKY' S carriage!' the porter shouted in an angry bass. The carriage drove up and both got in. It was only for the first few moments, while the carriage was driving out of the club-house gates, that Levin was still under the influence of the club atmosphere of repose, comfort, and unimpeachable good form. But as soon as the carriage drove out into the street, and he felt it jolting over the uneven road, heard the angry shout of a sledge-driver coming towards them, saw in the uncertain light the red blind of a tavern and the shops, this impression was dissipated, and he began to think over his actions, and to wonder whether he was doing right in going to see Anna. What would Kitty say? But Stepan Arkadyevitch gave him no time for reflection, and, as though divining his doubts, he scattered them. 'How glad I am,' he said, 'that you should know her! You know Dolly has long wished for it. And Lvov's been to see her, and often goes. Though she is my sister,' Stepan Arkadyevitch pursued, 'I don't hesitate to say that she's a remarkable woman. But you will see. Her position is very painful, especially now.' 'Why especially now?' 'We are carrying on negotiations with her husband about a divorce. And he's agreed; but there are difficulties in regard to the son, and the business, which ought to have been arranged long ago, has been dragging on for three months past. As soon as the divorce is over, she will marry Vronsky. How stupid these old ceremonies are, that no one believes in, and which only prevent people being comfortable!' Stepan Arkadyevitch put in. 'Well, then their position will be as regular as mine, as yours.' 'What is the difficulty?' said Levin. 'Oh, it's a long and tedious story! The whole business is in such an anomalous position with us. But the point is she has been for three months in Moscow, where everyone knows her, waiting for the divorce; she goes out nowhere, sees no woman except Dolly, because, do you understand, she doesn't care to have people come as a favour. That fool Princess Varvara, even she has left her, considering this a breach of propriety. Well, you see, in such a position any other woman would not have found resources in herself.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Only during the first day of his stay in Moscow Levin had been struck by the expenditure, strange to one living in the country, unproductive but inevitable, that was expected of him on every side. But by now he had grown used to it. That had happened to him in this matter which is said to happen to drunkards—the first glass sticks in the throat, the second flies down like a hawk, but after the third they're like tiny little birds. When Levin had changed his first hundred-rouble note to pay for liveries for his footmen and hall-porter, he could not help reflecting that these liveries were of no use to anyone—but they were indubitably necessary, to judge by the amazement of the princess and Kitty when he suggested that they might do without liveries,—that these liveries would cost the wages of two labourers for the summer, that is, would pay for about three hundred working days from Easter to Ash-Wednesday, and each day of hard work from early morning to late evening—and that hundred-rouble note did stick in his throat. But the next note, changed to pay for providing a dinner for their relations, that cost twenty-eight roubles, though it did excite in Levin the reflection that twenty-eight roubles meant nine measures of oats, which men would with groans and sweat have reaped and bound and threshed and winnowed and sifted and sown,—this next one he parted with more easily. And now the notes he changed no longer aroused such reflections, and they flew off like little birds. Whether the labour devoted to obtaining the money corresponded to the pleasure given by what was bought with it, was a consideration he had long ago dismissed. His business calculation that there was a certain price below which he could not sell certain grain was forgotten too. The rye, for the price of which he had so long held out, had been sold for fifty kopecks a measure cheaper than it had been fetching a month ago. Even the consideration that with such an expenditure he could not go on living for a year without debt, that even had no force. Only one thing was essential: to have money in the bank, without inquiring where it came from, so as to know that one had the wherewithal to buy meat for tomorrow. And this condition had hitherto been fulfilled; he had always had the money in the bank. But now the money in the bank had gone, and he could not quite tell where to get the next instalment. And this it was which, at the moment when Kitty had mentioned money, had disturbed him; but he had no time to think about it. He drove off, thinking of Katavasov and the meeting with Metrov that was before him. III L EVIN had on this visit to town seen a great deal of his old friend at the university, Professor Katavasov, whom he had not seen since his marriage.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Sport has, in my opinion, a great value, and as is always the case, we see nothing but what is most superficial.' 'It's not superficial,' said Princess Tverskoy. 'One of the officers, they say, has broken two ribs.' Alexey Alexandrovitch smiled his smile, which uncovered his teeth, but revealed nothing more. 'We'll admit, princess, that that's not superficial,' he said, 'but internal. But that's not the point,' and he turned again to the general with whom he was talking seriously; 'we mustn't forget that those who are taking part in the race are military men, who have chosen that career, and one must allow that every calling has its disagreeable side. It forms an integral part of the duties of an officer. Low sports, such as prizefighting or Spanish bull-fights, are a sign of barbarity. But specialised trials of skill are a sign of development.' 'No, I shan't come another time; it's too upsetting,' said Princess Betsy. 'Isn't it, Anna?' 'It is upsetting, but one can't tear oneself away,' said another lady. 'If I'd been a Roman woman I should never have missed a single circus.' Anna said nothing, and keeping her opera-glass up, gazed always at the same spot. At that moment a tall general walked through the pavilion. Breaking off what he was saying, Alexey Alexandrovitch got up hurriedly, though with dignity, and bowed low to the general. 'You're not racing?' the officer asked, chaffing him. 'My race is a harder one,' Alexey Alexandrovitch responded deferentially. And though the answer meant nothing, the general looked as though he had heard a witty remark from a witty man, and fully relished la pointe de la sauce. 'There are two aspects,' Alexey Alexandrovitch resumed: 'those who take part and those who look on; and love for such spectacles is an unmistakable proof of a low degree of development in the spectator, I admit, but . . . ' 'Princess, bets!' sounded Stepan Arkadyevitch's voice from below, addressing Betsy. 'Who's your favourite?' 'Anna and I are for Kuzovlev,' replied Betsy. 'I'm for Vronsky. A pair of gloves?' 'Done!' 'But it is a pretty sight, isn't it?' Alexey Alexandrovitch paused while there was talking about him, but he began again directly. 'I admit that manly sports do not . . .' he was continuing. But at that moment the racers started, and all conversation ceased. Alexey Alexandrovitch too was silent, and everyone stood up and turned towards the stream. Alexey Alexandrovitch took no interest in the race, and so he did not watch the racers, but fell to listlessly scanning the spectators with his weary eyes. His eyes rested upon Anna. Her face was white and set. She was obviously seeing nothing and no one but one man. Her hand had convulsively clutched her fan, and she held her breath.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  There is no one of his old friends in the regiment Alexey cares for as he does for you.' 'Delighted,' said Yashvin with a smile, from which Vronsky could see that he liked Anna very much. Yashvin said good-bye 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 you up in a moment,' he called to Yashvin. 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 even teeth, and he kissed her hand. 'Alexey, you have not changed to me?' she said, pressing his hand in both of hers. 'Alexey, 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 in a tone of offence, and she walked quickly away from him. XXXII W HEN 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 Yashvin 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 Oblonsky. 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 Tushkevitch made his appearance with a message from Princess Betsy.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Or perhaps about Kitty, that he feels he was to blame?' All her conjectures were unpleasant, but she did not guess what he really wanted to talk about to her. 'You have so much influence with Anna, she is so fond of you,' he said; 'do help me.' Darya Alexandrovna looked with timid inquiry into his energetic face, which under the lime-trees was continually being lighted up in patches by the sunshine, and then passing into complete shadow again. She waited for him to say more, but he walked in silence beside her, scratching with his cane in the gravel. 'You have come to see us, you, the only woman of Anna's former friends—I don't count Princess Varvara—but I know that you have done this not because you regard our position as normal, but because, understanding all the difficulty of the position, you still love her and want to be a help to her. Have I understood you rightly?' he asked, looking round at her. 'Oh, yes,' answered Darya Alexandrovna, putting down her sunshade, 'but . . .' 'No,' he broke in, and unconsciously, oblivious of the awkward position in which he was putting his companion, he stopped abruptly, so that she had to stop short too. 'No one feels more deeply and intensely than I do all the difficulty of Anna's position; and that you may well understand, if you do me the honour of supposing I have any heart. I am to blame for that position, and that is why I feel it.' 'I understand,' said Darya Alexandrovna, involuntarily admiring the sincerity and firmness with which he said this. 'But just because you feel yourself responsible, you exaggerate it, I am afraid,' she said. 'Her position in the world is difficult, I can well understand.' 'In the world it is hell!' he brought out quickly, frowning darkly. 'You can't imagine moral sufferings greater than what she went through in Petersburg in that fortnight. .. and I beg you to believe it.' 'Yes, but here, so long as neither Anna . . . nor you miss society . . .' 'Society!' he said contemptuously, 'how could I miss society?' 'So far—and it may be so always—you are happy and at peace. I see in Anna that she is happy, perfectly happy, she has had time to tell me so much already,' said Darya Alexandrovna, smiling; and involuntarily, as she said this, at the same moment a doubt entered her mind whether Anna really were happy. But Vronsky, it appeared, had no doubts on that score. 'Yes, yes,' he said, 'I know that she has revived after all her sufferings; she is happy. She is happy in the present. But I? . . . I am afraid of what is before us . . . I beg your pardon, you would like to walk on?' 'No, I don't mind.' 'Well, then, let us sit here.'

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  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 Sergey Ivanovitch, 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 defence 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 to 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 boy 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 nice 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 well-known step on the steps of the terrace. 'What's that you don't want to think about?' inquired Levin, coming on to the terrace. But no one answered him, and he did not repeat the question. 'I'm sorry I've broken in on your feminine parliament,' 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 Agafea Mihalovna, vexation at their making jam without water, and altogether at the outside Shtcherbatsky element. 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 old carts did. Well, are we going for the children?

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  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 Alexey Alexandrovitch. To his relief Alexey Alexandrovitch was not in the theatre that evening. 'How little of the military man there is left in you!' Serpuhovskoy 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 black coat,' answered Vronsky, smiling and slowly taking out his opera-glass. 'Well, I'll own I envy you there. When I come back from abroad and put on this,' he touched his epaulettes, 'I regret my freedom.' Serpuhovskoy 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 one ear, moved his opera-glass from the stalls and scanned the boxes. Near a lady in a turban and a bald old man, who seemed to wave angrily in the moving opera-glass, Vronsky suddenly caught sight of Anna's head, proud, strikingly beautiful, and smiling in the 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 Yashvin. 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 towards 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-glass 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. Yashvin's face wore the expression which was common when he was losing at cards. Scowling, he sucked the left end of his moustache further and further into his mouth, and cast sidelong glances at the next box. In that box on the left were the Kartasovs. Vronsky knew them, and knew that Anna was acquainted with them. Madame Kartasoy, 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.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'Kindly consider,' he began, 'cases of that kind are, as you are aware, under ecclesiastical jurisdiction; the reverend fathers are fond of going into the minutest details in cases of the kind,' he said with a smile, which betrayed his sympathy with the reverend fathers' taste. 'Letters may, of course, be a partial confirmation; but detection in the fact there must be of the most direct kind, that is, by eye-witnesses. In fact, if you do me the honour to intrust your confidence to me, you will do well to leave me the choice of the measures to be employed. If one wants the result, one must admit the means.' 'If it is so . . .' Alexey Alexandrovitch began, suddenly turning white; but at that moment the lawyer rose and again went to the door to speak to the intruding clerk. 'Tell her we don't haggle over fees!' he said, and returned to Alexey Alexandrovitch. On his way back he caught unobserved another moth. 'Nice state my rep curtains will be in by the summer!' he thought, frowning. 'And so you were saying? . . . ' he said. 'I will communicate my decision to you by letter,' said Alexey Alexandrovitch, getting up, and he clutched at the table. After standing a moment in silence, he said: 'From your words I may consequently conclude that a divorce may be obtained? I would ask you to let me know what are your terms.' 'It may be obtained if you give me complete liberty of action,' said the lawyer, not answering his question. 'When can I reckon on receiving information from you?' he asked, moving towards the door, his eyes and his varnished boots shining. 'In a week's time. Your answer as to whether you will undertake to conduct the case, and on what terms, you will be so good as to communicate to me.' 'Very good.' The lawyer bowed respectfully, let his client out of the door, and, left alone, gave himself up to his sense of amusement. He felt so mirthful that, contrary to his rules, he made a reduction in his terms to the haggling lady, and gave up catching moths, finally deciding that next winter he must have the furniture covered with velvet, like Sigonin's. VI A LEXEY A LEXANDROVITCH had gained a brilliant victory at the sitting of the Commission of the 17th of August, but in the sequel this victory cut the ground from under his feet. The new commission for the inquiry into the condition of the native tribes in all its branches had been formed and despatched to its destination with an unusual speed and energy inspired by Alexey Alexandrovitch. Within three months a report was presented.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Besides, they're received everywhere, and I '—she laid special stress on the I— 'have never been strict and intolerant. It's simply that I haven't the time.' 'No; you don't care, perhaps, to meet Stremov? Let him and Alexey Alexandrovitch tilt at each other in the committee—that's no affair of ours. But in the world, he's the most amiable man I know, and a devoted croquet-player. You shall see. And, in spite of his absurd position as Liza's lovesick swain at his age, you ought to see how he carries off the absurd position. He's very nice. Sappho Shtoltz you don't know? Oh, that's a new type, quite new.' Betsy said all this, and, at the same time, from her good-humoured, shrewd glance, Anna felt that she partly guessed her plight, and was hatching something for her benefit. They were in the little boudoir. 'I must write to Alexey though,' and Betsy sat down to the table, scribbled a few lines, and put the note in an envelope. 'I'm telling him to come to dinner. I've one lady extra to dinner with me, and no man to take her in. Look what I've said, will that persuade him? Excuse me, I must leave you for a minute. Would you seal it up, please, and send it off?' she said from the door; 'I have to give some directions.' Without a moment's thought, Anna sat down to the table with Betsy's letter, and, without reading it, wrote below: 'It's essential for me to see you. Come to the Vrede garden. I shall be there at six o'clock.' She sealed it up, and, Betsy coming back, in her presence handed the note to be taken. At tea, which was brought them on a little tea-table in the cool little drawing-room, the cosy chat promised by Princess Tverskoy before the arrival of her visitors really did come off between the two women. They criticised the people they were expecting, and the conversation fell upon Liza Merkalov. 'She's very sweet, and I always liked her,' said Anna. 'You ought to like her. She raves about you. Yesterday she came up to me after the races and was in despair at not finding you. She says you're a real heroine of romance, and that if she were a man she would do all sorts of mad things for your sake. Stremov says she does that as it is.' 'But do tell me, please, I never could make it out,' said Anna, after being silent for some time, speaking in a tone that showed she was not asking an idle question, but what she was asking was of more importance to her than it should have been: 'do tell me, please, what are her relations with Prince Kaluzhsky, Mishka, as he's called? I've met them so little. What does it mean?' Betsy smiled with her eyes, and looked intently at Anna. 'It's a new manner,' she said. 'They've all adopted that manner.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  She did not answer, and, bending her head a little, she looked inquiringly at him from under her brows, her eyes shining under their long lashes. Her hand shook as it played with a leaf she had picked. He saw it, and his face expressed that utter subjection, that slavish devotion, which had done so much to win her. 'I see something has happened. Do you suppose I can be at peace, knowing you have a trouble I am not sharing? Tell me, for God's sake,' he repeated imploringly. 'Yes; I shan't be able to forgive him if he does not realise all the gravity of it. Better not tell; why put him to the proof?' she thought, still staring at him in the same way, and feeling the hand that held the leaf was trembling more and more. 'For God's sake!' he repeated, taking her hand. 'Shall I tell you?' 'Yes, yes, yes . . . ' 'I'm with child,' she said, softly and deliberately. The leaf in her hand shook more violently, but she did not take her eyes off him, watching how he would take it. He turned white, would have said something, but stopped; he dropped her hand, and his head sank on his breast. 'Yes, he realises all the gravity of it,' she thought, and gratefully she pressed his hand. But she was mistaken in thinking he realised the gravity of the fact as she, a woman, realised it. On hearing it, he felt come upon him with tenfold intensity that strange feeling of loathing of someone. But at the same time, he felt that the turning-point he had been longing for had come now; that it was impossible to go on concealing things from her husband, and it was inevitable in one way or another that they should soon put an end to their unnatural position. But, besides that, her emotion physically affected him in the same way. He looked at her with a look of submissive tenderness, kissed her hand, got up, and, in silence, paced up and down the terrace. 'Yes,' he said, going up to her resolutely. 'Neither you nor I have looked on our relations as a passing amusement, and now our fate is sealed. It is absolutely necessary to put an end'—he looked round as he spoke—'to the deception in which we are living.' 'Put an end? How put an end, Alexey?' she said softly. She was calmer now, and her face lighted up with a tender smile. 'Leave your husband and make our life one.' 'It is one as it is,' she answered, scarcely audibly. 'Yes, but altogether; altogether.' 'But how, Alexey, tell me how?' she said in melancholy mockery at the hopelessness of her own position. 'Is there any way out of such a position? Am I not the wife of my husband?'

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  This boy was more often than anyone else a check upon their freedom. When he was present, both Vronsky and Anna did not merely avoid speaking of anything that they could not have repeated before everyone; they did not even allow themselves to refer by hints to anything the boy did not understand. They had made no agreement about this, it had settled itself. They would have felt it wounding themselves to deceive the child. In his presence they talked like acquaintances. But in spite of this caution, Vronsky often saw the child's intent, bewildered glance fixed upon him, and a strange shyness, uncertainty, at one time friendliness, at another, coldness and reserve, in the boy's manner to him; as though the child felt that between this man and his mother there existed some important bond, the significance of which he could not understand. As a fact the boy did feel that he could not understand this relation, and he tried painfully, and was not able to make clear to himself what feeling he ought to have for this man. With a child's keen instinct for every manifestation of feeling, he saw distinctly that his father, his governess, his nurse,—all did not merely dislike Vronsky, but looked on him with horror and aversion, though they never said anything about him, while his mother looked on him as her greatest friend. 'What does it mean? Who is he? How ought I to love him? If I don't know, it's my fault; either I'm stupid or a naughty boy,' thought the child. And this was what caused his dubious, inquiring, sometimes hostile, expression, and the shyness and uncertainty which Vronsky found so irksome. This child's presence always and infallibly called up in Vronsky that strange feeling of inexplicable loathing which he had experienced of late. This child's presence called up both in Vronsky and in Anna a feeling akin to the feeling of a sailor who sees by the compass that the direction in which he is swiftly moving is far from the right one, but that to arrest his motion is not in his power, that every instant is carrying him further and further away, and that to admit to himself his deviation from the right direction is the same as admitting his certain ruin. This child, with his innocent outlook upon life, was the compass that showed them the point to which they had departed from what they knew, but did not want to know. This time Seryozha was not at home, and she was completely alone. She was sitting on the terrace waiting for the return of her son, who had gone out for his walk and been caught in the rain. She had sent a manservant and a maid out to look for him. Dressed in a white gown, deeply embroidered, she was sitting in a corner of the terrace behind some flowers, and did not hear him.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  She spoke very simply and naturally, but too much and too fast. She was the more aware of this from noticing in the inquisitive look Mihail Vassilievitch turned on her that he was, as it were, keeping watch on her. Mihail Vassilievitch promptly went out on the terrace. She sat down beside her husband. 'You don't look quite well,' she said. 'Yes,' he said; 'the doctor's been with me today and wasted an hour of my time. I feel that someone of our friends must have sent him: my health's so precious, it seems.' 'No; what did he say?' She questioned him about his health and what he had been doing, and tried to persuade him to take a rest and come out to her. All this she said brightly, rapidly, and with a peculiar brilliance in her eyes. But Alexey Alexandrovitch did not now attach any special significance to this tone of hers. He heard only her words and gave them only the direct sense they bore. And he answered simply, though jestingly. There was nothing remarkable in all this conversation, but never after could Anna recall this brief scene without an agonising pang of shame. Seryozha came in preceded by his governess. If Alexey Alexandrovitch had allowed himself to observe he would have noticed the timid and bewildered eyes with which Seryozha glanced first at his father and then at his mother. But he would not see anything, and he did not see it. 'Ah, the young man! He's grown. Really, he's getting quite a man. How are you, young man?' And he gave his hand to the scared child. Seryozha had been shy of his father before, and now, ever since Alexey Alexandrovitch had taken to calling him young man, and since that insoluble question had occurred to him whether Vronsky were a friend or a foe, he avoided his father. He looked round towards his mother as though seeking shelter. It was only with his mother that he was at ease. Meanwhile, Alexey Alexandrovitch was holding his son by the shoulder while he was speaking to the governess, and Seryozha was so miserably uncomfortable that Anna saw he was on the point of tears. Anna, who had flushed a little the instant her son came in, noticing that Seryozha was uncomfortable, got up hurriedly, took Alexey Alexandrovitch's hand from her son's shoulder, and kissing the boy, led him out on to the terrace, and quickly came back. 'It's time to start, though,' said she, glancing at her watch. 'How is it Betsy doesn't come? . . .' 'Yes,' said Alexey Alexandrovitch, and getting up, he folded his hands and cracked his fingers. 'I've come to bring you some money too, for nightingales, we know, can't live on fairy tales,' he said. 'You want it, I expect?'