Shame

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)

  'No, I'm not nice at all. Come, tell me . . . Stop a minute, let's sit down,' said Kitty, making her sit down again beside her. 'Tell me, isn't it humiliating to think that a man has disdained your love, that he hasn't cared for it? . . .' 'But he didn't disdain it; I believe he cared for me, but he was a dutiful son …' 'Yes, but if it hadn't been on account of his mother, if it had been his own doing? . . .' said Kitty, feeling she was giving away her secret, and that her face, burning with the flush of shame, had betrayed her already. 'In that case he would have done wrong, and I should not have regretted him,' answered Varenka, evidently realising that they were now talking not of her, but of Kitty. 'But the humiliation,' said Kitty, 'the humiliation one can never forget, can never forget,' she said, remembering her look at the last ball during the pause in the music. 'Where is the humiliation? Why, you did nothing wrong?' 'Worse than wrong—shameful.' Varenka shook her head and laid her hand on Kitty's hand. 'Why, what is there shameful?' she said. 'You didn't tell a man, who didn't care for you, that you loved him, did you?' 'Of course not; I never said a word, but he knew it. No, no; there are looks, there are ways. I can't forget it, if I live a hundred years.' 'Why so? I don't understand. The whole point is whether you love him now or not,' said Varenka, who called everything by its name. 'I hate him; I can't forgive myself.' 'Why, what for?' 'The shame, the humiliation!' 'Oh! if everyone were as sensitive as you are!' said Varenka. 'There isn't a girl who hasn't been through the same. And it's all so unimportant.' 'Why, what is important?' said Kitty, looking into her face with inquisitive wonder. 'Oh, there's so much that's important,' said Varenka, smiling. 'Why, what?' 'Oh, so much that's more important,' answered Varenka, not knowing what to say. But at that instant they heard the princess's voice from the window. 'Kitty, it's cold! Either get a shawl, or come indoors.' 'It really is time to go in!' said Varenka, getting up. 'I have to go on to Madame Berthe's; she asked me to.' Kitty held her by the hand, and with passionate curiosity and entreaty her eyes asked her: 'What is it, what is this of such importance that gives you such tranquillity? You know, tell me!' But Varenka did not even know what Kitty's eyes were asking her. She merely thought that she had to go to see Madame Berthe too that evening, and to make haste home in time for maman's tea at twelve o'clock. She went indoors, collected her music, and saying good-bye to everyone, was about to go. 'Allow me to see you home,' said the colonel.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  I meant to have come to you,' she said; 'I had a letter from Stiva today.' 'We had a telegram too,' answered Anna, looking round for Kitty. 'He writes that he can't make out quite what Alexey Alexandrovitch wants, but he won't go away without a decisive answer.' 'I thought you had someone with you. Can I see the letter?' 'Yes; Kitty,' said Dolly, embarrassed. 'She stayed in the nursery. She has been very ill.' 'So I heard. May I see the letter?' 'I'll get it directly. But he doesn't refuse; on the contrary, Stiva has hopes,' said Dolly, stopping in the doorway. 'I haven't, and indeed I don't wish it,' said Anna. 'What's this? Does Kitty consider it degrading to meet me?' thought Anna when she was alone. 'Perhaps she's right, too. But it's not for her, the girl who was in love with Vronsky, it's not for her to show me that, even if it is true. I know that in my position I can't be received by any decent woman. I knew that from the first moment I sacrificed everything to him. And this is my reward! Oh, how I hate him! And what did I come here for? I'm worse here, more miserable.' She heard from the next room the sister's voices in consultation. 'And what am I going to say to Dolly now? Amuse Kitty by the sight of my wretchedness, submit to her patronising? No; and besides, Dolly wouldn't understand. And it would be no good my telling her. It would only be interesting to see Kitty, to show her how I despise everyone and everything, how nothing matters to me now.' Dolly came in with the letter. Anna read it and handed it back in silence. 'I knew all that,' she said, 'and it doesn't interest me in the least.' 'Oh, why so? On the contrary, I have hopes,' said Dolly, looking inquisitively at Anna. She had never seen her in such a strangely irritable condition. 'When are you going away?' she asked. Anna, half-closing her eyes, looked straight before her and did not answer. 'Why does Kitty shrink from me?' she said, looking at the door and flushing red. 'Oh, what nonsense! She's nursing, and things aren't going right with her, and I've been advising her. . . . She's delighted. She'll be here in a minute,' said Dolly awkwardly, not clever at lying. 'Yes, here she is.' Hearing that Anna had called, Kitty had wanted not to appear, but Dolly persuaded her. Rallying her forces, Kitty went in, walked up to her, blushing, and shook hands. 'I am so glad to see you,' she said with a trembling voice. Kitty had been thrown into confusion by the inward conflict between her antagonism to this bad woman and her desire to be nice to her. But as soon as she saw Anna's lovely and attractive face, all feeling of antagonism disappeared.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  During these two hours in Volgarinov's waiting-room Stepan Arkadyevitch, stepping jauntily about the room, pulling his whiskers, entering into conversation with the other petitioners, and inventing an epigram on his position, assiduously con cealed from others, and even from himself, the feeling he was experiencing. But all the time he was uncomfortable and angry, he could not have said why—whether because he could not get his epigram just right, or from some other reason. When at last Volgarinov had received him with exaggerated politeness and unmistakable triumph at his humiliation, and had all but refused the favour asked of him, Stepan Arkadyevitch had made haste to forget it all as soon as possible. And now, at the mere recollection, he blushed. XVIII 'Now there is something I want to talk about, and you know what it is. About Anna,' Stepan Arkadyevitch said, pausing for a brief space, and shaking off the unpleasant impression. As soon as Oblonsky uttered Anna's name, the face of Alexey Alexandrovitch was completely transformed; all the life was gone out of it, and it looked weary and dead. 'What is it exactly that you want from me?' he said, moving in his chair and snapping his pince-nez. 'A definite settlement, Alexey Alexandrovitch, some settlement of the position. I'm appealing to you' ('not as an injured husband,' Stepan Arkadyevitch was going to say, but afraid of wrecking his negotiation by this, he changed the words) 'not as a statesman' (which did not sound à propos), 'but simply as a man, and a good-hearted man and a Christian. You must have pity on her,' he said. 'That is, in what way precisely?' Karenin said softly. 'Yes, pity on her. If you had seen her as I have! —I have been spending all the winter with her—you would have pity on her. Her position is awful, simply awful!' 'I had imagined,' answered Alexey Alexandrovitch in a higher, almost shrill voice, 'that Anna Arkadyevna had everything she had desired for herself.' 'Oh, Alexey Alexandrovitch, for heaven's sake, don't let us indulge in recriminations! What is past is past, and you know what she wants and is waiting for—divorce.' 'But I believe Anna Arkadyevna refuses a divorce, if I make it a condition to leave me my son. I replied in that sense, and supposed that the matter was ended. I consider it at an end,' shrieked Alexey Alexandrovitch. 'But, for heaven's sake, don't get hot!' said Stepan Arkadyevitch, touching his brother-in-law's knee. 'The matter is not ended. If you will allow me to recapitulate, it was like this: when you parted, you were as magnanimous as could possibly be; you were ready to give her everything—freedom, divorce even. She appreciated that. No, don't think that. She did appreciate it—to such a degree that at the first moment, feeling how she had wronged you, she did not consider and could not consider everything.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  This was Nevyedovsky himself. Sviazhsky introduced him to Levin. 'Well, you find it exciting too?' said Stepan Arkadyevitch, winking at Vronsky. 'It's something like a race. One might bet on it. ' 'Yes, it is keenly exciting,' said Vronsky. 'And once taking the thing up, one's eager to see it through. It's a fight !' he said, scowling and setting his powerful jaws. 'What a capable fellow Sviazhsky is! Sees it all so clearly.' 'C' yes!' Vronsky assented indifferently. A silence followed, during which Vronsky—since he had to look at something—looked at Levin, at his feet, at his uniform, then at his face, and noticing his gloomy eyes fixed upon him, he said, in order to say something— 'How is it that you, living constantly in the country, are not a justice of the peace? You are not in the uniform of one.' 'It's because I consider that the justice of the peace is a silly institution,' Levin answered gloomily. He had been all the time looking for an opportunity to enter into conversation with Vronsky, so as to smooth over his rudeness at their first meeting. 'I don't think so, quite the contrary,! Vronsky said, with quiet surprise. 'It's a plaything,' Levin cut him short. 'We don't want justices of the peace. I've never had a single thing to do with them during eight years. And what I have had was decided wrongly by them. The justice of the peace is over thirty miles from me. For some matter of two roubles I should have to send a lawyer; who costs me fifteen.' And he related how a peasant had stolen some flour from the miller, and when the miller told him of it, had lodged a complaint for slander. All this was utterly uncalled for and stupid, and Levin felt it himself as he said it. 'Oh, this is such an original fellow!' said Stepan Arkadyevitch with his most soothing, almond-oil smile. 'But come along; I think they're voting.. .' And they separated. 'I can't understand,' said Sergey Ivanovitch, who had observed his brother's clumsiness, 'I can't understand how anyone can be so absolutely devoid of political tact. That's where we Russians are so deficient. The marshal of the province is our opponent, and with him you're ami cochon, and you beg him to stand. Count Vronsky, now . . . I'm not making a friend of him; he's asked me to dinner, and I'm not going; but he's one of our side—why make an enemy of him? Then you ask Nevyedovsky if he's going to stand. That's not a thing to do.' 'Oh, I don't understand it at all! And it's all such nonsense,' Levin answered gloomily. 'You say it's all such nonsense, but as soon as you have anything to do with it, you make a muddle.' Levin did not answer, and they walked together into the big room.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'I must be going home,' said Varenka, getting up, and again she went off into a giggle. When she had recovered, she said good-bye, and went into the house to get her hat. Kitty followed her. Even Varenka struck her as different. She was not worse, but different from what she had fancied her before. 'Oh dear! it's a long while since I've laughed so much!' said Varenka, gathering up her parasol and her bag. 'How nice he is, your father!' Kitty did not speak. 'When shall I see you again?' asked Varenka. 'Mamma meant to go and see the Petrovs. Won't you be there?' said Kitty, to try Varenka. 'Yes,' answered Varenka. 'They're getting ready to go away, so I promised to help them pack.' 'Well, I'll come too, then.' 'No, why should you?' 'Why not? why not? why not?' said Kitty, opening her eyes wide, and clutching at Varenka's parasol, so as not to let her go. 'No, wait a minute; why not?' 'Oh, nothing; your father has come, and besides, they will feel awkward at your helping.' 'No, tell me why you don't want me to be often at the Petrovs. You don't want me to—why not?' 'I didn't say that,' said Varenka quietly. 'No, please tell me!' 'Tell you everything?' said Varenka. 'Everything, everything!' Kitty assented. 'Well, there's really nothing of any consequence; only that Mihail Alexeyevitch (that was the artist's name) had meant to leave earlier, and now he doesn't want to go away,' said Varenka, smiling. 'Well, well!' Kitty urged impatiently, looking darkly at Varenka. 'Well, and for some reason Anna Pavlovna told him that he didn't want to go because you are here. Of course, that was nonsense; but there was a dispute over it—over you. You know how irritable these sick people are.' Kitty, scowling more than ever, kept silent, and Varenka went on speaking alone, trying to soften or soothe her, and seeing a storm coming—she did not know whether of tears or of words. 'So you'd better not go. . . . You understand; you won't be offended? . . .' 'And it serves me right! And it serves me right!' Kitty cried quickly, snatching the parasol out of Varenka's hand, and looking past her friend's face. Varenka felt inclined to smile, looking at her childish fury, but she was afraid of wounding her. 'How does it serve you right? I don't understand,' she said. 'It serves me right, because it was all sham; because it was all done on purpose, and not from the heart. What business had I to interfere with outsiders? And so it's come about that I'm cause of a quarrel, and that I've done what nobody asked me to do. Because it was all a sham! a sham! a sham! . . .'

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Having filled a sheet of paper, he got up, rang, and sent a note to the chief secretary of his department to look up certain necessary facts for him. Getting up and walking about the room, he glanced again at the portrait, frowned and smiled contemptuously. After reading a little more of the book on Egyptian hieroglyphics, and renewing his interest in it, Alexey Alexandrovitch went to bed at eleven o'clock, and recollecting as he lay in bed the incident with his wife, he saw it now in by no means such a gloomy light. XV T HOUGH Anna had obstinately and with exasperation contradicted Vronsky when he told her their position was impossible, at the bottom of her heart she regarded her own position as false and dishonourable, and she longed with her whole soul to change it. On the way home from the races she had told her husband the truth in a moment of excitement, and in spite of the agony she had suffered in doing so, she was glad of it. After her husband had left her, she told herself that she was glad, that now everything was made clear, and at least there would be no more lying and deception. It seemed to her beyond doubt that her position was now made clear for ever. It might be bad, this new position, but it would be clear; there would be no indefiniteness or falsehood about it. The pain she had caused herself and her husband in uttering those words would be rewarded now by everything being made clear, she thought. That evening she saw Vronsky, but she did not tell him of what had passed between her and her husband, though, to make the position definite, it was necessary to tell him. When she woke up next morning the first thing that rose to her mind was what she had said to her husband, and those words seemed to her so awful that she could not conceive now how she could have brought herself to utter those strange, coarse words, and could not imagine what would come of it. But the words were spoken, and Alexey Alexandrovitch had gone away without saying anything. 'I saw Vronsky and did not tell him. At the very instant he was going away I would have turned him back and told him, but I changed my mind, because it was strange that I had not told him the first minute. Why was it I wanted to tell him and did not tell him?' And in answer to this question a burning blush of shame spread over her face.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  But supposing that, as always, you don't think of yourself, what can it lead to?—to fresh suffering for you, to torture for the child. If there were a trace of humanity left in her, she ought not to wish for it herself. No, I have no hesitation in saying I advise not, and if you will intrust it to me, I will write to her.' And Alexey Alexandrovitch consented, and Countess Lidia Ivanovna sent the following letter in French: — 'D EAR M ADAME ,—To be reminded of you might have results for your son in leading to questions on his part which could not be answered without implanting in the child's soul a spirit of censure towards what should be for him sacred, and therefore I beg you to interpret your husband's refusal in the spirit of Christian love. I pray to Almighty God to have mercy on you. C OUNTESS L IDIA .' This letter attained the secret object which Countess Lidia Ivanovna had concealed from herself. It wounded Anna to the quick. For his part, Alexey Alexandrovitch, on returning home from Lidia Ivanovna's, could not all that day concentrate himself on his usual pursuits, and find that spiritual peace of one saved and believing which he had felt of late. The thought of his wife, who had so greatly sinned against him, and towards whom he had been so saintly, as Countess Lidia Ivanovna had so justly told him, ought not to have troubled him; but he was not easy; he could not understand the book he was reading; he could not drive away harassing recollections of his relations with her, of the mistake which, as it now seemed, he had made in regard to her. The memory of how he had received her confession of infidelity on their way home from the races (especially that he had insisted only on the observance of external decorum, and had not sent a challenge) tortured him like a remorse. He was tortured too by the thought of the letter he had written her; and most of all, his forgiveness, which nobody wanted, and his care of the other man's child made his heart burn with shame and remorse. And just the same feeling of shame and regret he felt now, as he reviewed all his past with her, recalling the awkward words in which, after long wavering, he had made her an offer. 'But how have I been to blame?' he said to himself. And this question always excited another question in him—whether they felt differently, did their loving and marrying differently, these Vronskys and Oblonskys…. these gentlemen of the bedchamber, with their fine calves. And there passed before his mind a whole series of these mettlesome, vigorous, self-confident men, who always and everywhere drew his inquisitive attention in spite of himself.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  And then she knew their home would be in the country, and she wanted to go, not abroad where she was not going to live, but to the place where their home would be. This definitely expressed purpose astonished Levin. But since he did not care either way, he immediately asked Stepan Arkadyevitch, as though it were his duty, to go down to the country and to arrange everything there to the best of his ability with the taste of which he had so much. 'But I say,' Stepan Arkadyevitch said to him one day after he had come back from the country, where he had got everything ready for the young people's arrival, 'have you a certificate of having been at confession?' 'No. But what of it?' 'You can't be married without it.' 'Aïe, aïe, aïe!' cried Levin. 'Why, I believe it's nine years since I've taken the sacrament! I never thought of it.' 'You're a pretty fellow!' said Stepan Arkadyevitch laughing, 'and you call me a Nihilist! But this won't do, you know. You must take the sacrament.' 'When? There are four days left now.' Stepan Arkadyevitch arranged this also, and Levin had to go to confession. To Levin, as to any unbeliever who respects the beliefs of others, it was exceedingly disagreeable to be present at and take part in church ceremonies. At this moment, in his present softened state of feeling, sensitive to everything, this inevitable act of hypocrisy was not merely painful to Levin, it seemed to him utterly impossible. Now, in the hey-day of his highest glory, his fullest flower, he would have to be a liar or a scoffer. He felt incapable of being either. But though he repeatedly plied Stepan Arkadyevitch with questions as to the possibility of obtaining a certificate without actually communicating, Stepan Arkadyevitch maintained that it was out of the question. 'Besides, what is it to you—two days? And he's an awfully nice clever old fellow. He'll pull the tooth out for you so gently, you won't notice it.' Standing at the first litany, Levin attempted to revive in himself his youthful recollections of the intense religious emotion he had passed through between the ages of sixteen and seventeen. But he was at once convinced that it was utterly impossible to him. He attempted to look at it all as an empty custom, having no sort of meaning, like the custom of paying calls. But he felt that he could not do that either.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  You want me to go and see her, to ask her here, and to rehabilitate her in society; but do understand that I cannot do so. I have daughters growing up, and I must live in the world for my husband's sake. Well, I'm ready to come and see Anna Arkadyevna: she will understand that I can't ask her here, or I should have to do so in such a way that she would not meet people who look at things differently; that would offend her. I can't raise her…' 'Oh, I don't regard her as fallen more than hundreds of women you do receive!' Vronsky interrupted her still more gloomily, and he got up in silence, understanding that his sister-in-law's decision was not to be shaken. 'Alexey! don't be angry with me. Please understand that I'm not to blame,' began Varya, looking at him with a timid smile. 'I'm not angry with you,' he said still as gloomily; 'but I'm sorry in two ways. I'm sorry, too, that this means breaking up our friendship —if not breaking up, at least weakening it. You will understand that for me, too, it cannot be otherwise.' And with that he left her. Vronsky knew that further efforts were useless, and that he had to spend these few days in Petersburg as though in a strange town, avoiding every sort of relation with his own old circle in order not to be exposed to the annoyances and humiliations which were so intolerable to him. One of the most unpleasant features of his position in Petersburg was that Alexey Alexandrovitch and his name seemed to meet him everywhere. He could not begin to talk of anything without the conversation turning on Alexey Alexandrovitch, he could not go anywhere without risk of meeting him. So at least it seemed to Vronsky, just as it seems to a man with a sore finger that he is continually, as though on purpose, grazing his sore finger on everything. Their stay in Petersburg was the more painful to Vronsky that he perceived all the time a sort of new mood that he could not understand in Anna. At one time she would seem in love with him, and then she would become cold, irritable, and impenetrable. She was worrying over something, and keeping something back from him, and did not seem to notice the humiliations which poisoned his existence, and for her, with her delicate intuition, must have been still more unbearable. XXIX O NE of Anna's objects in coming back to Russia had been to see her son. From the day she left Italy the thought of it had never ceased to agitate her.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  His eyes were wide open as though he had never been asleep. The heaviness in his head and the weariness in his limbs that he had felt a minute before had suddenly gone. 'You may trample me in the mud,' he heard Alexey Alexandrovitch's words and saw him standing before him, and saw Anna's face with its burning flush and glittering eyes, gazing with love and tenderness not at him but at Alexey Alexandrovitch; he saw his own, as he fancied, foolish and ludicrous figure when Alexey Alexandrovitch took his hands away from his face. He stretched out his legs again and flung himself on the sofa in the same position and shut his eyes. 'To sleep! To forget!' he repeated to himself. But with his eyes shut he saw more distinctly than ever Anna's face as it had been on the memorable evening before the races. 'That is not and will not be, and she wants to wipe it out of her memory. But I cannot live without it. How can we be reconciled? how can we be reconciled?' he said aloud, and unconsciously began to repeat these words. This repetition checked the rising up of fresh images and memories, which he felt were thronging in his brain. But repeating words did not check his imagination for long. Again in extraordinarily rapid succession his best moments rose before his mind, and then his recent humiliation. 'Take away his hands,' Anna's voice says. He takes away his hands and feels the shame-struck and idiotic expression of his face. He still lay down, trying to sleep, though he felt there was not the smallest hope of it, and kept repeating stray words from some chain of thought, trying by this to check the rising flood of fresh images. He listened, and heard in a strange, mad whisper words repeated: 'I did not appreciate it, did not make enough of it. I did not appreciate it, did not make enough of it.' 'What's this? Am I going out of my mind?' he said to himself. 'Perhaps. What makes men go out of their minds; what makes men shoot themselves?' he answered himself, and opening his eyes, he saw with wonder an embroidered cushion beside him, worked by Varya, his brother's wife. He touched the tassel of the cushion, and tried to think of Varya, of when he had seen her last. But to think of anything extra neous was an agonising effort. 'No, I must sleep!' He moved the cushion up, and pressed his head into it, but he had to make an effort to keep his eyes shut. He jumped up and sat down. That's all over for me,' he said to himself. 'I must think what to do. What is left?' His mind rapidly ran through his life apart from his love of Anna. 'Ambition? Serpuhovskoy? Society? The court?' He could not come to a pause anywhere.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  The celebrated physician, a very handsome man, still youngish, asked to examine the patient. He maintained, with peculiar satisfaction, it seemed, that maiden modesty is a mere relic of barbarism, and that nothing could be more natural than for a man still youngish to handle a young girl naked. He thought it natural because he did it every day, and felt and thought, as it seemed to him, no harm as he did it, and consequently he considered modesty in the girl not merely as a relic of barbarism, but also as an insult to himself. There was nothing for it but to submit, since, although all the doctors had studied in the same school, had read the same books, and learned the same science, and though some people said this celebrated doctor was a bad doctor, in the princess's household and circle it was for some reason accepted that this celebrated doctor alone had some special knowledge, and that he alone could save Kitty. After a careful examination and sounding of the bewildered patient, dazed with shame, the celebrated doctor, having scrupulously washed his hands, was standing in the drawing-room talking to the prince. The prince frowned and coughed, listening to the doctor. As a man who had seen something of life, and neither a fool nor an invalid, he had no faith in medicine, and in his heart was furious at the whole farce, especially as he was perhaps the only one who fully comprehended the cause of Kitty's illness. 'Conceited blockhead!' he thought, as he listened to the celebrated doctor's chatter about his daughter's symptoms. The doctor was meantime with difficulty restraining the expression of his contempt for this old gentleman, and with difficulty condescending to the level of his intelligence. He perceived that it was no good talking to the old man, and that the principal person in the house was the mother. Before her he decided to scatter his pearls. At that instant the princess came into the drawing-room with the family doctor. The prince withdrew, trying not to show how ridiculous he thought the whole performance. The princess was distracted, and did not know what to do. She felt she had sinned against Kitty. 'Well, doctor, decide our fate,' said the princess. Tell me everything.' 'Is there hope?' she meant to say, but her lips quivered, and she could not utter the question. 'Well, doctor?' 'Immediately, princess. I will talk it over with my colleague, and then I will have the honour of laying my opinion before you.' 'So we had better leave you?' 'As you please.' The princess went out with a sigh. When the doctors were left alone, the family doctor began timidly explaining his opinion, that there was a commencement of tuberculous trouble, but . . . and so on. The celebrated doctor listened to him, and in the middle of his sentence looked at his big gold watch. 'Yes,' said he. 'But . . .

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Levin found himself, like the majority of his contemporaries, in the vaguest position in regard to religion. Believe he could not, and at the same time he had no firm conviction that it was all wrong. And consequently, not being able to believe in the significance of what he was doing nor to regard it with indifference as an empty formality, during the whole period of preparing for the sacrament he was conscious of a feeling of discomfort and shame at doing what he did not himself understand, and what, as an inner voice told him, was therefore false and wrong. During the service he would first listen to the prayers, trying to attach some meaning to them not discordant with his own views; then feeling that he could not understand and must condemn them, he tried not to listen to them, but to attend to the thoughts, observations, and memories which floated through his brain with extreme vividness during this idle time of standing in church. He had stood through the litany, the evening service and the midnight service, and the next day he got up earlier than usual, and without having tea he went at eight o'clock in the morning to the church for the morning service and the confession. There was no one in the church but a beggar soldier, two old women, and the church officials. A young deacon, whose long back showed in two distinct halves through his thin undercassock, met him, and at once going to a little table at the wall read the exhortation. During the reading, especially at the frequent and rapid repetition of the same words, 'Lord, have mercy on us!' which resounded with an echo, Levin felt that thought was shut and sealed up, and that it must not be touched or stirred now or confusion would be the result; and so standing behind the deacon he went on thinking of his own affairs, neither listening nor examining what was said. 'It's wonderful what expression there is in her hand,' he thought, remembering how they had been sitting the day before at a corner table. They had nothing to talk about, as was almost always the case at this time, and laying her hand on the table she kept opening and shutting it, and laughed herself as she watched her action. He remembered how he had kissed it and then had examined the lines on the pink palm. 'Have mercy on us again!' thought Levin, crossing himself, bowing, and looking at the supple spring of the deacon's back bowing before him. 'She took my hand then and examined the lines. "You've got a splendid hand,"' she said. And he looked at his own hand and the short hand of the deacon. 'Yes, now it will soon be over,' he thought.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'I'll send him to you at once.' 'What madness is this?' Stepan Arkadyevitch said when, after hearing from his friend that he was being turned out of the house, he found Levin in the garden, where he was walking about waiting for his guest's departure. 'Mais c'est ridicule! What fly has stung you? Mais c'est du dernier ridicule! What did you think, if a young man…' But the place where Levin had been stung was evidently still sore, for he turned pale again, when Stepan Arkadyevitch would have enlarged on the reason, and he himself cut him short. 'Please don't go into it! I can't help it. I feel ashamed of how I'm treating you and him. But it won't be, I imagine, a great grief to him to go, and his presence was distasteful to me and to my wife.' 'But it's insulting to him! Et puis c'est ridicule.' 'And to me it's both insulting and distressing! And I'm not in fault in any way, and there's no need for me to suffer.' 'Well, this I didn't expect of you! On peut être jaloux, mais à ce point, c'est du dernier ridicule!' Levin turned quickly, and walked away from him into the depths of the avenue, and he went on walking up and down alone. Soon he heard the rumble of the trap, and saw from behind the trees how Vassenka, sitting in the hay (unluckily there was no seat in the trap) in his Scotch cap, was driven along the avenue, jolting up and down over the ruts. 'What's this?' Levin thought, when a footman ran out of the house and stopped the trap. It was the mechanician, whom Levin had totally forgotten. The mechanician, bowing low, said something to Veslovsky, then clambered into the trap, and they drove off together. Stepan Arkadyevitch and the princess were much upset by Levin's action. And he himself felt not only in the highest degree ridicule, but also utterly guilty and disgraced. But remembering what sufferings he and his wife had been through, when he asked himself how he should act another time, he answered that he should do just the same again. In spite of all this, towards the end of that day, everyone except the princess, who could not pardon Levin's action, became extraordinarily lively and good-humoured, like children after a punishment or grownup people after a dreary, ceremonious reception, so that by the evening Vassenka's dismissal was spoken of, in the absence of the princess, as though it were some remote event. And Dolly, who had inherited her father's gift of humorous story-telling made Varenka helpless with laughter as she related for the third and fourth time, always with fresh humorous additions, how she had only just put on her new shoes for the benefit of the visitor, and on going into the drawing-room, heard suddenly the rumble of the trap.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  She knew what had kept her from it; she knew that she had been ashamed. Her position, which had seemed to her simplified the night before, suddenly struck her now as not only not simple, but as absolutely hopeless. She felt terrified at the disgrace, of which she had not even thought before. Directly she thought of what her husband would do, the most terrible ideas came to her mind. She had a vision of being turned out of the house, of her shame being proclaimed to all the world. She asked herself where she should go when she was turned out of the house, and she could not find an answer. When she thought of Vronsky, it seemed to her that he did not love her, that he was already beginning to be tired of her, that she could not offer herself to him, and she felt bitter against him for it. It seemed to her that the words that she had spoken to her husband, and had continually repeated in her imagination, she had said to everyone, and everyone had heard them. She could not bring herself to look those of her own household in the face. She could not bring herself to call her maid, and still less to go downstairs and see her son and his governess. The maid, who had been listening at her door for a long while, came into her room of her own accord. Anna glanced inquiringly into her face, and blushed with a scared look. The maid begged her pardon for coming in, saying that she had fancied the bell rang. She brought her clothes and a note. The note was from Betsy. Betsy reminded her that Liza Merkalov and Baroness Shtolz were coming to play croquet wi:h her that morning with their adorers, Kaluzhsky and old Stremov. 'Come, if only as a study in morals. I shall expect you,' she finished. Anna read the note and heaved a deep sigh. 'Nothing, I need nothing,' she said to Annushka, who was rearranging the bottles and brushes on the dressing-table. 'You can go. I'll dress at once and come down. I need nothing.' Annushka went out, but Anna did not begin dressing, and sat in the same position, her head and hands hanging listlessly, and every now and then she shivered all over, seemed as though she would make some gesture, utter some word, and sank back into lifelessness again. She repeated continually, 'My God! my God!' But neither 'God' nor 'my' had any meaning to her. The idea of seeking help in her difficulty in religion was as remote from her as seeking help from Alexey Alexandrovitch himself, although she had never had doubts of the faith in which she had been brought up. She knew that the support of religion was possible only upon condition of renouncing what made up for her the whole meaning of life.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'There is a way out of every position. We must take our line,' he said. 'Anything's better than the position in which you're living. Of course, I see how you torture yourself over everything—the world and your son and your husband.' 'Oh, not over my husband,' she said, with a quiet smile. 'I don't know him, I don't think of him. He doesn't exist.' 'You're not speaking sincerely. I know you. You worry about him too.' 'Oh, he doesn't even know,' she said, and suddenly a hot flush came over her face; her cheeks, he brow, her neck crimsoned, and tears of shame came into her eyes. 'But we won't talk of him.' XXIII V RONSKY had several times already, though not so resolutely as now, tried to bring her to consider their position, and every time he had been confronted by the same superficiality and triviality with which she met his appeal now. It was as though there were something in this which she could not or would not face, as though directly she began to speak of this, she, the real Anna, retreated somehow into herself, and another strange and unaccountable woman came out, whom he did not love, and whom he feared, and who was in opposition to him. But today he was resolved to have it out. 'Whether he knows or not,' said Vronsky, in his usual quiet and resolute tone, 'that's nothing to do with us. We cannot . . . you cannot stay like this, especially now.' 'What's to be done, according to you?' she asked with the same frivolous irony. She who had so feared he would take her condition too lightly was now vexed with him for deducing from it the necessity of taking some step. 'Tell him everything, and leave him.' 'Very well, let us suppose I do that,' she said. 'Do you know what the result of that would be? I can tell you it all beforehand,' and a wicked light gleamed in her eyes, that had been so soft a minute before.' "Eh, you love another man, and have entered into criminal intrigues with him?"' (Mimicking her husband, she threw an emphasis on the word 'criminal', as Alexey Alexandrovitch did.)' "I warned you of the results in the religious, the civil, and the domestic relation. You have not listened to me. Now I cannot let you disgrace my name,—"' and my son, she had meant to say, but about her son she could not jest,— ' "disgrace my name, and"—and more in the same style,' she added. 'In general terms, he'll say in his official manner, and with all distinctness and precision, that he cannot let me go, but will take all measures in his power to prevent scandal. And he will calmly and punctually act in accordance with his words.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  They say they send their dough to Petersburg. The Moscow water is so good for it. Ah, the springs at Mitishtchen, and the pancakes!' And she remembered how, long, long ago, when she was a girl of seventeen, she had gone with her aunt to Troitsa. 'Riding, too. Was that really me, with red hands? How much that seemed to me then splendid and out of reach has become worthless, while what I had then has gone out of my reach for ever! Could I ever have believed then that I could come to such humiliation? How conceited and self-satisfied he will be when he gets my note! But I will show him. . . . How horrid that paint smells! Why is it they're always painting and building? Modes et robes,' she read. A man bowed to her. It was Annushka's husband. 'Our parasites'; she remembered how Vronsky had said that. 'Our? Why our? What's so awful is that one can't tear up the past by its roots. One can't tear it out, but one can hide one's memory of it. And I'll hide it.' And then she thought of her past with Alexey Alexandrovitch, of how she had blotted the memory of it out of her life. 'Dolly will think I'm leaving my second husband, and so I certainly must be in the wrong. As if I cared to be right! I can't help it! ' she said, and she wanted to cry. But at once she fell to wondering what those two girls could be smiling about. 'Love, most likely. They don't know how dreary it is, how low . . . The boulevard and the children. Three boys running, playing at horses. Seryozha! And I'm losing everything and not getting him back. Yes, I'm losing everything, if he doesn't return. Perhaps he was late for the train and has come back by now. Longing for humiliation again!' she said to herself. 'No, I'll go to Dolly, and say straight out to her, I'm unhappy, I deserve this, I'm to blame, but still I'm unhappy, help me. These horses, this carriage— how loathsome I am to myself in this carriage—all his; but I won't see them again.' Thinking over the words in which she would tell Dolly, and mentally working her heart up to great bitterness, Anna went upstairs. 'Is there anyone with her?' she asked in the hall. 'Katerina Alexandrovna Levin,' answered the footman. 'Kitty! Kitty, whom Vronsky was in love with!' thought Anna, 'the girl he thinks of with love. He's sorry he didn't marry her. But me he thinks of with hatred, and is sorry he had anything to do with me.' The sisters were having a consultation about nursing when Anna called. Dolly went down alone to see the visitor who had interrupted their conversation. 'Well, so you've not gone away yet?

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  She sent word to her husband that she had come, went to her own room, and occupied herself in sorting out her things, expecting he would come to her. But an hour passed; he did not come. She went into the dining-room on the pretext of giving some directions, and spoke loudly on purpose, expecting him to come out there; but he did not come, though she heard him go to the door of his study as he parted from the chief secretary. She knew he usually went out quickly to his office, and she wanted to see him before that, so that their attitude to one another might be defined. She walked across the drawing-room and went resolutely to him. When she went into his study he was in official uniform, obviously ready to go out, sitting at a little table on which he rested his elbows, looking dejectedly before him. She saw him before he saw her, and she saw that he was thinking of her. On seeing her, he would have risen, but changed his mind, then his face flushed hotly—a thing Anna had never seen before, and he got up quickly and went to meet her, looking not at her eyes, but above them at her forehead and hair. He went up to her, took her by the hand, and asked her to sit down. 'I am very glad you have come,' he said, sitting down beside her, and obviously wishing to say something, he stuttered. Several times he tried to begin to speak, but stopped. In spite of the fact that, preparing herself for meeting him, she had schooled herself to despise and reproach him, she did not know what to say to him, and she felt sorry for him. And so the silence lasted for some time. 'Is Seryozha quite well?' he said, and not waiting for an answer, he added: 'I shan't be dining at home today, and I have got to go out directly.' 'I had thought of going to Moscow,' she said. 'No, you did quite, quite right to come here,' he said, and was silent again. Seeing that he was powerless to begin the conversation, she began herself. 'Alexey Alexandrovitch,' she said, looking at him and not dropping her eyes under his persistent gaze at her hair, 'I'm a guilty woman, I'm a bad woman, but I am the same as I was, as I told you then, and I have come to tell you that I can change nothing.' 'I have asked you no question about that,' he said, all at once, resolutely and with hatred looking her straight in the face; 'that was as I had supposed.' Under the influence of anger he apparently regained complete possession of all his faculties.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  All this would have been very well, if there had been no exaggeration. But the princess saw that her daughter was rushing into extremes, and so indeed she told her. ' Il ne faut jamais rien outrer,' she said to her. Her daughter made her no reply, only in her heart she thought that one could not talk about exaggeration where Christianity was concerned. What exaggeration could there be in the practice of a doctrine wherein one was bidden to turn the other cheek when one was smitten, and give one's cloak if one's coat were taken? But the princess disliked this exaggeration, and disliked even more the fact that she felt her daughter did not care to show her all her heart. Kitty did in fact conceal her new views and feelings from her mother. She concealed them not because she did not respect or did not love her mother, but simply because she was her mother. She would have revealed them to anyone sooner than to her mother. 'How is it Anna Pavlovna's not been to see us for so long?' the princess said one day of Madame Petrov. 'I've asked her, but she seems put out about something.' 'No, I've not noticed it, maman,' said Kitty, flushing hotly. 'Is it long since you went to see them?' 'We're meaning to make an expedition to the mountains tomorrow,' answered Kitty. 'Well, you can go,' answered the princess, gazing at her daughter's embarrassed face and trying to guess the cause of her embarrassment. That day Varenka came to dinner and told them that Anna Pavlovna had changed her mind and given up the expedition for the morrow. And the princess noticed again that Kitty reddened. 'Kitty, haven't you had some misunderstanding with the Petrovs?' said the princess, when they were left alone. 'Why has she given up sending the children and coming to see us?' Kitty answered that nothing had happened between them, and that she could not tell why Anna Pavlovna seemed displeased with her. Kitty answered perfectly truly. She did not know the reason Anna Pavlovna had changed to her, but she guessed it. She guessed at something which she could not tell her mother, which she did not put into words to herself. It was one of those things which one knows but which one can never speak of even to oneself, so terrible and shameful would it be to be mistaken.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'If I look at him he will think I am studying him, I am afraid; if I don't look at him, he'll think I'm thinking of other things. If I walk on tiptoe, he will be vexed; to tread firmly, I'm ashamed.' Kitty evidently did not think of herself, and had no time to think about herself: she was thinking about him because she knew something, and all went well. She told him about herself even and about her wedding, and smiled and sympathised with him and petted him, and talked of cases of recovery and all went well; so then she must know. The proof that her behaviour and Agafea Mihalovna's was not instinctive, animal, irrational, was that apart from the physical treatment, the relief of suffering, both Agafea Mihalovna and Kitty required for the dying man something else more important than the physical treatment, and something which had nothing in common with physical conditions. Agafea Mihalovna, speaking of the man just dead, had said: 'Well, thank God, he took the sacrament and received absolution; God grant each one of us such a death.' Katya in just the same way, besides all her care about linen, bedsores, drink, found time the very first day to persuade the sick man of the necessity of taking the sacrament and receiving absolution. On getting back from the sickroom to their own two rooms for the night, Levin sat with hanging head not knowing what to do. Not to speak of supper, of preparing for bed, of considering what they were going to do, he could not even talk to his wife; he was ashamed to. Kitty, on the contrary, was more active than usual. She was even livelier than usual. She ordered supper to be brought, herself unpacked their things, and herself helped to make the beds, and did not even forget to sprinkle them with Persian powder. She showed that alertness, that swiftness of reflection which comes out in men before a battle, in conflict, in the dangerous and decisive moments of life—those moments when a man shows once and for all his value, and that all his past has not been wasted but has been a preparation for these moments. Everything went rapidly in her hands, and before it was twelve o'clock all their things were arranged cleanly and tidily in her rooms, in such a way that the hotel rooms seemed like home: the beds were made, brushes, combs, looking-glasses were put out, table-napkins were spread. Levin felt that it was unpardonable to eat, to sleep, to talk even now, and it seemed to him that every movement he made was unseemly. She arranged the brushes, but she did it all so that there was nothing shocking in it.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  I've told you, and I say it again, that I have some pride, and never, never would I do as you're doing—go back to a man who's deceived you, who has cared for another woman. I can't understand it! You may, but I can't!' And saying these words she glanced at her sister, and seeing that Dolly sat silent, her head mournfully bowed, Kitty, instead of running out of the room, as she had meant to do, sat down near the door, and hid her face in her handkerchief. The silence lasted for two minutes: Dolly was thinking of herself. That humiliation of which she was always conscious came back to her with a peculiar bitterness when her sister reminded her of it. She had not looked for such cruelty in her sister, and she was angry with her. But suddenly she heard the rustle of a skirt, and with it the sound of heart-rending, smothered sobbing, and felt arms about her neck. Kitty was on her knees before her. 'Dolinka, I am so, so wretched!' she whispered penitently. And the sweet face covered with tears hid itself in Darya Alexandrovna's skirt. As though tears were the indispensable oil, without which the machinery of mutual confidence could not run smoothly between the two sisters, the sisters after their tears talked, not of what was uppermost in their minds, but, though they talked of outside matters, they understood each other. Kitty knew that the word she had uttered in anger about her husband's infidelity and her humiliating position, had cut her poor sister to the heart, but that she had forgiven her. Dolly for her part knew all she had wanted to find out. She felt certain that her surmises were correct; that Kitty's misery, her inconsolable misery, was due precisely to the fact that Levin had made her an offer and she had rufused him, and Vronsky had deceived her, and that she was fully prepared to love Levin and to detest Vronsky. Kitty said not a word of that; she talked of nothing but her spiritual condition. 'I have nothing to make me miserable,' she said, getting calmer; 'but can you understand that everything has become hateful, loathsome, coarse to me, and I myself most of all? You can't imagine what loathsome thoughts I have about everything.' 'Why, whatever loathsome thoughts can you have?' asked Dolly, smiling. 'The most utterly loathsome and coarse; I can't tell you. It's not unhappiness, or low spirits, but much worse. As though everything that was good in me was all hidden away, and nothing was left but the most loathsome. Come, how am I to tell you?' she went on, seeing the puzzled look in her sister's eyes. 'Father began saying something to me just now. . . .