The external relations of Alexey Alexandrovitch and his wife had
remained unchanged. The sole difference lay in the fact that he
was more busily occupied than ever. As in former years, at the
beginning of the spring he had gone to a foreign watering-place
for the sake of his health, deranged by the winter's work that
every year grew heavier. And just as always he returned in July
and at once fell to work as usual with increased energy. As
usual, too, his wife had moved for the summer to a villa out of
town, while he remained in Petersburg. From the date of their
conversation after the party at Princess Tverskaya's he had never
spoken again to Anna of his suspicions and his jealousies, and
that habitual tone of his bantering mimicry was the most
convenient tone possible for his present attitude to his wife.
He was a little colder to his wife. He simply seemed to be
slightly displeased with her for that first midnight
conversation, which she had repelled. In his attitude to her
there was a shade of vexation, but nothing more. "You would not
be open with me," he seemed to say, mentally addressing her; "so
much the worse for you. Now you may beg as you please, but I
won't be open with you. So much the worse for you!" he said
mentally, like a man who, after vainly attempting to extinguish a
fire, should fly in a rage with his vain efforts and say, "Oh,
very well then! you shall burn for this!" This man, so subtle
and astute in official life, did not realize all the
senselessness of such an attitude to his wife. He did not
realize it, because it was too terrible to him to realize his
actual position, and he shut down and locked and sealed up in his
heart that secret place where lay hid his feelings towards his
family, that is, his wife and son. He who had been such a
careful father, had from the end of that winter become peculiarly
frigid to his son, and adopted to him just the same bantering
tone he used with his wife. "Aha, young man!" was the greeting
with which he met him.
Alexey Alexandrovitch asserted and believed that he had never in
any previous year had so much official business as that year.
But he was not aware that he sought work for himself that year,
that this was one of the means for keeping shut that secret place
where lay hid his feelings towards his wife and son and his
thoughts about them, which became more terrible the longer they
lay there. If anyone had had the right to ask Alexey
Alexandrovitch what he thought of his wife's behavior, the mild
and peaceable Alexey Alexandrovitch would have made no answer,
but he would have been greatly angered with any man who should
question him on that subject. For this reason there positively
came into Alexey Alexandrovitch's face a look of haughtiness and
severity whenever anyone inquired after his wife's health.
Alexey Alexandrovitch did not want to think at all about his
wife's behavior, and he actually succeeded in not thinking about
it at all.