"Amen!" the unseen choir sent rolling again upon the air.
"'Joinest together in love them that were separate.' What deep
meaning in those words, and how they correspond with what one
feels at this moment," thought Levin. "Is she feeling the same
as I?"
And looking round, he met her eyes, and from their expression he
concluded that she was understanding it just as he was. But this
was a mistake; she almost completely missed the meaning of the
words of the service; she had not heard them, in fact. She could
not listen to them and take them in, so strong was the one
feeling that filled her breast and grew stronger and stronger.
That feeling was joy at the completion of the process that for
the last month and a half had been going on in her soul, and had
during those six weeks been a joy and a torture to her. On the
day when in the drawing room of the house in Arbaty Street she
had gone up to him in her brown dress, and given herself to him
without a word--on that day, at that hour, there took place in
her heart a complete severance from all her old life, and a quite
different, new, utterly strange life had begun for her, while the
old life was actually going on as before. Those six weeks had
for her been a time of the utmost bliss and the utmost misery.
All her life, all her desires and hopes were concentrated on this
one man, still uncomprehended by her, to whom she was bound by a
feeling of alternate attraction and repulsion, even less
comprehended than the man himself, and all the while she was
going on living in the outward conditions of her old life.
Living the old life, she was horrified at herself, at her utter
insurmountable callousness to all her own past, to things, to
habits, to the people she had loved, who loved her--to her
mother, who was wounded by her indifference, to her kind, tender
father, till then dearer than all the world. At one moment she
was horrified at this indifference, at another she rejoiced at
what had brought her to this indifference. She could not frame a
thought, not a wish apart from life with this man; but this new
life was not yet, and she could not even picture it clearly to
herself. There was only anticipation, the dread and joy of the
new and the unknown. And now behold--anticipation and
uncertainty and remorse at the abandonment of the old life--all
was ending, and the new was beginning. This new life could not
but have terrors for her inexperience; but, terrible or not, the
change had been wrought six weeks before in her soul, and this
was merely the final sanction of what had long been completed in
her heart.