Anna Karenina - Part 5

"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.