Anna Karenina - Part 5

Never afterwards did he feel it with such intensity, but this

first time he could not for a long while get over it. His

natural feeling urged him to defend himself, to prove to her she

was wrong; but to prove her wrong would mean irritating her still

more and making the rupture greater that was the cause of all his

suffering. One habitual feeling impelled him to get rid of the

blame and to pass it on to her. Another feeling, even stronger,

impelled him as quickly as possible to smooth over the rupture

without letting it grow greater. To remain under such undeserved

reproach was wretched, but to make her suffer by justifying

himself was worse still. Like a man half-awake in an agony of

pain, he wanted to tear out, to fling away the aching place, and

coming to his senses, he felt that the aching place was himself.

He could do nothing but try to help the aching place to bear it,

and this he tried to do.

They made peace. She, recognizing that she was wrong, though she

did not say so, became tenderer to him, and they experienced new,

redoubled happiness in their love. But that did not prevent such

quarrels from happening again, and exceedingly often too, on the

most unexpected and trivial grounds. These quarrels frequently

arose from the fact that they did not yet know what was of

importance to each other and that all this early period they were

both often in a bad temper. When one was in a good temper, and

the other in a bad temper, the peace was not broken; but when

both happened to be in an ill-humor, quarrels sprang up from such

incomprehensibly trifling causes, that they could never remember

afterwards what they had quarreled about. It is true that when

they were both in a good temper their enjoyment of life was

redoubled. But still this first period of their married life was

a difficult time for them.

During all this early time they had a peculiarly vivid sense of

tension, as it were, a tugging in opposite directions of the

chain by which they were bound. Altogether their honeymoon--that

is to say, the month after their wedding--from which from

tradition Levin expected so much, was not merely not a time of

sweetness, but remained in the memories of both as the bitterest

and most humiliating period in their lives. They both alike

tried in later life to blot out from their memories all the

monstrous, shameful incidents of that morbid period, when both

were rarely in a normal frame of mind, both were rarely quite

themselves.