Anna Karenina - Part 5

"Not you it was performed that noble act of forgiveness, at which

I was moved to ecstasy, and everyone else too, but He, working

within your heart," said Countess Lidia Ivanovna, raising her

eyes rapturously, "and so you cannot be ashamed of your act."

Alexey Alexandrovitch knitted his brows, and crooking his hands,

he cracked his fingers.

"One must know all the facts," he said in his thin voice. "A

man's strength has its limits, countess, and I have reached my

limits. The whole day I have had to be making arrangements,

arrangements about household matters arising" (he emphasized the

word _arising_) "from my new, solitary position. The servants,

the governess, the accounts.... These pinpricks have stabbed me to

the heart, and I have not the strength to bear it. At dinner...

yesterday, I was almost getting up from the dinner table. I

could not bear the way my son looked at me. He did not ask me

the meaning of it all, but he wanted to ask, and I could not bear

the look in his eyes. He was afraid to look at me, but that is

not all...." Alexey Alexandrovitch would have referred to the

bill that had been brought him, but his voice shook, and he

stopped. That bill on blue paper, for a hat and ribbons, he

could not recall without a rush of self-pity.

"I understand, dear friend," said Lidia Ivanovna. "I understand

it all. Succor and comfort you will find not in me, though I

have come only to aid you if I can. If I could take from off you

all these petty, humiliating cares...I understand that a woman's

word, a woman's superintendence is needed. You will intrust it

to me?"

Silently and gratefully Alexey Alexandrovitch pressed her hand.

"Together we will take care of Seryozha. Practical affairs are

not my strong point. But I will set to work. I will be your

housekeeper. Don't thank me. I do it not from myself..."

"I cannot help thanking you."

"But, dear friend, do not give way to the feeling of which you

spoke--being ashamed of what is the Christian's highest glory:

_he who humbles himself shall be exalted_. And you cannot thank

me. You must thank Him, and pray to Him for succor. In Him

alone we find peace, consolation, salvation, and love," she said,

and turning her eyes heavenwards, she began praying, as Alexey

Alexandrovitch gathered from her silence.

Alexey Alexandrovitch listened to her now, and those expressions

which had seemed to him, if not distasteful, at least

exaggerated, now seemed to him natural and consolatory. Alexey

Alexandrovitch had disliked this new enthusiastic fervor. He was

a believer, who was interested in religion primarily in its

political aspect, and the new doctrine which ventured upon

several new interpretations, just because it paved the way to

discussion and analysis, was in principle disagreeable to him.

He had hitherto taken up a cold and even antagonistic attitude to

this new doctrine, and with Countess Lidia Ivanovna, who had been

carried away by it, he had never argued, but by silence had

assiduously parried her attempts to provoke him into argument.

Now for the first time he heard her words with pleasure, and did

not inwardly oppose them.