Anna Karenina - Part 5

And Alexey Alexandrovitch consented, and Countess Lidia Ivanovna

sent the following letter in French: "Dear Madame, "To be reminded of you might have results for your son in leading

to questions on his part which could not be answered without

implanting in the child's soul a spirit of censure towards what

should be for him sacred, and therefore I beg you to interpret

your husband's refusal in the spirit of Christian love. I pray

to Almighty God to have mercy on you.

Countess Lidia"

This letter attained the secret object which Countess Lidia

Ivanovna had concealed from herself. It wounded Anna to the

quick.

For his part, Alexey Alexandrovitch, on returning home from Lidia

Ivanovna's, could not all that day concentrate himself on his

usual pursuits, and find that spiritual peace of one saved and

believing which he had felt of late.

The thought of his wife, who had so greatly sinned against him,

and towards whom he had been so saintly, as Countess Lidia

Ivanovna had so justly told him, ought not to have troubled him;

but he was not easy; he could not understand the book he was

reading; he could not drive away harassing recollections of his

relations with her, of the mistake which, as it now seemed, he

had made in regard to her. The memory of how he had received her

confession of infidelity on their way home from the races

(especially that he had insisted only on the observance of

external decorum, and had not sent a challenge) tortured him like

a remorse. He was tortured too by the thought of the letter he

had written her; and most of all, his forgiveness, which nobody

wanted, and his care of the other man's child made his heart burn

with shame and remorse.

And just the same feeling of shame and regret he felt now, as he

reviewed all his past with her, recalling the awkward words in

which, after long wavering, he had made her an offer.

"But how have I been to blame?" he said to himself. And this

question always excited another question in him--whether they

felt differently, did their loving and marrying differently,

these Vronskys and Oblonskys...these gentlemen of the

bedchamber, with their fine calves. And there passed before his

mind a whole series of these mettlesome, vigorous, self-

confident men, who always and everywhere drew his inquisitive

attention in spite of himself. He tried to dispel these

thoughts, he tried to persuade himself that he was not living for

this transient life, but for the life of eternity, and that there

was peace and love in his heart.