Anna Karenina - Part 7

"Now there is something I want to talk about, and you know what

it is. About Anna," Stepan Arkadyevitch said, pausing for a

brief space, and shaking off the unpleasant impression.

As soon as Oblonsky uttered Anna's name, the face of Alexey

Alexandrovitch was completely transformed; all the life was gone

out of it, and it looked weary and dead.

"What is it exactly that you want from me?" he said, moving in

his chair and snapping his pince-nez.

"A definite settlement, Alexey Alexandrovitch, some settlement of

the position. I'm appealing to you" ("not as an injured

husband," Stepan Arkadyevitch was going to say, but afraid of

wrecking his negotiation by this, he changed the words) "not as a

statesman" (which did not sound _à propos_), "but simply as a man,

and a good-hearted man and a Christian. You must have pity on

her," he said.

"That is, in what way precisely?" Karenin said softly.

"Yes, pity on her. If you had seen her as I have!--I have been

spending all the winter with her--you would have pity on her.

Her position is awful, simply awful!"

"I had imagined," answered Alexey Alexandrovitch in a higher,

almost shrill voice, "that Anna Arkadyevna had everything she had

desired for herself."

"Oh, Alexey Alexandrovitch, for heaven's sake, don't let us

indulge in recriminations! What is past is past, and you know

what she wants and is waiting for--divorce."

"But I believe Anna Arkadyevna refuses a divorce, if I make it a

condition to leave me my son. I replied in that sense, and

supposed that the matter was ended. I consider it at an end,"

shrieked Alexey Alexandrovitch.

"But, for heaven's sake, don't get hot!" said Stepan

Arkadyevitch, touching his brother-in-law's knee. "The matter is

not ended. If you will allow me to recapitulate, it was like

this: when you parted, you were as magnanimous as could possibly

be; you were ready to give her everything--freedom, divorce even.

She appreciated that. No, don't think that. She did appreciate

it--to such a degree that at the first moment, feeling how she

had wronged you, she did not consider and could not consider

everything. She gave up everything. But experience, time, have

shown that her position is unbearable, impossible."

"The life of Anna Arkadyevna can have no interest for me," Alexey

Alexandrovitch put in, lifting his eyebrows.

"Allow me to disbelieve that," Stepan Arkadyevitch replied

gently. "Her position is intolerable for her, and of no benefit

to anyone whatever. She has deserved it, you will say. She

knows that and asks you for nothing; she says plainly that she

dare not ask you. But I, all of us, her relatives, all who love

her, beg you, entreat you. Why should she suffer? Who is any

the better for it?"