Page 1023 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

but he knew that what he tried to convey in that picture,
no one ever had conveyed. This he knew positively, and
had known a long while, ever since he had begun to paint
it. But other people’s criticisms, whatever they might be,

had yet immense consequence in his eyes, and they
agitated him to the depths of his soul. Any remark, the
most insignificant, that showed that the critic saw even the
tiniest part of what he saw in the picture, agitated him to
the depths of his soul. He always attributed to his critics a
more profound comprehension than he had himself, and
always expected from them something he did not himself
see in the picture. And often in their criticisms he fancied
that he had found this.
He walked rapidly to the door of his studio, and in
spite of his excitement he was struck by the soft light on
Anna’s figure as she stood in the shade of the entrance
listening to Golenishtchev, who was eagerly telling her
something, while she evidently wanted to look round at
the artist. He was himself unconscious how, as he
approached them, he seized on this impression and
absorbed it, as he had the chin of the shopkeeper who had
sold him the cigars, and put it away somewhere to be
brought out when he wanted it. The visitors, not
agreeably impressed beforehand by Golenishtchev’s

1022 of 1759