Page 1036 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

and so of the significance, of his picture—a conviction
essential to the most intense fervor, excluding all other
interests—in which alone he could work.
Christ’s foreshortened leg was not right, though. He

took his palette and began to work. As he corrected the
leg he looked continually at the figure of John in the
background, which his visitors had not even noticed, but
which he knew was beyond perfection. When he had
finished the leg he wanted to touch that figure, but he felt
too much excited for it. He was equally unable to work
when he was cold and when he was too much affected
and saw everything too much. There was only one stage
in the transition from coldness to inspiration, at which
work was possible. Today he was too much agitated. He
would have covered the picture, but he stopped, holding
the cloth in his hand, and, smiling blissfully, gazed a long
while at the figure of John. At last, as it were regretfully
tearing himself away, he dropped the cloth, and, exhausted
but happy, went home.
Vronsky, Anna, and Golenishtchev, on their way
home, were particularly lively and cheerful. They talked of
Mihailov and his pictures. The word talent, by which they
meant an inborn, almost physical, aptitude apart from
brain and heart, and in which they tried to find an

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