Page 1051 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

Chapter 15

They had just come back from Moscow, and were glad
to be alone. He was sitting at the writing table in his
study, writing. She, wearing the dark lilac dress she had
worn during the first days of their married life, and put on
again today, a dress particularly remembered and loved by
him, was sitting on the sofa, the same old-fashioned
leather sofa which had always stood in the study in Levin’s
father’s and grandfather’s days. She was sewing at broderie
anglaise. He thought and wrote, never losing the happy
consciousness of her presence. His work, both on the land
and on the book, in which the principles of the new land
system were to be laid down, had not been abandoned;
but just as formerly these pursuits and ideas had seemed to
him petty and trivial in comparison with the darkness that
overspread all life, now they seemed as unimportant and
petty in comparison with the life that lay before him
suffused with the brilliant light of happiness. He went on
with his work, but he felt now that the center of gravity of
his attention had passed to something else, and that
consequently he looked at his work quite differently and
more clearly. Formerly this work had been for him an

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