Page 1099 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

Chapter 21

From the moment when Alexey Alexandrovitch
understood from his interviews with Betsy and with
Stepan Arkadyevitch that all that was expected of him was
to leave his wife in peace, without burdening her with his
presence, and that his wife herself desired this, he felt so
distraught that he could come to no decision of himself;
he did not know himself what he wanted now, and
putting himself in the hands of those who were so pleased
to interest themselves in his affairs, he met everything with
unqualified assent. It was only when Anna had left his
house, and the English governess sent to ask him whether
she should dine with him or separately, that for the first
time he clearly comprehended his position, and was
appalled by it. Most difficult of all in this position was the
fact that he could not in any way connect and reconcile
his past with what was now. It was not the past when he
had lived happily with his wife that troubled him. The
transition from that past to a knowledge of his wife’s
unfaithfulness he had lived through miserably already; that
state was painful, but he could understand it. If his wife
had then, on declaring to him her unfaithfulness, left him,

1098 of 1759