Page 1107 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

preparing to cry. And he too was softened; he snatched
her plump hand and proceeded to kiss it.
‘Dear friend!’ she said in a voice breaking with
emotion. ‘You ought not to give way to grief. Your

sorrow is a great one, but you ought to find consolation.’
‘I am crushed, I am annihilated, I am no longer a man!’
said Alexey Alexandrovitch, letting go her hand, but still
gazing into her brimming eyes. ‘My position is so awful
because I can find nowhere, I cannot find within me
strength to support me.’
‘You will find support; seek it—not in me, though I
beseech you to believe in my friendship,’ she said, with a
sigh. ‘Our support is love, that love that He has
vouchsafed us. His burden is light,’ she said, with the look
of ecstasy Alexey Alexandrovitch knew so well. ‘He will
be your support and your succor.’
Although there was in these words a flavor of that
sentimental emotion at her own lofty feelings, and that
new mystical fervor which had lately gained ground in
Petersburg, and which seemed to Alexey Alexandrovitch
disproportionate, still it was pleasant to him to hear this
now.
‘I am weak. I am crushed. I foresaw nothing, and now
I understand nothing.’

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