Page 1220 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

the overhanging branches of a birch tree. Watching the
streak of smoke, Sergey Ivanovitch walked gently on,
deliberating on his position.
‘Why not?’ he thought. ‘If it were only a passing fancy

or a passion, if it were only this attraction—this mutual
attraction (I can call it a MUTUAL attraction), but if I felt
that it was in contradiction with the whole bent of my
life—if I felt that in giving way to this attraction I should
be false to my vocation and my duty...but it’s not so. The
only thing I can say against it is that, when I lost Marie, I
said to myself that I would remain faithful to her memory.
That’s the only thing I can say against my feeling.... That’s
a great thing,’ Sergey Ivanovitch said to himself, feeling at
the same time that this consideration had not the slightest
importance for him personally, but would only perhaps
detract from his romantic character in the eyes of others.
‘But apart from that, however much I searched, I should
never find anything to say against my feeling. If I were
choosing by considerations of suitability alone, I could not
have found anything better.’
However many women and girls he thought of whom
he knew, he could not think of a girl who united to such
a degree all, positively all, the qualities he would wish to
see in his wife. She had all the charm and freshness of

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