Page 154 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

contempt by them, and do not touch on their feeling for
their family. They draw a sort of line that can’t be crossed
between them and their families. I don’t understand it, but
it is so.’

‘Yes, but he has kissed her..’
‘Dolly, hush, darling. I saw Stiva when he was in love
with you. I remember the time when he came to me and
cried, talking of you, and all the poetry and loftiness of his
feeling for you, and I know that the longer he has lived
with you the loftier you have been in his eyes. You know
we have sometimes laughed at him for putting in at every
word: ‘Dolly’s a marvelous woman.’ You have always
been a divinity for him, and you are that still, and this has
not been an infidelity of the heart..’
‘But if it is repeated?’
‘It cannot be, as I understand it..’
‘Yes, but could you forgive it?’
‘I don’t know, I can’t judge.... Yes, I can,’ said Anna,
thinking a moment; and grasping the position in her
thought and weighing it in her inner balance, she added:
‘Yes, I can, I can, I can. Yes, I could forgive it. I could not
be the same, no; but I could forgive it, and forgive it as
though it had never been, never been at all..’

153 of 1759