Page 1588 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

Chapter 22

Stepan Arkadyevitch felt completely nonplussed by the
strange talk which he was hearing for the first time. The
complexity of Petersburg, as a rule, had a stimulating effect
on him, rousing him out of his Moscow stagnation. But
he liked these complications, and understood them only in
the circles he knew and was at home in. In these
unfamiliar surroundings he was puzzled and disconcerted,
and could not get his bearings. As he listened to Countess
Lidia Ivanovna, aware of the beautiful, artless—or perhaps
artful, he could not decide which—eyes of Landau fixed
upon him, Stepan Arkadyevitch began to be conscious of a
peculiar heaviness in his head.
The most incongruous ideas were in confusion in his
head. ‘Marie Sanina is glad her child’s dead.... How good a
smoke would be now!... To be saved, one need only
believe, and the monks don’t know how the thing’s to be
done, but Countess Lidia Ivanovna does know.... And
why is my head so heavy? Is it the cognac, or all this being
so queer? Anyway, I fancy I’ve done nothing unsuitable so
far. But anyway, it won’t do to ask her now. They say
they make one say one’s prayers. I only hope they won’t

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