Page 1690 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

gone to the bee house again. Though it’s a pity he’s there
so often, still I’m glad. It distracts his mind. He’s become
altogether happier and better now than in the spring. He
used to be so gloomy and worried that I felt frightened for

him. And how absurd he is!’ she whispered, smiling.
She knew what worried her husband. It was his
unbelief. Although, if she had been asked whether she
supposed that in the future life, if he did not believe, he
would be damned, she would have had to admit that he
would be damned, his unbelief did not cause her
unhappiness. And she, confessing that for an unbeliever
there can be no salvation, and loving her husband’s soul
more than anything in the world, thought with a smile of
his unbelief, and told herself that he was absurd.
‘What does he keep reading philosophy of some sort
for all this year?’ she wondered. ‘If it’s all written in those
books, he can understand them. If it’s all wrong, why does
he read them? He says himself that he would like to
believe. Then why is it he doesn’t believe? Surely from his
thinking so much? And he thinks so much from being
solitary. He’s always alone, alone. He can’t talk about it all
to us. I fancy he’ll be glad of these visitors, especially
Katavasov. He likes discussions with them,’ she thought,
and passed instantly to the consideration of where it would

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