Page 312 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

back. He could not go to bed, feeling that it was
absolutely needful for him first to think thoroughly over
the position that had just arisen.
When Alexey Alexandrovitch had made up his mind

that he must talk to his wife about it, it had seemed a very
easy and simple matter. But now, when he began to think
over the question that had just presented itself, it seemed
to him very complicated and difficult.
Alexey Alexandrovitch was not jealous. Jealousy
according to his notions was an insult to one’s wife, and
one ought to have confidence in one’s wife. Why one
ought to have confidence— that is to say, complete
conviction that his young wife would always love him—
he did not ask himself. But he had no experience of lack
of confidence, because he had confidence in her, and told
himself that he ought to have it. Now, though his
conviction that jealousy was a shameful feeling and that
one ought to feel confidence, had not broken down, he
felt that he was standing face to face with something
illogical and irrational, and did not know what was to be
done. Alexey Alexandrovitch was standing face to face
with life, with the possibility of his wife’s loving someone
other than himself, and this seemed to him very irrational
and incomprehensible because it was life itself. All his life

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