Page 313 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

Alexey Alexandrovitch had lived and worked in official
spheres, having to do with the reflection of life. And every
time he had stumbled against life itself he had shrunk away
from it. Now he experienced a feeling akin to that of a

man who, wile calmly crossing a precipice by a bridge,
should suddenly discover that the bridge is broken, and
that there is a chasm below. That chasm was life itself, the
bridge that artificial life in which Alexey Alexandrovitch
had lived. For the first time the question presented itself to
him of the possibility of his wife’s loving someone else,
and he was horrified at it.
He did not undress, but walked up and down with his
regular tread over the resounding parquet of the dining
room, where one lamp was burning, over the carpet of the
dark drawing room, in which the light was reflected on
the big new portrait of himself handing over the sofa, and
across her boudoir, where two candles burned, lighting up
the portraits of her parents and woman friends, and the
pretty knick-knacks of her writing table, that he knew so
well. He walked across her boudoir to the bedroom door,
and turned back again. At each turn in his walk, especially
at the parquet of the lighted dining room, he halted and
said to himself, ‘Yes, this I must decide and put a stop to; I
must express my view of it and my decision.’ And he

312 of 1759