Page 404 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

that this is something they can’t understand. If it were a
common, vulgar, worldly intrigue, they would have left
me alone. They feel that this is something different, that
this is not a mere pastime, that this woman is dearer to me

than life. And this is incomprehensible, and that’s why it
annoys them. Whatever our destiny is or may be, we have
made it ourselves, and we do not complain of it,’ he said,
in the word we linking himself with Anna. ‘No, they must
needs teach us how to live. They haven’t an idea of what
happiness is; they don’t know that without our love, for us
there is neither happiness nor unhappiness—no life at all,’
he thought.
He was angry with all of them for their interference
just because he felt in his soul that they, all these people,
were right. He felt that the love that bound him to Anna
was not a momentary impulse, which would pass, as
worldly intrigues do pass, leaving no other traces in the life
of either but pleasant or unpleasant memories. He felt all
the torture of his own and her position, all the difficulty
there was for them, conspicuous as they were in the eye of
all the world, in concealing their love, in lying and
deceiving; and in lying, deceiving, feigning, and
continually thinking of others, when the passion that

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