Page 441 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

with you. So much the worse for you!’ he said mentally,
like a man who, after vainly attempting to extinguish a
fire, should fly in a rage with his vain efforts and say, ‘Oh,
very well then! you shall burn for this!’ This man, so

subtle and astute in official life, did not realize all the
senselessness of such an attitude to his wife. He did not
realize it, because it was too terrible to him to realize his
actual position, and he shut down and locked and sealed
up in his heart that secret place where lay hid his feelings
towards his family, that is, his wife and son. He who had
been such a careful father, had from the end of that winter
become peculiarly frigid to his son, and adopted to him
just the same bantering tone he used with his wife. ‘Aha,
young man!’ was the greeting with which he met him.
Alexey Alexandrovitch asserted and believed that he
had never in any previous year had so much official
business as that year. But he was not aware that he sought
work for himself that year, that this was one of the means
for keeping shut that secret place where lay hid his feelings
towards his wife and son and his thoughts about them,
which became more terrible the longer they lay there. If
anyone had had the right to ask Alexey Alexandrovitch
what he thought of his wife’s behavior, the mild and
peaceable Alexey Alexandrovitch would have made no

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