Page 805 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

‘You would be glad,’ the lawyer, without lifting his
eyes, responded, adopting, with a certain satisfaction, the
tone of his client’s remarks, ‘for me to lay before you all
the methods by which you could secure what you desire?’

And on receiving an assuring nod from Alexey
Alexandrovitch, he went on, stealing a glance now and
then at Alexey Alexandrovitch’s face, which was growing
red in patches.
‘Divorce by our laws,’ he said, with a slight shade of
disapprobation of our laws, ‘is possible, as you are aware,
in the following cases.... Wait a little!’ he called to a clerk
who put his head in at the door, but he got up all the
same, said a few words to him, and sat down again. ‘...In
the following cases: physical defect in the married parties,
desertion without communication for five years,’ he said,
crooking a short finger covered with hair, ‘adultery’ (this
word he pronounced with obvious satisfaction),
‘subdivided as follows’ (he continued to crook his fat
fingers, though the three cases and their subdivisions could
obviously not be classified together): ‘physical defect of the
husband or of the wife, adultery of the husband or of the
wife.’ As by now all his fingers were used up, he
uncrooked all his fingers and went on: ‘This is the
theoretical view; but I imagine you have done me the

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