Page 856 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

Chapter 12

Connected with the conversation that had sprung up
on the rights of women there were certain questions as to
the inequality of rights in marriage improper to discuss
before the ladies. Pestsov had several times during dinner
touched upon these questions, but Sergey Ivanovitch and
Stepan Arkadyevitch carefully drew him off them.
When they rose from the table and the ladies had gone
out, Pestsov did not follow them, but addressing Alexey
Alexandrovitch, began to expound the chief ground of
inequality. The inequality in marriage, in his opinion, lay
in the fact that the infidelity of the wife and infidelity of
the husband are punished unequally, both by the law and
by public opinion. Stepan Arkadyevitch went hurriedly up
to Alexey Alexandrovitch and offered him a cigar.
‘No, I don’t smoke,’ Alexey Alexandrovitch answered
calmly, and as though purposely wishing to show that he
was not afraid of the subject, he turned to Pestsov with a
chilly smile.
‘I imagine that such a view has a foundation in the very
nature of things,’ he said, and would have gone on to the
drawing room. But at this point Turovtsin broke suddenly

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