Page 941 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

not considering that by this he would be ruining her
irrevocably, had sunk into his heart. And connecting this
saying with his forgiveness of her, with his devotion to the
children, he understood it now in his own way. To

consent to a divorce, to give her her freedom, meant in
his thoughts to take from himself the last tie that bound
him to life—the children whom he loved; and to take
from her the last prop that stayed her on the path of right,
to thrust her down to her ruin. If she were divorced, he
knew she would join her life to Vronsky’s, and their tie
would be an illegitimate and criminal one, since a wife, by
the interpretation of the ecclesiastical law, could not marry
while her husband was living. ‘She will join him, and in a
year or two he will throw her over, or she will form a
new tie,’ thought Alexey Alexandrovitch. ‘And I, by
agreeing to an unlawful divorce, shall be to blame for her
ruin.’ He had thought it all over hundreds of times, and
was convinced that a divorce was not at all simple, as
Stepan Arkadyevitch had said, but was utterly impossible.
He did not believe a single word Stepan Arkadyevitch said
to him; to every word he had a thousand objections to
make, but he listened to him, feeling that his words were
the expression of that mighty brutal force which
controlled his life and to which he would have to submit.

940 of 1759