Page 985 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

those six weeks been a joy and a torture to her. On the
day when in the drawing room of the house in Arbaty
Street she had gone up to him in her brown dress, and
given herself to him without a word—on that day, at that

hour, there took place in her heart a complete severance
from all her old life, and a quite different, new, utterly
strange life had begun for her, while the old life was
actually going on as before. Those six weeks had for her
been a time of the utmost bliss and the utmost misery. All
her life, all her desires and hopes were concentrated on
this one man, still uncomprehended by her, to whom she
was bound by a feeling of alternate attraction and
repulsion, even less comprehended than the man himself,
and all the while she was going on living in the outward
conditions of her old life. Living the old life, she was
horrified at herself, at her utter insurmountable callousness
to all her own past, to things, to habits, to the people she
had loved, who loved her—to her mother, who was
wounded by her indifference, to her kind, tender father,
till then dearer than all the world. At one moment she was
horrified at this indifference, at another she rejoiced at
what had brought her to this indifference. She could not
frame a thought, not a wish apart from life with this man;
but this new life was not yet, and she could not even

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