Anna Karenina | Page 4

Stepan Arkadyevitch's eyes twinkled gaily, and he pondered with a
smile. "Yes, it was nice, very nice. There was a great deal more that
was delightful, only there's no putting it into words, or even expressing
it in one's thoughts awake." And noticing a gleam of light peeping in
beside one of the serge curtains, he cheerfully dropped his feet over the
edge of the sofa, and felt about with them for his slippers, a present on
his last birthday, worked for him by his wife on gold-colored morocco.
And, as he had done every day for the last nine years, he stretched out
his hand, without getting up, towards the place where his
dressing-gown always hung in his bedroom. And thereupon he
suddenly remembered that he was not sleeping in his wife's room, but
in his study, and why: the smile vanished from his face, he knitted his
brows.
"Ah, ah, ah! Oo!..." he muttered, recalling everything that had
happened. And again every detail of his quarrel with his wife was
present to his imagination, all the hopelessness of his position, and
worst of all, his own fault.

"Yes, she won't forgive me, and she can't forgive me. And the most
awful thing about it is that it's all my fault--all my fault, though I'm not
to blame. That's the point of the whole situation," he reflected. "Oh, oh,
oh!" he kept repeating in despair, as he remembered the acutely painful
sensations caused him by this quarrel.
Most unpleasant of all was the first minute when, on coming, happy
and good-humored, from the theater, with a huge pear in his hand for
his wife, he had not found his wife in the drawing-room, to his surprise
had not found her in the study either, and saw her at last in her bedroom
with the unlucky letter that revealed everything in her hand.
She, his Dolly, forever fussing and worrying over household details,
and limited in her ideas, as he considered, was sitting perfectly still
with the letter in her hand, looking at him with an expression of horror,
despair, and indignation.
"What's this? this?" she asked, pointing to the letter.
And at this recollection, Stepan Arkadyevitch, as is so often the case,
was not so much annoyed at the fact itself as at the way in which he
had met his wife's words.
There happened to him at that instant what does happen to people when
they are unexpectedly caught in something very disgraceful. He did not
succeed in adapting his face to the position in which he was placed
towards his wife by the discovery of his fault. Instead of being hurt,
denying, defending himself, begging forgiveness, instead of remaining
indifferent even--anything would have been better than what he did
do--his face utterly involuntarily (reflex spinal action, reflected Stepan
Arkadyevitch, who was fond of physiology)--utterly involuntarily
assumed its habitual, good-humored, and therefore idiotic smile.
This idiotic smile he could not forgive himself. Catching sight of that
smile, Dolly shuddered as though at physical pain, broke out with her
characteristic heat into a flood of cruel words, and rushed out of the
room. Since then she had refused to see her husband.

"It's that idiotic smile that's to blame for it all," thought Stepan
Arkadyevitch.
"But what's to be done? What's to be done?" he said to himself in
despair, and found no answer.





Chapter 2
Stepan Arkadyevitch was a truthful man in his relations with himself.
He was incapable of deceiving himself and persuading himself that he
repented of his conduct. He could not at this date repent of the fact that
he, a handsome, susceptible man of thirty-four, was not in love with his
wife, the mother of five living and two dead children, and only a year
younger than himself. All he repented of was that he had not succeeded
better in hiding it from his wife. But he felt all the difficulty of his
position and was sorry for his wife, his children, and himself. Possibly
he might have managed to conceal his sins better from his wife if he
had anticipated that the knowledge of them would have had such an
effect on her. He had never clearly thought out the subject, but he had
vaguely conceived that his wife must long ago have suspected him of
being unfaithful to her, and shut her eyes to the fact. He had even
supposed that she, a worn-out woman no longer young or good-looking,
and in no way remarkable or interesting, merely a good mother, ought
from a sense of fairness to take an indulgent view. It had turned out
quite the other way.
"Oh, it's awful! oh dear, oh dear! awful!" Stepan Arkadyevitch kept
repeating to himself, and he could think of