452 453
your conduct may have been, I do not consider myself justified in
breaking the ties in which we are bound by a Higher Power. The family
cannot be broken up by a whim, a caprice, or even by the sin of one of
the partners in the marriage, and our life must go on as it has done in
the past. This is essential for me, for you, and for our son. I am fully
persuaded that you have repented and do repent of what has called
forth the present letter, and that you will cooperate with me in eradi-
cating the cause of our estrangement, and forgetting the past. In the
contrary event, you can conjecture what awaits you and your son. All
this I hope to discuss more in detail in a personal interview. As the
season is drawing to a close, I would beg you to return to Petersburg as
quickly as possible, not later than Tuesday. All necessary preparations
shall be made for your arrival here. I beg you to note that I attach
particular significance to compliance with this request.
A. Karenin
“P.S.—I enclose the money which may be needed for your ex-
penses.”
He read the letter through and felt pleased with it, and especially
that he had remembered to enclose money: there was not a harsh
word, not a reproach in it, nor was there undue indulgence. Most of all,
it was a golden bridge for return. Folding the letter and smoothing it
with a massive ivory knife, and putting it in an envelope with the
money, he rang the bell with the gratification it always afforded him to
use the well arranged appointments of his writing-table.
“Give this to the courier to be delivered to Anna Arkadyevna
tomorrow at the summer villa,” he said, getting up.
“Certainly, your excellency; tea to be served in the study?”
Alexey Alexandrovitch ordered tea to be brought to the study, and
playing with the massive paper-knife, he moved to his easy chair, near
which there had been placed ready for him a lamp and the French
work on Egyptian hieroglyphics that he had begun. Over the easy
chair there hung in a gold frame an oval portrait of Anna, a fine paint-
ing by a celebrated artist. Alexey Alexandrovitch glanced at it. The
unfathomable eyes gazed ironically and insolently at him. Insuffer-
ably insolent and challenging was the effect in Alexey Alexandrovitch’s
eyes of the black lace about the head, admirably touched in by the
painter, the black hair and handsome white hand with one finger lifted,
covered with rings. After looking at the portrait for a minute, Alexey
Alexandrovitch shuddered so that his lips quivered and he uttered the
sound “brrr,” and turned away. He made haste to sit down in his easy
chair and opened the book. He tried to read, but he could not revive
the very vivid interest he had felt before in Egyptian hieroglyphics. He
looked at the book and thought of something else. He thought not of
his wife, but of a complication that had arisen in his official life, which
at the time constituted the chief interest of it. He felt that he had
penetrated more deeply than ever before into this intricate affair, and
that he had originated a leading idea—he could say it without self-
flattery—calculated to clear up the whole business, to strengthen him
in his official career, to discomfit his enemies, and thereby to be of the
greatest benefit to the government. Directly the servant had set the
tea and left the room, Alexey Alexandrovitch got up and went to the
writing-table. Moving into the middle of the table a portfolio of pa-
pers, with a scarcely perceptible smile of self-satisfaction, he took a
pencil from a rack and plunged into the perusal of a complex report
relating to the present complication. The complication was of this
nature: Alexey Alexandrovitch’s characteristic quality as a politician,
that special individual qualification that every rising functionary pos-
sesses, the qualification that with his unflagging ambition, his reserve,