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Chapter 19.
The mistake made by Alexey Alexandrovitch in that, when pre-
paring for seeing his wife, he had overlooked the possibility that her
repentance might be sincere, and he might forgive her, and she might
not die—this mistake was two months after his return from Moscow
brought home to him in all its significance. But the mistake made by
him had arisen not simply from his having overlooked that contingency,
but also from the fact that until that day of his interview with his dying
wife, he had not known his own heart. At his sick wife’s bedside he had
for the first time in his life given way to that feeling of sympathetic
suffering always roused in him by the sufferings of others, and hitherto
looked on by him with shame as a harmful weakness. And pity for her,
and remorse for having desired her death, and most of all, the joy of
forgiveness, made him at once conscious, not simply of the relief of his
own sufferings, but of a spiritual peace he had never experienced
before. He suddenly felt that the very thing that was the source of his
sufferings had become the source of his spiritual joy; that what had
seemed insoluble while he was judging, blaming, and hating, had be-
come clear and simple when he forgave and loved.
He forgave his wife and pitied her for her sufferings and her re-
morse. He forgave Vronsky, and pitied him, especially after reports
reached him of his despairing action. He felt more for his son than
before. And he blamed himself now for having taken too little interest
in him. But for the little newborn baby he felt a quite peculiar senti-
ment, not of pity, only, but of tenderness. At first, from a feeling of
compassion alone, he had been interested in the delicate little creature,
who was not his child, and who was cast on one side during her mother’s
illness, and would certainly have died if he had not troubled about her,
and he did not himself observe how fond he became of her. He would
go into the nursery several times a day, and sit there for a long while, so
that the nurses, who were at first afraid of him, got quite used to his
presence. Sometimes for half an hour at a stretch he would sit silently
gazing at the saffron-red, downy, wrinkled face of the sleeping baby,
watching the movements of the frowning brows, and the fat little hands,
with clenched fingers, that rubbed the little eyes and nose. At such
moments particularly, Alexey Alexandrovitch had a sense of perfect
peace and inward harmony, and saw nothing extraordinary in his posi-
tion, nothing that ought to be changed.
But as time went on, he saw more and more distinctly that however
natural the position now seemed to him, he would not long be allowed
to remain in it. He felt that besides the blessed spiritual force control-
ling his soul, there was another, a brutal force, as powerful, or more
powerful, which controlled his life, and that this force would not allow
him that humble peace he longed for. He felt that everyone was
looking at him with inquiring wonder, that he was not understood, and
that something was expected of him. Above all, he felt the instability
and unnaturalness of his relations with his wife.
When the softening effect of the near approach of death had passed
away, Alexey Alexandrovitch began to notice that Anna was afraid of
him, ill at ease with him, and could not look him straight in the face.
She seemed to be wanting, and not daring, to tell him something; and