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Chapter 22.
Stepan Arkadyevitch, with the same somewhat solemn expression
with which he used to take his presidential chair at his board, walked
into Alexey Alexandrovitch’s room. Alexey Alexandrovitch was walk-
ing about his room with his hands behind his back, thinking of just
what Stepan Arkadyevitch had been discussing with his wife.
“I’m not interrupting you?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, on the sight
of his brother-in-law becoming suddenly aware of a sense of embar-
rassment unusual with him. To conceal this embarrassment he took
out a cigarette case he had just bought that opened in a new way, and
sniffing the leather, took a cigarette out of it.
“No. Do you want anything?” Alexey Alexandrovitch asked with-
out eagerness.
“Yes, I wished...I wanted...yes, I wanted to talk to you,” said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, with surprise aware of an unaccustomed timidity.
This feeling was so unexpected and so strange that he did not
believe it was the voice of conscience telling him that what he was
meaning to do was wrong.
Stepan Arkadyevitch made an effort and struggled with the timid-
ity that had come over him.
“I hope you believe in my love for my sister and my sincere affec-
tion and respect for you,” he said, reddening.
Alexey Alexandrovitch stood still and said nothing, but his face
struck Stepan Arkadyevitch by its expression of an unresisting sacri-
fice.
“I intended...I wanted to have a little talk with you about my sister
and your mutual position,” he said, still struggling with an unaccus-
tomed constraint.
Alexey Alexandrovitch smiled mournfully, looked at his brother-
in-law, and without answering went up to the table, took from it an
unfinished letter, and handed it to his brother-in-law.
“I think unceasingly of the same thing. And here is what I had
begun writing, thinking I could say it better by letter, and that my
presence irritates her,” he said, as he gave him the letter.
Stepan Arkadyevitch took the letter, looked with incredulous sur-
prise at the lusterless eyes fixed so immovably on him, and began to
read.
“I see that my presence is irksome to you. Painful as it is to me to
believe it, I see that it is so, and cannot be otherwise. I don’t blame you,
and God is my witness that on seeing you at the time of your illness I
resolved with my whole heart to forget all that had passed between us
and to begin a new life. I do not regret, and shall never regret, what I
have done; but I have desired one thing—your good, the good of your
soul—and now I see I have not attained that. Tell me yourself what
will give you true happiness and peace to your soul. I put myself
entirely in your hands, and trust to your feeling of what’s right.”
Stepan Arkadyevitch handed back the letter, and with the same
surprise continued looking at his brother-in-law, not knowing what to
say. This silence was so awkward for both of them that Stepan
Arkadyevitch’s lips began twitching nervously, while he still gazed with-
out speaking at Karenin’s face.