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feelings, the feelings that have guided me and will guide me, so that
you may not be in error regarding me. You know I had resolved on a
divorce, and had even begun to take proceedings. I won’t conceal from
you that in beginning this I was in uncertainty, I was in misery; I will
confess that I was pursued by a desire to revenge myself on you and on
her. When I got the telegram, I came here with the same feelings; I will
say more, I longed for her death. But....” He paused, pondering whether
to disclose or not to disclose his feeling to him. “But I saw her and
forgave her. And the happiness of forgiveness has revealed to me my
duty. I forgive completely. I would offer the other cheek, I would give
my cloak if my coat be taken. I pray to God only not to take from me
the bliss of forgiveness!”
Tears stood in his eyes, and the luminous, serene look in them
impressed Vronsky.
“This is my position: you can trample me in the mud, make me the
laughing-stock of the world, I will not abandon her, and I will never
utter a word of reproach to you,” Alexey Alexandrovitch went on. “My
duty is clearly marked for me; I ought to be with her, and I will be. If
she wishes to see you, I will let you know, but now I suppose it would
be better for you to go away.”
He got up, and sobs cut short his words. Vronsky too was getting
up, and in a stooping, not yet erect posture, looked up at him from
under his brows. He did not understand Alexey Alexandrovitch’s
feeling, but he felt that it was something higher and even unattainable
for him with his view of life.
Chapter 18.
After the conversation with Alexey Alexandrovitch, Vronsky went
out onto the steps of the Karenins’ house and stood still, with difficulty
remembering where he was, and where he ought to walk or drive. He
felt disgraced, humiliated, guilty, and deprived of all possibility of washing
away his humiliation. He felt thrust out of the beaten track along
which he had so proudly and lightly walked till then. All the habits
and rules of his life that had seemed so firm, had turned out suddenly
false and inapplicable. The betrayed husband, who had figured till
that time as a pitiful creature, an incidental and somewhat ludicrous
obstacle to his happiness, had suddenly been summoned by her her-
self, elevated to an awe-inspiring pinnacle, and on the pinnacle that
husband had shown himself, not malignant, not false, not ludicrous,
but kind and straightforward and large. Vronsky could not but feel
this, and the parts were suddenly reversed. Vronsky felt his elevation
and his own abasement, his truth and his own falsehood. He felt that
the husband was magnanimous even in his sorrow, while he had been
base and petty in his deceit. But this sense of his own humiliation
before the man he had unjustly despised made up only a small part of
his misery. He felt unutterably wretched now, for his passion for Anna,
which had seemed to him of late to be growing cooler, now that he
knew he had lost her forever, was stronger than ever it had been. He