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suspense,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, with his most deprecating smile.
“I hardly think that the time for such questions has come yet for me.”
Alexey Alexandrovitch and Lidia Ivanovna looked at each other.
“We can never tell whether the time has come for us or not,” said
Alexey Alexandrovitch severely. “We ought not to think whether we
are ready or not ready. God’s grace is not guided by human consider-
ations: sometimes it comes not to those that strive for it, and comes to
those that are unprepared, like Saul.”
“No, I believe it won’t be just yet,” said Lidia Ivanovna, who had
been meanwhile watching the movements of the Frenchman. Landau
got up and came to them.
“Do you allow me to listen?” he asked.
“Oh, yes; I did not want to disturb you,” said Lidia Ivanovna,
gazing tenderly at him; “sit here with us.”
“One has only not to close one’s eyes to shut out the light,” Alexey
Alexandrovitch went on.
“Ah, if you knew the happiness we know, feeling His presence ever
in our hearts!” said Countess Lidia Ivanovna with a rapturous smile.
“But a man may feel himself unworthy sometimes to rise to that
height,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, conscious of hypocrisy in admitting
this religious height, but at the same time unable to bring himself to
acknowledge his free-thinking views before a person who, by a single
word to Pomorsky, might procure him the coveted appointment.
“That is, you mean that sin keeps him back?” said Lidia Ivanovna.
“But that is a false idea. There is no sin for believers, their sin has been
atoned for. Pardon,” she added, looking at the footman, who came in
again with another letter. She read it and gave a verbal answer: “To-
morrow at the Grand Duchess’s, say.” “For the believer sin is not,” she
went on.
“Yes, but faith without works is dead,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch,
recalling the phrase from the catechism, and only by his smile clinging
to his independence.
“There you have it—from the epistle of St. James,” said Alexey
Alexandrovitch, addressing Lidia Ivanovna, with a certain reproach-
fulness in his tone. It was unmistakably a subject they had discussed
more than once before. “What harm has been done by the false
interpretation of that passage! Nothing holds men back from belief
like that misinterpretation. ‘I have not works, so I cannot believe,’
though all the while that is not said. But the very opposite is said.”
“Striving for God, saving the soul by fasting,” said Countess Lidia
Ivanovna, with disgusted contempt, “those are the crude ideas of our
monks.... Yet that is nowhere said. It is far simpler and easier,” she
added, looking at Oblonsky with the same encouraging smile with
which at court she encouraged youthful maids of honor, disconcerted
by the new surroundings of the court.
“We are saved by Christ who suffered for us. We are saved by
faith,” Alexey Alexandrovitch chimed in, with a glance of approval at
her words.
“Vous comprenez l’anglais?” asked Lidia Ivanovna, and receiving a
reply in the affirmative, she got up and began looking through a shelf
of books.
“I want to read him ‘Safe and Happy,’ or ‘Under the Wing,’” she
said, looking inquiringly at Karenin. And finding the book, and sitting
down again in her place, she opened it. “It’s very short. In it is de-
scribed the way by which faith can be reached, and the happiness,
above all earthly bliss, with which it fills the soul. The believer cannot
be unhappy because he is not alone. But you will see.” She was just
settling herself to read when the footman came in again. “Madame