Part Seven: Chapter 23

by Leo Tolstoy

　　In order to carry through any undertaking in family life, theremust necessarily be either complete division between the husbandand wife, or loving agreement. When the relations of a coupleare vacillating and neither one thing nor the other, no sort ofenterprise can be undertaken.

　　Many families remain for years in the same place, though bothhusband and wife are sick of it, simply because there is neithercomplete division nor agreement between them.

　　Both Vronsky and Anna felt life in Moscow insupportable in theheat and dust, when the spring sunshine was followed by the glareof summer, and all the trees in the boulevards had long sincebeen in full leaf, and the leaves were covered with dust. Butthey did not go back to Vozdvizhenskoe, as they had arranged todo long before; they went on staying in Moscow, though they bothloathed it, because of late there had been no agreement betweenthem.

　　The irritability that kept them apart had no external cause, andall efforts to come to an understanding intensified it, insteadof removing it. It was an inner irritation, grounded in her mindon the conviction that his love had grown less; in his, on regretthat he had put himself for her sake in a difficult position,which she, instead of lightening, made still more difficult.Neither of them gave full utterance to their sense of grievance,but they considered each other in the wrong, and tried on everypretext to prove this to one another.

　　In her eyes the whole of him, with all his habits, ideas,desires, with all his spiritual and physical temperament, was onething--love for women, and that love, she felt, ought to beentirely concentrated on her alone. That love was less;consequently, as she reasoned, he must have transferred part ofhis love to other women or to another woman--and she was jealous.She was jealous not of any particular woman but of the decreaseof his love. Not having got an object for her jealousy, she wason the lookout for it. At the slightest hint she transferred herjealousy from one object to another. At one time she was jealousof those low women with whom he might so easily renew his oldbachelor ties; then she was jealous of the society women he mightmeet; then she was jealous of the imaginary girl whom he mightwant to marry, for whose sake he would break with her. And thislast form of jealousy tortured her most of all, especially as hehad unwarily told her, in a moment of frankness, that his motherknew him so little that she had had the audacity to try andpersuade him to marry the young Princess Sorokina.

　　And being jealous of him, Anna was indignant against him andfound grounds for indignation in everything. For everything thatwas difficult in her position she blamed him. The agonizingcondition of suspense she had passed in Moscow, the tardiness andindecision of Alexey Alexandrovitch, her solitude--she put it alldown to him. If he had loved her he would have seen all thebitterness of her position, and would have rescued her from it.For her being in Moscow and not in the country, he was to blametoo. He could not live buried in the country as she would haveliked to do. He must have society, and he had put her in thisawful position, the bitterness of which he would not see. Andagain, it was his fault that she was forever separated from herson.

　　Even the rare moments of tenderness that came from time to timedid not soothe her; in his tenderness now she saw a shade ofcomplacency, of self-confidence, which had not been of old andwhich exasperated her.

　　It was dusk. Anna was alone, and waiting for him to come backfrom a bachelor dinner. She walked up and down in his study (theroom where the noise from the street was least heard), andthought over every detail of their yesterday's quarrel. Goingback from the well-remembered, offensive words of the quarrel towhat had been the ground of it, she arrived at last at itsorigin. For a long while she could hardly believe that theirdissension had arisen from a conversation so inoffensive, of solittle moment to either. But so it actually had been. It allarose from his laughing at the girls' high schools, declaringthey were useless, while she defended them. He had spokenslightingly of women's education in general, and had said thatHannah, Anna's English protegee, had not the slightest need toknow anything of physics.

　　This irritated Anna. She saw in this a contemptuous reference toher occupations. And she bethought her of a phrase to pay himback for the pain he had given her. "I don't expect you tounderstand me, my feelings, as anyone who loved me might, butsimple delicacy I did expect," she said.

　　And he had actually flushed with vexation, and had said somethingunpleasant. She could not recall her answer, but at that point,with an unmistakable desire to wound her too, he had said:

　　"I feel no interest in your infatuation over this girl, that'strue, because I see it's unnatural."

　　The cruelty with which he shattered the world she had built upfor herself so laboriously to enable her to endure her hard life,the injustice with which he had accused her of affectation, ofartificiality, aroused her.

　　"I am very sorry that nothing but what's coarse and material iscomprehensible and natural to you," she said and walked out ofthe room.

　　When he had come in to her yesterday evening, they had notreferred to the quarrel, but both felt that the quarrel had beensmoothed over, but was not at an end.

　　Today he had not been at home all day, and she felt so lonelyand wretched in being on bad terms with him that she wanted toforget it all, to forgive him, and be reconciled with him; shewanted to throw the blame on herself and to justify him.

　　"I am myself to blame. I'm irritable, I'm insanely jealous. Iwill make it up with him, and we'll go away to the country; thereI shall be more at peace."

　　"Unnatural!" she suddenly recalled the word that had stung hermost of all, not so much the word itself as the intent to woundher with which it was said. "I know what he meant; he meant--unnatural, not loving my own daughter, to love another person'schild. What does he know of love for children, of my love forSeryozha, whom I've sacrificed for him? But that wish to woundme! No, he loves another woman, it must be so."

　　And perceiving that, while trying to regain her peace of mind,she had gone round the same circle that she had been round sooften before, and had come back to her former state ofexasperation, she was horrified at herself. "Can it beimpossible? Can it be beyond me to control myself?" she said toherself, and began again from the beginning. "He's truthful,he's honest, he loves me. I love him, and in a few days thedivorce will come. What more do I want? I want peace of mindand trust, and I will take the blame on myself. Yes, now when hecomes in, I will tell him I was wrong, though I was not wrong,and we will go away tomorrow."

　　And to escape thinking any more, and being overcome byirritability, she rang, and ordered the boxes to be brought upfor packing their things for the country.

　　At ten o'clock Vronsky came in.