Anna Karenina - Part 1 - Page 3/119

Stepan Arkadyevitch was a truthful man in his relations with

himself. He was incapable of deceiving himself and persuading

himself that he repented of his conduct. He could not at this

date repent of the fact that he, a handsome, susceptible man of

thirty-four, was not in love with his wife, the mother of five

living and two dead children, and only a year younger than

himself. All he repented of was that he had not succeeded better

in hiding it from his wife. But he felt all the difficulty of

his position and was sorry for his wife, his children, and

himself. Possibly he might have managed to conceal his sins

better from his wife if he had anticipated that the knowledge of

them would have had such an effect on her. He had never clearly

thought out the subject, but he had vaguely conceived that his

wife must long ago have suspected him of being unfaithful to her,

and shut her eyes to the fact. He had even supposed that she, a

worn-out woman no longer young or good-looking, and in no way

remarkable or interesting, merely a good mother, ought from a

sense of fairness to take an indulgent view. It had turned out

quite the other way.

"Oh, it's awful! oh dear, oh dear! awful!" Stepan Arkadyevitch

kept repeating to himself, and he could think of nothing to be

done. "And how well things were going up till now! how well we

got on! She was contented and happy in her children; I never

interfered with her in anything; I let her manage the children

and the house just as she liked. It's true it's bad _her_ having

been a governess in our house. That's bad! There's something

common, vulgar, in flirting with one's governess. But what a

governess!" (He vividly recalled the roguish black eyes of Mlle.

Roland and her smile.) "But after all, while she was in the

house, I kept myself in hand. And the worst of it all is that

she's already...it seems as if ill-luck would have it so! Oh,

oh! But what, what is to be done?"

There was no solution, but that universal solution which life

gives to all questions, even the most complex and insoluble.

That answer is: one must live in the needs of the day--that is,

forget oneself. To forget himself in sleep was impossible now,

at least till nighttime; he could not go back now to the music

sung by the decanter-women; so he must forget himself in the

dream of daily life.

"Then we shall see," Stepan Arkadyevitch said to himself, and

getting up he put on a gray dressing-gown lined with blue silk,

tied the tassels in a knot, and, drawing a deep breath of air

into his broad, bare chest, he walked to the window with his

usual confident step, turning out his feet that carried his full

frame so easily. He pulled up the blind and rang the bell

loudly. It was at once answered by the appearance of an old

friend, his valet, Matvey, carrying his clothes, his boots, and a

telegram. Matvey was followed by the barber with all the

necessaries for shaving.