Alexey Alexandrovitch had seen nothing striking or improper in
the fact that his wife was sitting with Vronsky at a table apart,
in eager conversation with him about something. But he noticed
that to the rest of the party this appeared something striking
and improper, and for that reason it seemed to him too to be
improper. He made up his mind that he must speak of it to his
wife.
On reaching home Alexey Alexandrovitch went to his study, as he
usually did, seated himself in his low chair, opened a book on
the Papacy at the place where he had laid the paper-knife in it,
and read till one o'clock, just as he usually did. But from time
to time he rubbed his high forehead and shook his head, as
though to drive away something. At his usual time he got up and
made his toilet for the night. Anna Arkadyevna had not yet come
in. With a book under his arm he went upstairs. But this
evening, instead of his usual thoughts and meditations upon
official details, his thoughts were absorbed by his wife and
something disagreeable connected with her. Contrary to his usual
habit, he did not get into bed, but fell to walking up and down
the rooms with his hands clasped behind his back. He could not
go to bed, feeling that it was absolutely needful for him first
to think thoroughly over the position that had just arisen.
When Alexey Alexandrovitch had made up his mind that he must talk
to his wife about it, it had seemed a very easy and simple
matter. But now, when he began to think over the question that
had just presented itself, it seemed to him very complicated and
difficult.
Alexey Alexandrovitch was not jealous. Jealousy according to
his notions was an insult to one's wife, and one ought to have
confidence in one's wife. Why one ought to have confidence--
that is to say, complete conviction that his young wife would
always love him--he did not ask himself. But he had no
experience of lack of confidence, because he had confidence in
her, and told himself that he ought to have it. Now, though his
conviction that jealousy was a shameful feeling and that one
ought to feel confidence, had not broken down, he felt that he
was standing face to face with something illogical and
irrational, and did not know what was to be done. Alexey
Alexandrovitch was standing face to face with life, with the
possibility of his wife's loving someone other than himself, and
this seemed to him very irrational and incomprehensible because
it was life itself. All his life Alexey Alexandrovitch had lived
and worked in official spheres, having to do with the reflection
of life. And every time he had stumbled against life itself he
had shrunk away from it. Now he experienced a feeling akin to
that of a man who, while calmly crossing a precipice by a bridge,
should suddenly discover that the bridge is broken, and that
there is a chasm below. That chasm was life itself, the bridge
that artificial life in which Alexey Alexandrovitch had lived.
For the first time the question presented itself to him of the
possibility of his wife's loving someone else, and he was
horrified at it.