Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/203

 another direction; he began to think of her, and how she would feel. His imagination vividly showed him her personal life, her thoughts, and her desires; and the idea that she might, that she must, have her individual life apart from his, seemed to him so terrible, that he hastened to put it out of his mind.

This was the abyss which it was so dreadful for him to gaze into. To penetrate by thought and feeling into the soul of another was a psychical effort strange to Alekseï Aleksandrovitch. He considered it a pernicious and dangerous mental habit.

"And what is most terrible," he said to himself, "is that this senseless uncertainty comes on me just as I am about to bring my work to completion,"—he referred to a scheme which he was at that time managing,—"and when I need perfect freedom from agitation and all my mental powers. What is to be done? I am not one of those men who can endure agitation and annoyance and have the strength of mind to face them."

"I must reflect; I must take some stand and get rid of this annoyance," he added aloud. "I do not admit that I have any right to probe into her feelings, or to scrutinize what is going on in her heart; that belongs to her conscience, and comes into the domain of religion," he said to himself, feeling some consolation that he had found a domain of law applicable to the circumstances that had arisen.

"So," he continued, "the questions relating to her feelings and the like are questions of conscience, in which I have no concern. My duty lies clearly before me. As head of my family, I am bound to guide her, and therefore, to a certain degree, I am responsible. I must point out the danger which I see; I must watch over her, and even use my powers. I must speak to her."

And Alekseï Aleksandrovitch formulated in his mind everything that he should say to his wife. While he was thinking it over he regretted the necessity of wasting his time and his intellectual powers in family matters. But, in spite of him, his plan assumed, in his thought, the clear, precise, and logical form of a report:—