Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/648

 came to close the breach as quickly as possible and not let it grow wider. For him to remain under the shadow of an injustice was cruel; but, under the pretext of a justification, to cause her pain was still worse. Like a man half asleep, wearied with pain, he wished to free himself from it, to throw off the painful place; but, on fully waking, he found that the painful place was himself. Patience only was necessary to give relief to the pain, and he tried to apply this remedy.

Reconciliation followed. Kitty felt herself in the wrong, and, though she did not confess it, was more than ever tender to him, and they felt a new and doubled happiness of love. But this did not prevent these differences from coming up, and coming up very frequently, from the most unexpected and insignificant causes. These collisions often arose from the fact that they were still ignorant of what was indispensable for each, and from the fact that during all this first period they both were often in a bad frame of mind. When one was happy and the other depressed, then peace was disturbed, but when they both happened to be in low spirits, then such childish things were sufficient to provoke misunderstandings, that they could not even remember afterward what they were quarreling about. It is true, when they were both in good spirits, their joy of life was doubled. But nevertheless this first period was a trying time for them both. All those early days, they felt with especial vividness the strain, just as if both of them were pulling in contrary ways on the chain that bound them. Especially the honeymoon, from which Levin expected so much, was far from honey-sweet, but remained in the memories of them both the most trying and humiliating period of their lives. Both of them afterwards tried to blot from their memories all the ugly, shameful incidents of this unhealthy period, during which they so rarely found themselves in a normal state of mind, were so rarely themselves.

Life became better regulated only after their return from Moscow, where they made a short visit in the third month after the wedding.