Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/683

 ANNA KARENINA

PART FIFTH—Continued

CHAPTER XXI

S soon as Alekseï Aleksandrovitch had learned from Betsy and Stepan Arkadyevitch that all that was expected of him was that he should leave his wife in peace and not trouble her with his presence, and that his wife herself wished this, he had felt himself in too great perplexity to be able to decide anything for himself, and he did not know what he wanted; but, having placed his fate in the hands of others, who were willing enough to occupy themselves with his affairs, he was ready to accept whatever might be proposed to him.

Only when Anna had taken her departure and when the English governess sent to inquire if she should dine with him or by herself, did he for the first time clearly realize his position and its full horror.

The hardest element in this state of affairs was that he could not coordinate and reconcile his past with the present. Nor was it the past when he lived happily with his wife that disturbed him. The transition from that past to the knowledge of his wife's infidelity he had borne like a martyr; that state of things was trying, but it was comprehensible to him. If at the time when his wife had confessed her wrong to him she had left him, he would have been mortified and unhappy; but he would not have been in that inextricable, incomprehensible position in which he now felt that he was. He could never now reconcile his recent position, his reconciliation, his love for his sick wife and the alien child, 1