Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/686

 Anna's aunt, a wealthy lady of the governmental capital, introduced her niece to this governor, who was young for such a position, if not in years, and she forced him to the alternative of proposing marriage or leaving the city. Alekseï Aleksandrovitch long hesitated. There seemed as many reasons in favor of this step as there were opposed to it; there was no definite reason which should impel him to break his rule, "When in doubt, don't!" but Anna's aunt sent word to him through a friend that he had compromised the young lady, and that as a man of honor he must offer her his hand. He offered himself, and gave her, first as his betrothed and afterward as his wife, all the affection which it was in his power to show.

This attachment prevented him from feeling the need of any other intimacy. And now out of all the number of his acquaintances he had not one confidential friend. He had many so-called "friends," but no intimates. There were many persons whom Alekseï Aleksandrovitch could invite to dinner, or ask favors of, in the interests of his public capacity or protection for some petitioner; with whom he could freely criticize the actions of other people and of the highest officers of government. But his relations to these people were exclusively confined to this official domain, from which it was impossible to escape. There was one university comrade with whom he had kept up an intimacy in after years, and to whom he would have confided his private sorrows, but this friend was a trustee of the classical educational institutes in a distant province. Of all the people in Petersburg, the nearest and most practicable acquaintances were his Director of the Chancelry and his doctor.

Mikhaïl Vasilyevitch Sliudin, "manager of affairs," was a simple, good, intelligent, and well-bred man, and he seemed full of sympathy for Karenin; but five years' association in official service put a barrier between them which silenced confidences.