Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/70

 words are taken. However, I don't say what I think, but what I feel. You feel a disgust for spiders and I for these reptiles. You see you did not have to study spiders, and you know nothing about their natures. So it is with me."

"It is well for you to say so; it is a very convenient way to do as the character in Dickens did, and throw all embarrassing questions over his right shoulder with his left hand. But to deny a fact is not to answer it. Now, what is to be done? tell me! what is to be done? Your wife grows old and you are full of life. Before you are aware of it you realize that you do not love your wife, however much you may respect her. And then suddenly you fall in love with some one and you fall, you fall!" said Stepan Arkadyevitch, with a melancholy despair.

Levin laughed.

"Yes, you fall!" repeated Oblonsky. "Then what is to be done?"

"Don't steal fresh bread."

Stepan Arkadyevitch burst out laughing.

"O moralist! but please appreciate the situation. Here are two women: one insists only on her rights, and her rights mean your love which you cannot give; the other has sacrificed everything for you and demands nothing. What can one do? How can one proceed? Here is a terrible tragedy!"

"If you wish my judgment concerning this tragedy, I will tell you that I don't believe in this tragedy, and this is why. In my opinion, Love—the two Loves which Plato describes in his 'Symposium,' you remember, serve as the touchstone for men. Some people understand only one of them; others understand the other. Those who comprehend only the Platonic love have no right to speak of this tragedy now. In this sort of love there can be no tragedy. I thank you humbly for the pleasure; and therein consists the whole drama. But for Platonic love there can be no tragedy because it is bright and pure, and because .... "

At this moment Levin remembered his own short-