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76 young girl. He held out for three years. Afterwards, in Anna Karenin, he related how his declaration to Sophie Bers was effected, and how she replied to it: both of them tracing with one finger, under a table, the initials of words they dared not say.

Like Levine in Anna Karenin, he was so cruelly honest as to place his intimate journal in the hands of his betrothed, in order that she should be unaware of none of his past transgressions; and Sophie, like Kitty in Anna Karenin, was bitterly hurt by its perusal. They were married on the 23rd of September, 1862.

In the artist’s imagination this marriage was consummated three years earlier, when Family Happiness was written. For these years he had been living in the future; through the ineffable days of love that does not as yet know itself: through the delirious days of love that has attained self-knowledge, and the hour in which the divine, anticipated words are whispered; when the tears arise “of a happiness which departs for ever and will never return again”; and the triumphant reality of