“Oh, for a girl in any case there’s noth­ing so awful about it. All girls take pride in being pro­posed to.”
“All girls, yes, but not her.”
Oblon­sky smiled. He under­stood this feel­ing of Levin’s very well, he knew that for him all the girls in the world were divided into two kinds: one kind was—all the girls in the world except her, and those girls had every human frailty and were very com­mon­place girls; the other kind was—she alone, with no frail­ties at all and far beyond all mankind.
“Wait a sec­ond, you must have some of this sauce,” he said, keep­ing Levin’s hand from push­ing the sauce away.
Levin obe­di­ently helped him­self to the sauce, but did not give Oblon­sky a chance to eat.
“No, now you listen—listen!” he said. “You can under­stand that for me this is a ques­tion of life or death. I’ve never spo­ken about it to any­one. And I can’t speak about it to any­one as I can with you. You and I, after all, are com­pletely dif­fer­ent from each other in every way: dif­fer­ent tasts, opin­ions, every­thing; but I know you’re fond of me and under­stand me, and because of that I’m ter­ri­bly fond of you. But for God’s sake you must be absolutely frank!”
P 39

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Noth­ing would have seemed sim­pler than for him, a man thirty-two years old, of good fam­ily and rich rather than poor, to pro­pose to Princess Shcherbatsky; in all like­li­hood he would instantly have been acknowl­edged as a first-rate match. But Levin was in love, and because of this it seemed to him that Kitty was such per­fec­tion in every way, a being far above every­thing else on earth, while he was a lowly, earthy crea­ture, that it was absolutely unthink­able for oth­ers and her­self to regard him as wor­thy of her.

AK Pg 23

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In Moscow, for the first time, after the course and lux­u­ri­ous life of Peters­burg, [Vron­sky] expe­ri­enced the delight of friend­ship with a sweet, inno­cent soci­ety girl who was in love with him. It never even entered his head that there might be any­thing wrong about his rela­tions with Kitty. At balls he danced chiefly with her; he went call­ing on the fam­ily. He talked the usual soci­ety talk with her; all sorts of non­sense, but non­sense that he invol­un­tar­ily put a spe­cial mean­ing into for her. In spite of his say­ing noth­ing to her that he might not have said in pub­lic, he felt that she was grow­ing more and more depen­dent on him, and the more he felt this the pleas­an­ter it was for him, and the more ten­der his own feel­ing grew for her. He did not know that his behav­ior toward Kitty had a cer­tain name; that he was lead­ing a young girl into temp­ta­tion with no inten­tion of mar­ry­ing her, and that this seduc­tion was one of the evil actions habit­ual among bril­liant young men like him­self. He thought him­self the first to dis­cover this plea­sure, and he enjoyed his dis­cov­ery.
….But as Vron­sky left the Shcherbatsky’s that evening, though he did not even sus­pect what her par­ents were say­ing, he had the feel­ing that the secret spir­i­tual bond that existed between him and Kitty had been strength­ened that evening with such force that he had to do some­thing about it. But he had no notion what could or should be done.
That’s what’s so delight­ful about it, he thought, as he left the Shcherb­taskys’, tak­ing with him as always an agree­able sen­sa­tion of purity and fresh­ness, partly due to his not hav­ing smoked the whole evening, together with a novel feel­ing of ten­der­ness at her love for him—the delight­ful thing is that noth­ing was said by her or by me, but we under­stood each other so well, in the invis­i­ble con­ver­sa­tion of looks and over­tones, that tonight it was clearer than ever that she told me she loves me. And so sweetly, so sim­ply, above all so trust­ingly! I myself feel bet­ter, purer. I feel that I have a heart and that there’s a great deal of good in me. Those sweet lov­ing eyes! When she said, “and very much…”
But then what? Well, nothing…It’s all right for me, and it’s all right for her. And he began think­ing of how he might fin­ish his evening.
AK P 59–60

Vron­sky, stand­ing side by side with Oblon­sky, [who has just told him that Levin has pro­posed to Kitty and was declined], watch­ing the cars and the peo­ple com­ing out, had for­got­ten his mother com­pletely. What he had just heard about Kitty had excited him and made him happy. He squared his chest uncon­sciously; his eyes shone. He felt like a con­queror.
“Count­ess Vron­sky is in this com­part­ment,” said the smart­look­ing con­duc­tor, com­ing up to him.
The conductor’s words aroused him and made him think of his mother and their forth­com­ing meet­ing. At heart he had no respect for his mother, and with­out admit­ting it to him­self did not love her, but in accor­dance with the ideas of the cir­cle he lived in and because of his upbring­ing, he could not imag­ine any other rela­tion­ship with his mother but one of the most respect­ful obe­di­ence, and the more respect­ful and obe­di­ent he was in appear­ance the less he respected and loved her at heart. P 63–64

Kitty came in directly after din­ner. She knew Anna, though not at all well, and was com­ing to her sister’s now full of fears as to how she would be received by this Peters­burg soci­ety woman whose praises were being sung by every­body. But Anna liked her—Kitty saw that at once. Anna plainly admired her beauty and youth, and Kitty could not even recover her poise before she fell not only under Anna’s influ­ence, but infat­u­ated with her, in the way young girls are capa­ble of falling in love with older mar­ried women. Anna was not at all like a soci­ety woman, or like the mother of an eight-year-old son, but would rather have resem­bled a twenty-year-old girl in the sup­ple­ness of her move­ments, her fresh­ness, and the vivac­ity that played about her face and kept break­ing through in a smile or a look, if it had not been for the grave and occa­sion­ally sad expres­sion in her eyes, which struck Kitty and attracted her. Kitty felt that Anna was com­pletely sim­ple and hid noth­ing, but that she had within her another, higher world of inter­ests, com­plex and poet­i­cal, that were beyond Kitty’s reach.
….Next week, it’s going to be a splen­did one. One of those balls that are always gay.”
“And are there any that are always gay?” said Anna with ten­der irony.
“It’s strange, but there are. It’s always gay at the Bor­ishchevs’, at the Nikitins’ too, while at the Meshkovs’ it’s always bor­ing. Surely you’ve noticed it?”
“No, my dear, for me there are no such balls ay longer where it’s always gay,” said Anna, and in her eyes Kitty saw that spe­cial world that was closed to her. “For me there are only balls which are less dif­fi­cult and bor­ing…”
“But how can a ball be bor­ing for you?”
“But why shouldn’t it be bor­ing for me at a ball? asked Anna.
Kitty noticed that Anna knew what the answer to this would be.
“Because you’re always pret­tier than any­one else.”
Anna had a capac­ity for blush­ing. She blushed and said: “In the first place, that’s never so; sec­ondly, even if that were to be so what use would it be to me?”
“Are you going to this ball?” asked Kitty.
“I think it’ll be impos­si­ble not to. Here, take it,” she said to Tanya, who was pulling of a loosely fit­ting ring from her white, slen­der, taper­ing fin­ger.
AK P 75

“But what did his mother tell you?”
“Oh, such a lot! I know he’s her favorite, but even so it’s obvi­ous how chival­rous he is…For instance, she told me he wanted to give up his entire for­tune to his brother, and that as a child he did some­thing else that was very unusual, he saved a woman from drown­ing. I n one word—a hero,” said Anna, smil­ing and think­ing about the two hun­dred rubles [Vron­sky] had given away at the sta­tion.
But she said noth­ing about the two hun­dred rubles. For some rea­son she found it unpleas­ant to think of. She felt there was some­thing about it that con­cerned her, the sort of thing it shouldn’t have been. [In fact, Vron­sky was so cher­i­ta­ble out of pride in their mutual attrac­tion]
AK P 78

Dolly came out of her room for the grownups’ tea. Oblon­sky did not come out; doubt­less he had left his wife’s room by the back door.
“I’m afraid you’ll be cold upstairs,” remarked Dolly to Anna. “I’d like to move you down­stairs, we can be closer to each other.”
“Oh really, please don’t worry about me,” Anna replied, scru­ti­niz­ing Dolly’s face to see whether or not there had been a rec­on­cil­i­a­tion.
“There’ll be too much light for you here,” answered her sister-in-law.
“I assure you I always sleep like a dor­mouse any­where.”
“What’s all this?” Oblosnky asked his wife as he came out of his study.
By his tone both Kitty and Anna knew at once that there had been a rec­on­cil­i­a­tion.
“I want to move Anna down­stairs, only the cur­tains have to be changed. No one else can do it, I’ll have to myself,” Dolly answered, turn­ing to him.
Heaven only knows whether they’re com­pletely rec­on­ciled, Anna thought when she heard Dolly’s tone, chilly and com­posed.
AK Pg 78

Kitty had been see­ing Anna every day, was in love with her, and invari­ably imag­ined her in lilac. But now, when she saw her in black, she felt she had never real­ized her full charm before. She saw her now as some­thing com­pletely new and unex­pected. Now she real­ized that Anna could never be in lilac, and that her charm con­sisted of just that—she always stood out from her dress; it was never con­spic­u­ous. The black dress with its rich lace was also unno­tice­able on her: it was merely a frame, what was vis­i­ble was only her­self, sim­ple, nat­ural, ele­gant, and at the same time gay and full of life.
She her­self very erect as usual; she was talk­ing to the host, with her head turned toward him slightly, when Kitty came over to the group.
“No, I shan’t be the one to throw the first stone,” she was say­ing in answer to some­thing he had said. “Although I don’t under­stand it,” she went on, shrug­ging her shoul­ders; then with a ten­der pro­tect­ing smile she turned at once to Kitty. Tak­ing in her dress with a swift fem­i­nine glance, she made a motion with her head, scarcely per­cep­ti­ble but under­stood by Kitty, in approval of her dress and her beauty.
AK Pg 83

Why is she so annoyed with him, thought Kitty, who had noticed Anna’s inten­tional dis­re­gard of Vrosnky’s bow. Vron­sky came over to Kitty: he reminded her that he had the first quadrille and regreted not haing had the plea­sure of see­ing her for such a long time. Kitty, full of admi­ra­tion, watched Anna waltzhing while she lis­tened to him. She was expect­ing him to ask her for a waltz, but he did not: she glanced at him in sur­prise. He flushed and hur­riedly asked her to waltz, but he had no sooner put his arm around her slen­der waist and taken the first step when the music sud­denly stopped. Kitty looked at his face, which was so close to her, and for a long time after­ward, for sev­eral years, that look full of love that she gave him then and that he did not respond to, cut her to the heart in an agony of shame.
AK Pg 84

But as she was danc­ing the final quadrille with one of the bor­ing young men it was impos­si­ble to refuse, she hap­pened to find her­self fac­ing Vron­sky and Anna. She had not been together with Anna since the very begin­ning; now she sud­denly saw her again, this time in a new and unex­pected light. She saw in her the ela­tion with suc­cess she knew so well. She saw that Anna was drunk with the wine of the rap­ture she had aroused. Kitty knew this feel­ing and knew its signs, and she saw them in Anna—the quiv­er­ing light flash­ing in her eyes, the smile of hap­pi­ness and ela­tion that curled her lips invol­un­tar­ily, and the grace­ful pre­ci­sion, accu­racy and light­ness of her move­ments. Tolstoy’s Par­lor Room
But who is it? Kitty asked her­self: everyone—or just one? With­out giv­ing any help to the dis­tressed young man she was danc­ing with, who had lost the thread of the con­ver­sa­tion and couldn’t pick it up again, and seem­ingly under the spell of the merry, resound­ing, peremp­tory cries of Kor­sun­sky, who first ordered every­one to form a grand rond, then a chaîne, she kept watch­ing, and her heart sank more and more.
Every time Vron­sky spoke to Anna a joy­ous light flared up in her eyes, and a smile of plea­sure curved her red lips. She seemed to be mak­ing an effort to hide these signs of joy, but they passed over her face of their own accord. Kitty looked at him in hor­ror: But what’s hap­pen­ing to him? What Kitty saw so clearly in the mir­ror of Anna’s face she saw in him too. What had become of his unchange­ably calm, firm man­ner, and the calm non­cha­lance of his expres­sion? No—now, when­ever he spoke to her he bowed his head a lit­tle as though he wanted to fall down in front of her; in his eyes there was noth­ing but an expres­sion of sub­mis­sion and ter­ror. “I don’t wish to offen­sive,” that expres­sion seemed to keep say­ing, “but I want to save myself and I don’t know how.” There was a look on his face Kitty had never seen before. Smolensk Krem­lin
They were talk­ing about peo­ple they both knew, and car­ry­ing on the most triv­ial con­ver­sa­tion, but it seemed to Kitty that every word they said was deci­sive for their fate and hers. What was strange was that even though they really were speak­ing about how ridicu­lous Ivan Ivanovich was with his French accent, or whether a bet­ter match might be found for the Elet­sky girl, nev­er­the­less these words meant some­thing to them, which they felt just as Kitty did. The entire ball, the entire world—everything was over­laid by a mist in Kitty’s heart. Only the strict school of train­ing she had gone through propped her up and forced her to do what was required of her, that is, dance, answer ques­tions, talk, and even smile. But before the mazurka began, when chairs were already being set out for it and sev­eral cou­ples had moved from the small to the large ball­room, a moment of despair and ter­ror laid hold of her. She had refused five men who had asked for the mazurka, and now she was not in it. There was not even a hope of her being asked, just because she had had too great a suc­cess and it could never have entered anyone’s head that she had not already been asked. She ought to have told her mother she was feel­ing ill and then gone home, but she lacked the strength. She felt shat­tered.
She went off to the far end of the small draw­ing room and sank into an easy chair. Her airy skirts stood out like a cloud from her slen­der fig­ure; one thin, bare, del­i­cate girl­ish arm dropped nerve­lessly and was lost in the pink folds of her tunic; the other held a fan with which, with rapid, short strokes, she fanned her glow­ing face. But though she looked like a but­ter­fly that had just set­tled on a blade of grass and was about to flut­ter off at any moment and spread its rain­bow wings, her heart was crushed by a fright­ful despair.
But I may be wrong, per­haps it wasn’t that way. And again she recalled every­thing she had seen.
“Kitty, what does this mean?” said Count­ess Norston, com­ing over on the car­pet to her sound­lessly. “I don’t under­stand.”
Kitty’s lower lip quiv­ered; she got up quickly.
“Kitty aren’t you danc­ing the mazurka?”
“No—no,” said Kitty, her voice tremu­lous with tears.
“He asked for the mazurka in front of me,” said Count­ess Norston, know­ing Kitty would under­stand who “he” and “she” were. “She said, ‘aren’t you danc­ing with Princess Shcherbatsky?’”
“Oh! It’s all the same to me!” Kitty replied.
No one but her­self under­stood her posi­tion, no one knew that she had refused a man whom she may have loved, and refused him because she had trusted another. Pg. 85–86.

Kitty danced in the first pair; luck­ily for her she did not have to speak, since Kor­sun­sky kept run­ning back and forth man­ag­ing his domain. Vron­sky and Anna were sit­ting almost oppo­site her. She saw them with her far­sighted eyes and she saw them close by as well, when they met in the fig­ures; the more she saw them the more she was con­vinced that her hap­pi­ness was com­plete. She saw that in this crowded room they felt by them­selves. And on Vronsky’s face, which was always so res­olute and self-possessed, she saw that expres­sion of bewil­der­ment and sub­mis­sion which had star­tled her, an expres­sion like that of an intel­li­gent dog when it feels guilty.
AK Pg. 86–87

Terem PalaceThe next morn­ing Levin left Moscow and arrived home toward evening. In the train on the way he dis­cussed pol­i­tics and the new rail­roads with his neigh­bors, and just as in Moscow he was dis­tressed by his con­fu­sion of ideas, by a dis­sat­is­fac­tion with him­self, and by a vague sense of shame about some­thing or other. But when he got out at his sta­tion, and rec­og­nized his one-eyed coach­man Ignat, with his coat col­lar turned up, and when he saw his rug­cov­ered sleigh in the dim light from the sta­tion win­dow, and his horses with their plaited tails, and their har­ness with its rings and tas­sels, and when Ignat, while putting every­thing away told him the local news—how the con­trac­tor had come, and how Pava had had a calf—he felt his con­fu­sion clear­ing up a lit­tle, and his shame and dis­sat­is­fac­tion with him­self pass­ing away. He felt this at the mere sight of Ignat and the horses; but when he put on the sheep­skin coat that had been brought for him, and sat down well wrapped up in the sleigh and started off turn­ing over in his mind the instruc­tions to be given about the estate and watch­ing the side horse, a for­mer sad­dle horse from the Don, used up but still spir­ited, he began to under­stand what had been hap­pen­ing to him in a com­pletely dif­fer­ent way. He felt he was him­self again and had no desire to be any dif­fer­ent. Now he only wanted to be bet­ter than he had been before. First of all he decided that from that day on he would no longer set his hopes on the extra­or­di­nary hap­pi­ness that mar­riage was to have given him, and there­fore would not belit­tle the present so much. Sec­ondly, he would never per­mit him­self to be car­ried away by base pas­sion, the rec­ol­lec­tion of which had tor­mented him so when he had been mak­ing up his mind to pro­pose. Then, recall­ing his brother Nicholas, he deter­mined that he would never again allow him­self to for­get him, but would keep track of and watch out for him so as to be ready to help if he was hav­ing a hard time. That, he felt, was going to come soon. Then his brother’s talk about com­mu­nism, which he had treated so lightly at the time, now made him reflect. He thought a com­plete trans­for­ma­tion of eco­nomic con­di­tions was non­sense, but he had always felt the injus­tice of his own abun­dance in com­par­i­son with the mis­ery of the peo­ple, and now he deter­mined that in order to feel him­self com­pletely in the right, even though he had always worked hard and lived fru­gally, he would now work still harder and allow him­self even less lux­ury. And all this seemed to him so easy to carry out that he spent the whole trip in the most agree­able reverie. Toward nine o’clock in the evening he reached his house, with a robust feel­ing of hope for a new and bet­ter life.
AK P 97

“Well, to tell the truth, Anna, I’m not very anx­ious for Kitty to marry him. It’s much bet­ter for it to be bro­ken up, if Vron­sky is able to fall in love with you in one day.”
“Dear God, that would be so silly!” said Anna, and again a deep flush of plea­sure passed over her face at hear­ing the thought at the back of her mind expressed in words. “So, that’s why I’m leav­ing, after hav­ing made an enemy of Kitty, whome I became so attached to. What a dar­ling she is! But you’ll smooth things over, Dolly, won’t you?
Dolly could scarcely refrain from smil­ing. She loved Anna, but it was pleas­ant for her to see that she too had her weak­nesses.
“An enemy? That’s impos­si­ble!”
AK P 104

Still with the same pre­oc­cu­pa­tion she had had that whole day, Anna set­tled her­self in for the trip with sat­is­fac­tion and delib­er­a­tion; with her deft lit­tle hands she unlocked her red bag, took out a small pil­low which she placed on her knees, locked the bag again and care­fully wrap­ping up her feet set­tled down com­fort­ably. An invalid woman was already going to bed. Two other women started up a con­ver­sa­tion with her; the fat old one was wrap­ping up her feet and mak­ing remarks about the heat­ing. Anna said a few words in reply, but not expect­ing any amuse­ment from the con­ver­sa­tion asked Annushka to get her read­ing lamp; she fas­tened it to the arm of the seat and took a paper knife and an Eng­lish novel out of her hand­bag. For a while she couldn’t read. At first she was dis­turbed by the bustling and walk­ing about; then, when the train started, it was impos­si­ble not to lis­ten to the noises; then the snow, beat­ing on the left win­dow and stick­ing to it, the sight of the con­duc­tor pass­ing by, bun­dled up and cov­ered with snow on one side, and the con­ver­sa­tions about what a ter­ri­ble snow­storm was rag­ing out­side, all dis­tracted her atten­tion. Far­ther on it was just the same; the same jolt­ing and clat­ter, the same snow beat­ing on the win­dow, the same rapid changes from steam­ing heat to cold and back again to heat, the same faces gleam­ing in the semi­dark­ness, and the same voices; Anna began to read and to under­stand what she was read­ing. Annushka was already doz­ing, her broad hands, with one of the gloves torn, hold­ing the red bag on her lap. Anna under­stood what she was read­ing, but it was unpleas­ant for her to read, that is, to fol­low the reflec­tion of the lives of other peo­ple. She had too strong a desire to live her­self. If she was read­ing about the hero­ine of a novel tend­ing an invalid, she felt like walk­ing inaudi­bly about the invalid’s room; if she read about a Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment mak­ing a speech, she felt like mak­ing the speech; if she read about Lady Mary rid­ing to hounds, teas­ing her sister-in-law and astound­ing every­one with her bold­ness, she felt like doing all that her­self. But there was noth­ing to be done, so she forced her­self to read, her lit­tle hands toy­ing with the smooth paper knife.Portrait Tol­stoy
AK Pg 104–105

Vron­sky did not even try to sleep that night. He sat in his arm­chair, some­times star­ing straight ahead of him, some­times look­ing round at the peo­ple going in and out, and if even before he had struck and upset peo­ple who didn’t know him by his look of unshak­able seren­ity, now he seemed even prouder and more self-sufficient. He looked at peo­ple as though they were objects. A ner­vous young man sit­ting oppo­site him, a clerk in the local courts, hated him for this stare. The young man kept ask­ing him for a light, started talk­ing to him, and even jos­tled him, in order to make him see that he was a man, not an object, but Vronksy kept look­ing at him just as he did at the lamp; the young man started gri­mac­ing, feel­ing his self-control dwin­dling away under the strain of this man who refused to acknowl­edge his exis­tence.
Vron­sky saw noth­ing and no one. He felt like a King, not because he believed he had made any impres­sion on Anna—he still didn’t believe that—but because the effect she had had on him made him happy and proud.
Pg 110

“She’s unique!” said the host­ess.
”Mar­velous!” said some­one else.
The effect pro­duced by what­ever Princes Myakgy said was always the same; its secret con­sisted of her say­ing sim­ple things that made sense, even when, as now, they were not quite to the point. In the soci­ety she lived in remarks like this had the effect of the wit­ti­est jokes. Princess Myagky didn’t under­stand why they had this effect, but she knew they did and exploited it.
Since every­one had been lis­ten­ing to Princess Myagky and the con­ver­sa­tion around the ambassador’s wife had come to a stop, the host­ess tried to unify the whole com­pany: she turned to the ambassador’s wife:
“Are you quite sure you don’t want any tea? You should come over and join us.”
“No, we’re really very com­fort­able here,” answered the ambassador’s wife smil­ingly, and wen on with the con­ver­sa­tion that had begun. Rooms in Tolstoy’s Manor
This con­ver­sa­tion was very agree­able. The Karenins, hus­band and wife, were being run down.
“Anna’s changed a great deal since her trip to Moscow. There’s some­thing odd about her,” said a woman who was a friend of hers.
“The prin­ci­pal change is that she’s brought the shadow of Alexis Vron­sky back with her,” said the ambassador’s wife.
“And why not? You know the Grimm fairy tale, ‘The Man with­out a shadow.’ It’s a pun­ish­ment for some­thing or other. I never could under­stand why it was a pun­ish­ment. But it must be unpleas­ant for a woman to be with­out a shadow.”
“Yes, but women with a shadow usu­ally end badly,” said Anna’s friend.
“Bad cess to your tongue,” Princess Myagky, hear­ing this remark, said sud­denly. &rlquo;Anna is a won­der­ful woman. I don’t like her hus­band, but I like her very much indeed.”
“But why don’t you like her hus­band? He’s such a remark­able man,” said the ambassador’s wife. “My hus­band says there are very few states­men like him in Europe.”
“My hus­band tells me the same thing, but I don’t believe it,” said Princess Myagky. “If our hus­bands didn’t tell us that we would see things as they are, and to my mind Karenin is sim­ply stu­pid. I say this only in a whisper…Doesn’t that clear every­thing up? Before, when I was ordered to con­sider him intel­li­gent, I kept on try­ing to and I con­sid­ered myself stu­pid for not see­ing how intel­li­gent he was; but the moment I said, ‘he’s stu­pid,’ but said it in a whis­per, every­thing became quite clear. Isn’t that so?”
“How mali­cious you are today!”
“Not in the least. I have no other way out. One of the two of us is stu­pid. Well, as you know, it’s never pos­si­ble to say that about your­self.”
“No one is sat­is­fied with his for­tune, but every­one is sat­is­fied with his wit,” said the attache, quot­ing some French verse. Sophia Tol­stoy
“That’s just it,” said Princess Myagky, turn­ing to him quickly. “But the point is I’m not going to let you have Anna. She’s so won­der­ful, so charm­ing! What can she do if every one falls in love with her and fol­lows her around like a shadow?”
“But I wasn’t think­ing of con­demn­ing her,” said Anna’s friend, to jus­tify her­self.
”If no one fol­lows us about like a shadow that doesn’t prove we have the right to con­demn any­one else.”
And hav­ing prop­erly dis­posed of Anna’s friend, Princess Myagky got up and together with the ambassador’s wife went over to the table where a gen­eral con­ver­sa­tion was going on about the King of Prus­sia.
AK Pg 142–143

He saw she was say­ing some­thing she had to force her­self to say, not what she wanted to.
“If you love me as you say,” she whis­pered, “allow me to be at peace.”
His face lit up. “Surely you know that for me you are all of life; but I don’t know how to give you peace and can­not do it. All of me, love—yes. I’m inca­pable of think­ing of you and of myself sep­a­rately. For myself you and I are one. And I can­not fore­see any pos­si­bil­ity of peace either for myself or for you. I see a pos­si­bil­ity of despair, of unhappiness—or I see a pos­si­bil­ity of hap­pi­ness, and of what hap­pi­ness! Surely that is pos­si­ble” he added with his lips alone, but she heard him.
She bent all the power of her mind to say what she ought to say; but instead of that she fixed her eyes on him, full of love, and said noth­ing.
At last! He thought, enrap­tured. Just when I was begin­ning to despair, when it seemed as though the end would never come—at last! She loves me! She admits!
“Then do this for me, never say such things to me, and let us be good friends,” she said, in words, though her eyes said some­thing quite dif­fer­ent.
Pg 146–147

At each sec­tion of [Karenin’s] walk, for the most part on the par­quet of the lighted-up din­ing room, he would stop it, and express him­self: Yes, I must make a deci­sion and stop it, and express my opin­ion of it and my deci­sion. Then he would turn back again. But just what should I express? What deci­sion? He would say to him­self in the draw­ing room, and not find an answer. After all, he would ask him­self before turn­ing into his study, just what has hap­pened? Noth­ing. She talked to him a long time—well, what of it? Aren’t there a great many men in soci­ety a woman can talk to? Besides, being jeal­ous means degrad­ing both myself and her, he would say to him­self as he entered her sit­ting room; but this con­sid­er­a­tion, which had had such weight for him before now had no weight and meant noth­ing. At the bed­room door he would turn back again into the room, and the moment he had gone back into the dark draw­ing room some voice would say to him that that was not so, and that if oth­ers had noticed it, it meant that there was some­thing there. Then in the din­ing room he would say to him­self again: Yes, it’s nec­es­sary to make a deci­sion and stop it, and express my opinion…And once again he would ask him­self in the din­ing room before turn­ing back, But what deci­sion? Then he would ask him­self, But what hap­pened? He would answer, Noth­ing, and recall that jeal­ousy was a feel­ing that was an insult to one’s wife, but in the draw­ing room he would con­vince him­self again that some­thing had hap­pened after all. His thoughts as well as his body went round in a full cir­cle with­out encoun­ter­ing any­thing new. He noticed this, rubbed his fore­head, and sat down in her sit­ting room.
There, as he looked at her table with the mala­chite cover on the blot­ting paper and an unfin­ished note on the top of it, his thoughts sud­denly changed. He began to think about her—what she was think­ing and feel­ing. For the first time he vividly pic­tured to him­self her own per­sonal life, her thoughts, her desires, and the idea that she might and must have a life of her own seemed to him so ter­ri­fy­ing that he hastily drove it away. This was the abyss he was ter­ri­fied of look­ing into. To trans­fer him­self by thought and feel­ing into another being was a spir­i­tual activ­ity that was alien to Karenin. He regarded it as a harm­ful and dan­ger­ous abuse of fancy.
….Ques­tions about her feel­ings, about what has been tak­ing place or may take place in her soul—that’s none of my busi­ness, that’s the busi­ness of her con­science and con­cerns reli­gion, he said to him­self, with a feel­ing of relief at the aware­ness of hav­ing found a juridi­cal point on which he could duly hang the cir­cum­stance that had arisen.
Con­se­quently, Karenin said to him­self, ques­tions con­cern­ing her feel­ings and all that—are ques­tions for her con­science, which can­not be any of my busi­ness, while my own duties are clearly defined. As the head of a fam­ily, I am the per­son who is bound to guide her and there­fore is partly respon­si­ble; I must point out the dan­ger I see, warn her, and even make use of my author­ity. I must speak to her plainly.
AK Pg 150–151

She was look­ing at him so sim­ply, so cheer­fully, that no one who didn’t know her as he did would have been able to notice any­thing unnat­ural in either the sounds or the sense of what she said. But for him, who knew her, who knew that when he went to bed five min­utes late she would notice it and ask the rea­son, for him who knew that she would imme­di­ately tell him all her joys, plea­sures, and wor­ries instantly—for him to see now that she did not want to notice his state, did not want to say a word about her­self, meant a great deal. He saw that the depths of her soul, which had always been open to him before, were now closed. That was the least of it: by her tone he saw that she was not even embar­rassed at this, but seemed to be say­ing to him straight out: Yes, it is closed, and that’s how it ought to be and will be from now on. Now he had a feel­ing such as a man might have, on return­ing home and find­ing his own house locked up. But per­haps the key can still be found, Karenin thought.
AK, p 153

But mar­riage was far­ther away from [Levin] now than ever before. The place was taken; now, when in his imag­i­na­tion he would put some other girl he knew into it he felt it was com­pletely impos­si­ble. In addi­tion, the mem­ory of her refusal and of the role he had played in it tor­mented him with shame. No mat­ter how much he told him­self that he was not in the least to blame, the rec­ol­lec­tion of it, together with other shame­ful mem­o­ries, would make him start and blush. In his past, as in every man’s, there had been actions he knew were wrong, for which his con­scious should have tor­mented him; but the mem­ory of these bad actions of his did not tor­ment him nearly so much as these triv­ial, shame­ful mem­o­ries. Such wounds never close up. And among these rec­ol­lec­tions there now stood her refusal, and the pathetic fig­ure he must have cut in the eyes of the oth­ers that evening. But time and work had their effect. The painful mem­o­ries become more and more cov­ered up in his mind by the com­mon­place but impor­tant events of coun­try life. With each week that went by he thought about Kitty less and less often. He was impa­tiently wait­ing for the news that she had already been mar­ried or was about to be, hop­ing this news would com­pletely cure him, like the pulling of a tooth.
AK, P 159

Even just after Levin’s return from Moscow, when he still started and blushed every time he recalled the shame of hav­ing been refused, he said to him­self: I blushed and started in just the same way, and thought every­thing was over with, when I flunked physics and had to stay on in the sec­ond class; in just the same way I thought myself ruined when I bun­gled that busi­ness of my sister’s that was put in my charge. And what of it? Now that years have gone by when­ever I recall it I’m astounded that it could have upset me so. It’ll be the same with this trou­ble too; as time goes by I’ll be indif­fer­ent to the whole thing.
But three months had gone by and he had still not grown indif­fer­ent, and it was just as painful for him to think of it as it had been at first. He could not be at peace, because after hav­ing dreamed for so long about a fam­ily life, and hav­ing felt that he was ripe for it, nev­er­the­less he was still not mar­ried and was far­ther away from mar­riage than ever before. He him­self felt painfully just what every­one else around him felt too, that it was unwhole­some for a man of his age to live alone. He recalled how, just before leav­ing for Moscow, he had once said to his cat­tle­man Nicholas, a naïve peas­ant he liked to talk to: “ Well, Nicholas, I want to get mar­ried,” and how Nicholas had promptly answered, as though it were some­thing there could be no doubt about, “ and high time too, Mr. Con­stan­tine.”
But mar­riage was far­ther away from him now than ever before. The place was taken; now, when in his imag­i­na­tion he would put some other girl he knew into it he felt it was com­pletely impos­si­ble. In addi­tion, the mem­ory of her refusal and of the role he had played in it tor­mented him with shame. No mat­ter how much he told him­self that he was not in the least to blame, the rec­ol­lec­tion of it, together with other shame­ful mem­o­ries, would make him start and blush. In his past, as in every man’s, there had been actions he knew were wrong, for which his con­science should have tor­mented him; but the mem­ory of these bad actions of his did not tor­ment him nearly so much as these triv­ial, but shame­ful mem­o­ries. Such wounds never closed up. And among these rec­ol­lec­tions there now stood her refusal, and the pathetic fig­ure he must have cut in the eyes of the oth­ers that evening.
AK, P 158–159

Yasvin—a gam­bler and rake who was not only with­out prin­ci­ples, but whose prin­ci­ples were vicious—was Vronsky’s best friend in the reg­i­ment. Vron­sky was fond of him because of his unusual phys­i­cal strength, which he demon­strated prin­ci­pally by being able to drink life a fish and ever going to sleep with­out being affected by it in the least, because of his great strength of char­ac­ter, which he demon­strated in his rela­tions with his supe­ri­ors and com­rades, attract­ing their fear and respect, and also because of his card play­ing, when he would stake tens of thou­sands of rubles and invari­ably, in spite of all the wine he had drunk, play with such skill and dash that he was con­sid­ered the best player in the Eng­lish Club. Vron­sky respected and liked him espe­cially because he felt that Yashvin liked him not for his name and for­tune, but for him­self. And among all the men Vron­sky knew it was only he whom he would have liked to talk with about his love. He felt that in spite of Yashvin’s appar­ent con­tempt for all feel­ing he was the only one—the only one, it seemed to Vronsky—who was capa­ble of under­stand­ing the intense pas­sion that now filled his whole life. Aside from this he was cer­tain that Yashvin in any case would be sure to take no plea­sure in gos­sip and scan­dal, but would have a proper under­stand­ing of this feel­ing of his, that is, he would real­ize and believe that this love was not a joke, not a pas­time, but some­thing more seri­ous and impor­tant.
Vron­sky did not speak about his love to him, but he knew Yashvin knew every­thing, under­stood every­thing prop­erly, and it was pleas­ant for him to see all this in his eyes.
AK Pg 186—187

He was angry with all of them for inter­fer­ing just because he felt at heart that they—all of them–were right. He felt that the that bound him to Anna was not a momen­tary infat­u­a­tion which would pass away, as soci­ety love affairs pass away with­out leav­ing any trace in the life of either one or the other except agree­able or dis­agree­able mem­o­ries. He felt the full tor­ment of her posi­tion and his own, all the dif­fi­culty of hid­ing their love, exposed as they were to the eyes of the whole world, of lying and deceiv­ing; and of lying, deceiv­ing, schem­ing, and think­ing of oth­ers just when the pas­sion that bound them together was so pow­er­ful that both of them were obliv­i­ous of every­thing but their love.
AK P 194

But though she tried to look calm her lips were quiv­er­ing.
“For­give me for hav­ing come, but I couldn’t get through the day with­out see­ing you,” he con­tin­ued in French, which he always spoke to her in order to avoid say­ing the Russ­ian you, which was impos­si­bly cold, or the dan­ger­ously inti­mate Russ­ian thou.
AK P 197

Glad­i­a­tor and Diana were approach­ing it together and almost at the iden­ti­cal instant; simul­ta­ne­ously they rose above the brook and soared over it on to the other side; lightly, as though on wings, Frou-Frou soared up behind them but at just the same moment Vron­sky felt he was in the air he sud­denly saw, almost beneath the hoofs of his own horse, Kuzu­vloyov, floun­der­ing around with Diana on the other side of the brook (Kuzov­lyov had let go the reins after the jump, and the horse had sent him fly­ing over her head.) It was only later that Vron­sky learned these details; what he saw now was only that directly beneath Frou-Frou’s legs, just where she had to alight, Diana’s leg or head might turn up. But like a falling cat Frou-Frou exerted her legs and back dur­ing the jump and clear­ing the other horse hur­tled on.
AK P 208

Yashvin over­took him with his cap and led him home; half an hour later Vron­sky was him­self again. But for a long time the thought of this race remained in his heart as the bit­ter­est and most ago­niz­ing mem­ory of his life.
AK P 212

She said all these things gaily, quickly, and with a pecu­liar sparkle in her eyes; but Karenin no longer ascribed any mean­ing now to this tone of hers. All he heard was what she said, which he under­stood in its direct sense only. And he replied to her sim­ply, even though ban­ter­ingly. The whole con­ver­sa­tion was per­fectly com­mon­place, but after­ward Anna could never recall this whole brief scene with­out an ago­niz­ing twinge of shame.
AK P 217

As always hap­pens wher­ever peo­ple gather together, so at the lit­tle Ger­man spa the Shcherbatskys went to there took place the usual crys­tal­liza­tion as it were of soci­ety that assigns each one of its mem­bers a def­i­nite and unal­ter­able niche. As def­i­nitely and unal­ter­ably as a drop of water in the cold takes on a cer­tain form of snow crys­tal, so each new per­son arriv­ing at a spa instantly and with the same pre­ci­sion set­tles into his own spe­cial place.
AK P 226

Mlle. Varenka was not exactly past her first youth, but seemed a being beyond youthfulness—you might think her nine­teen years old, or thirty. If her fea­tures were ana­lyzed she was rather pret­tier than she was plain, in spite of her unhealthy com­plex­ion. She would also have had a good fig­ure if she hadn’t been far too dried up, with a head that was too large for her medium height; but she couldn’t have been attrac­tive to men. She was like a beau­ti­ful flower, which though its petals were all there had already with­ered and had no scent. Besides which she couldn’t have been attrac­tive to men because she didn’t have enough of what Kitty had too much of—a repressed flame of vital­ity and the aware­ness of her own attrac­tive­ness.
AK P 228

Levin looked on his half-brother as a man of enor­mous intel­lect and edu­ca­tion, who was noble in the lofti­est sense of the word and had the fit of being able to work for the com­mon wel­fare. But in the depths of his soul, the older he got and the bet­ter he came to know his brother, the more often the thought came into his head that this capac­ity of work­ing for the com­mon wel­fare, which he felt him­self to be com­pletely devoid of, might not be and was not so much a qual­ity as the con­trary, a lack of some­thing. It was not a lack of kind, hon­or­able, noble desires and tastes but of some vital force, of what is called heart, of that impulse that forces a man to choose, out of the count­less ways of life pre­sented to him, just one, and to desire that one alone. The more he came to know his brother the more he noticed that both Koznyshov and many oth­ers who worked for the com­mon wel­fare had not been brought by their hearts to this love of the com­mon wel­fare, but had intel­lec­tu­ally rea­soned that it was good to occupy one­self with it, and this was the only rea­son they did so. This con­vic­tion of Levin’s was strength­ened still fur­ther when he noticed that his brother did not take ques­tions about the gen­eral wel­fare or about the immor­tal­ity of the soul any more to heart than he did a game of chess, or the inge­nious con­struc­tion of a new machine.
AK P 255

NB: For a descrip­tion light­ing sim­i­lar ground see Eric Hof­fer on his clumsy dock­yard mate.

When Anna, on her return from the races, had told him of her rela­tions with Vron­sky, burst into tears imme­di­ately after­ward and hid­den her face in her hands, Karenin, in spite of the fury this aroused in him, had felt at the same time an upsurge of the emo­tional dis­tur­bance tears always pro­duced in him. Know­ing this and know­ing that any expres­sion of his feel­ings at that moment would be out of keep­ing with the sit­u­a­tion, he tried to sup­press any dis­play of life, and so he nei­ther moved nor looked at her. This was what had brought about the pecu­liar, death­like expres­sion on his face that had so struck Anna.
His wife’s words, which con­firmed his worst sus­pi­cions, had given him bit­ter pain. This pain was height­ened still fur­ther by the strange feel­ing of phys­i­cal pity which had been evoked by her tears. But when he was left alone in the car­riage, to his own sur­prise and joy, he felt utterly lib­er­ated both from his pity and from the doubts and jeal­ous anguish that had been tor­ment­ing him lately.
He felt like some­one who has just had a tooth extracted after a long-drawn-out toothache. After dread­ful pain, and a sen­sa­tion of some­thing vast, larger than his head, being pulled out of his jaw, the suf­ferer sud­denly, still not believ­ing his own good for­tune, feels that the thing that has been poi­son­ing his life for so long and pre­oc­cu­py­ing his whole atten­tion, no longer exists, and that once again he can life, think, and be inter­ested in some­thing beside his tooth alone. this was Karenin’s feel­ing. The pain had been strange and ter­ri­ble, but now it was past; he felt that once again he could live and think about some­thing beside his wife.
AK P 297

Once he had decided in his own mind that he was happy in his love and that he was going to sac­ri­fice his ambi­tion to it&mdas;or at any rate had assumed this role—Vronsky could no longer feel either any jeal­ousy of Ser­pukhovsky or any annoy­ance with him for not hav­ing called on him first when he came to see the reg­i­ment. Ser­pukhovsky was a good friend and he looked for­ward to see­ing him.
…Vron­sky had not seen Ser­pukhovsky for three years. He was more mature and had grown whiskers, but he was still just as well built; he was strik­ing not so much by his looks as by the gen­tle­ness and nobil­ity of his face and bear­ing. The only change Vron­sky noticed in him was that serene unflag­ging radi­ance that set­tles on the face of peo­ple who are suc­cess­ful and are sure of everyone’s acknowl­edg­ing it. Vron­sky was famil­iar with this radi­ance and noticed it instantly in Ser­pukhovsky.
AK P 329

The night Levin had spent on the haystack did not pass with­out hav­ing some effect on him. The farm­ing he had been doing dis­gusted him now; he lost all inter­est in it. In spite of the splen­did har­vest he had never, at any rate he thought he had never had so many mishaps or so much il feel­ing between him and the peas­ants till this year, and the rea­son for these mishaps and this ill feel­ing now seemed to him com­pletely under­stand­able. The delight he had felt in the actual labor, because of his greater inti­macy with the peas­ants, the envy he felt for them and for their life, the desire to enter into that life, which dur­ing that night had no longer been a dream for him but an inten­tion whose details he had been think­ing through—all this had so changed his view of the way his farm was being run that he was quite inca­pable of tak­ing his for­mer inter­est in it any longer; he could not help but per­ceive the unpleas­ant­ness of his atti­tude toward the labor­ers, which was the basis of it all.…. But now he saw clearly…that the farm­ing he was doing was merely a cruel and stub­born con­test between him­self and the labor­ers, in which on one side&mdas;his side—there was a bit­ter, stren­u­ous, con­stant attempt to remodel every­thing accord­ing to a pat­tern accepted as the best, while on the other side there was the nat­ural order of things. In this strug­gle he saw that, with the great­est expen­di­ture of effort on his part, and with­out any effort even intended on the part of the oth­ers, the only thing accom­plished was that the farm­ing pleased no one, and first-rate tools, and first-rate cat­tle and land were ruined to no avail. But the main thing was that not only was the energy directed into this com­pletely wasted, but that now he could not help feel­ing, once the mean­ing of his farm­ing was laid bare, that the goal of his efforts was most unwor­thy. At bot­tom what was the strug­gle about? He was fight­ing for every penny (which he couldn’t help, since the moment he slack­ened his efforts he wouldn’t have enough money to pay the labor­ers off) while all they were fight­ing for was to work calmly and pleas­antly, that is, just as they were accus­tomed to. It was to his inter­est for each laborer to fin­ish as much work as pos­si­ble, while at the same time keep­ing his mind on it, try­ing not to break the win­now­ing machines, the horse rakes, and the thresh­ing machines, and pay­ing atten­tion to what he was doing. But what the laborer felt like doing was work­ing as agree­ably as pos­si­ble, with breaks for a rest, and above all in a care­free way, with­out wor­ry­ing or think­ing. AK P 342–343

I can’t ask [Kitty] to marry me just because she can’t marry the man she wanted, he said to him­self. The thought of this made him cold and hos­tile toward her. I’ll be inca­pable of speak­ing to her with­out feel­ing reproach­ful, of look­ing at her with­out mal­ice, and she’ll only grow to hate me even more—and quite right too. Besides, after what Dolly said to me how can I visit them now? How can I help but show that I know what she told me? And to go there mag­nan­i­mously to for­give her, pity her! I’d be play­ing the role in front of her of some­one who for­gives her and hon­ors her with his love!
…Why Did Dolly tell me that? I might have been able to see her by acci­dent; then every­thing would have hap­pened by itself, but now it’s impos­si­ble, impossible!

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As always hap­pens wher­ever peo­ple gather together, so at the lit­tle Ger­man spa the Shcherbatskys went to there took place the usual crys­tal­liza­tion as it were of soci­ety that assigns each one of its mem­bers a def­i­nite and unal­ter­able niche. As def­i­nitely and unal­ter­ably as a drop of water in the cold takes on a cer­tain form of snow crys­tal, so each new per­son arriv­ing at a spa instantly and with the same pre­ci­sion set­tles into his own spe­cial place.
AK P 226

Mlle. Varenka was not exactly past her first youth, but seemed a being beyond youthfulness—you might think her nine­teen years old, or thirty. If her fea­tures were ana­lyzed she was rather pret­tier than she was plain, in spite of her unhealthy com­plex­ion. She would also have had a good fig­ure if she hadn’t been far too dried up, with a head that was too large for her medium height; but she couldn’t have been attrac­tive to men. She was like a beau­ti­ful flower, which though its petals were all there had already with­ered and had no scent. Besides which she couldn’t have been attrac­tive to men because she didn’t have enough of what Kitty had too much of—a repressed flame of vital­ity and the aware­ness of her own attrac­tive­ness.
AK P 228

Levin looked on his half-brother as a man of enor­mous intel­lect and edu­ca­tion, who was noble in the lofti­est sense of the word and had the fit of being able to work for the com­mon wel­fare. But in the depths of his soul, the older he got and the bet­ter he came to know his brother, the more often the thought came into his head that this capac­ity of work­ing for the com­mon wel­fare, which he felt him­self to be com­pletely devoid of, might not be and was not so much a qual­ity as the con­trary, a lack of some­thing. It was not a lack of kind, hon­or­able, noble desires and tastes but of some vital force, of what is called heart, of that impulse that forces a man to choose, out of the count­less ways of life pre­sented to him, just one, and to desire that one alone. The more he came to know his brother the more he noticed that both Koznyshov and many oth­ers who worked for the com­mon wel­fare had not been brought by their hearts to this love of the com­mon wel­fare, but had intel­lec­tu­ally rea­soned that it was good to occupy one­self with it, and this was the only rea­son they did so. This con­vic­tion of Levin’s was strength­ened still fur­ther when he noticed that his brother did not take ques­tions about the gen­eral wel­fare or about the immor­tal­ity of the soul any more to heart than he did a game of chess, or the inge­nious con­struc­tion of a new machine.
AK P 255

NB: For a descrip­tion light­ing sim­i­lar ground, see Eric Hof­fer on his clumsy dock­yard mate.

When Anna, on her return from the races, had told him of her rela­tions with Vron­sky, burst into tears imme­di­ately after­ward and hid­den her face in her hands, Karenin, in spite of the fury this aroused in him, had felt at the same time an upsurge of the emo­tional dis­tur­bance tears always pro­duced in him. Know­ing this and know­ing that any expres­sion of his feel­ings at that moment would be out of keep­ing with the sit­u­a­tion, he tried to sup­press any dis­play of life, and so he nei­ther moved nor looked at her. This was what had brought about the pecu­liar, death­like expres­sion on his face that had so struck Anna.
His wife’s words, which con­firmed his worst sus­pi­cions, had given him bit­ter pain. This pain was height­ened still fur­ther by the strange feel­ing of phys­i­cal pity which had been evoked by her tears. But when he was left alone in the car­riage, to his own sur­prise and joy, he felt utterly lib­er­ated both from his pity and from the doubts and jeal­ous anguish that had been tor­ment­ing him lately.
He felt like some­one who has just had a tooth extracted after a long-drawn-out toothache. After dread­ful pain, and a sen­sa­tion of some­thing vast, larger than his head, being pulled out of his jaw, the suf­ferer sud­denly, still not believ­ing his own good for­tune, feels that the thing that has been poi­son­ing his life for so long and pre­oc­cu­py­ing his whole atten­tion, no longer exists, and that once again he can life, think, and be inter­ested in some­thing beside his tooth alone. this was Karenin’s feel­ing. The pain had been strange and ter­ri­ble, but now it was past; he felt that once again he could live and think about some­thing beside his wife.
AK P 297

Once he had decided in his own mind that he was happy in his love and that he was going to sac­ri­fice his ambi­tion to it—or at any rate had assumed this role—Vronsky could no longer feel either any jeal­ousy of Ser­pukhovsky or any annoy­ance with him for not hav­ing called on him first when he came to see the reg­i­ment. Ser­pukhovsky was a good friend and he looked for­ward to see­ing him.
…Vron­sky had not seen Ser­pukhovsky for three years. He was more mature and had grown whiskers, but he was still just as well built; he was strik­ing not so much by his looks as by the gen­tle­ness and nobil­ity of his face and bear­ing. The only change Vron­sky noticed in him was that serene unflag­ging radi­ance that set­tles on the face of peo­ple who are suc­cess­ful and are sure of everyone’s acknowl­edg­ing it. Vron­sky was famil­iar with this radi­ance and noticed it instantly in Ser­pukhovsky.
AK P 329

The night Levin had spent on the haystack did not pass with­out hav­ing some effect on him. The farm­ing he had been doing dis­gusted him now; he lost all inter­est in it. In spite of the splen­did har­vest he had never, at any rate he thought he had never had so many mishaps or so much il feel­ing between him and the peas­ants till this year, and the rea­son for these mishaps and this ill feel­ing now seemed to him com­pletely under­stand­able. The delight he had felt in the actual labor, because of his greater inti­macy with the peas­ants, the envy he felt for them and for their life, the desire to enter into that life, which dur­ing that night had no longer been a dream for him but an inten­tion whose details he had been think­ing through—all this had so changed his view of the way his farm was being run that he was quite inca­pable of tak­ing his for­mer inter­est in it any longer; he could not help but per­ceive the unpleas­ant­ness of his atti­tude toward the labor­ers, which was the basis of it all.…. But now he saw clearly…that the farm­ing he was doing was merely a cruel and stub­born con­test between him­self and the labor­ers, in which on one side—his side—there was a bit­ter, stren­u­ous, con­stant attempt to remodel every­thing accord­ing to a pat­tern accepted as the best, while on the other side there was the nat­ural order of things. In this strug­gle he saw that, with the great­est expen­di­ture of effort on his part, and with­out any effort even intended on the part of the oth­ers, the only thing accom­plished was that the farm­ing pleased no one, and first-rate tools, and first-rate cat­tle and land were ruined to no avail. But the main thing was that not only was the energy directed into this com­pletely wasted, but that now he could not help feel­ing, once the mean­ing of his farm­ing was laid bare, that the goal of his efforts was most unwor­thy. At bot­tom what was the strug­gle about? He was fight­ing for every penny (which he couldn’t help, since the moment he slack­ened his efforts he wouldn’t have enough money to pay the labor­ers off) while all they were fight­ing for was to work calmly and pleas­antly, that is, just as they were accus­tomed to. It was to his inter­est for each laborer to fin­ish as much work as pos­si­ble, while at the same time keep­ing his mind on it, try­ing not to break the win­now­ing machines, the horse rakes, and the thresh­ing machines, and pay­ing atten­tion to what he was doing. But what the laborer felt like doing was work­ing as agree­ably as pos­si­ble, with breaks for a rest, and above all in a care­free way, with­out wor­ry­ing or think­ing. AK P 342–343

I cant ask [Kitty] to marry me just because she can’t marry the man she wanted, he said to him­self. The thought of this made him cold and hos­tile toward her. I’ll be inca­pable of speak­ing to her with­out feel­ing reproach­ful, of look­ing at her with­out mal­ice, and she’ll only grow to hate me even more—and quite right too. Besides, after what Dolly said to me how can I visit them now? How can I help but show that I know what she told me? And to go there mag­nan­i­mously to for­give her, pity her! I’d be play­ing the role in front of her of some­one who for­gives her and hon­ors her with his love!
…Why Did Dolly tell me that? I might have been able to see her by acci­dent; then every­thing would have hap­pened by itself, but now it’s impos­si­ble, impossible!

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At each sec­tion of [Karenin’s] walk, for the most part on the par­quet of the lighted-up din­ing room, he would stop it, and express him­self: Yes, I must make a deci­sion and stop it, and express my opin­ion of it and my deci­sion. Then he would turn back again. But just what should I express? What deci­sion? He would say to him­self in the draw­ing room, and not find an answer. After all, he would ask him­self before turn­ing into his study, just what has hap­pened? Noth­ing. She talked to him a long time—well, what of it? Aren’t there a great many men in soci­ety a woman can talk to? Besides, being jeal­ous means degrad­ing both myself and her, he would say to him­self as he entered her sit­ting room; but this con­sid­er­a­tion, which had had such weight for him before now had no weight and meant noth­ing. At the bed­room door he would turn back again into the room, and the moment he had gone back into the dark draw­ing room some voice would say to him that that was not so, and that if oth­ers had noticed it, it meant that there was some­thing there. Then in the din­ing room he would say to him­self again: Yes, it’s nec­es­sary to make a deci­sion and stop it, and express my opinion…And once again he would ask him­self in the din­ing room before turn­ing back, But what deci­sion? Then he would ask him­self, But what hap­pened? He would answer, Noth­ing, and recall that jeal­ousy was a feel­ing that was an insult to one’s wife, but in the draw­ing room he would con­vince him­self again that some­thing had hap­pened after all. His thoughts as well as his body went round in a full cir­cle with­out encoun­ter­ing any­thing new. He noticed this, rubbed his fore­head, and sat down in her sit­ting room.
There, as he looked at her table with the mala­chite cover on the blot­ting paper and an unfin­ished note on the top of it, his thoughts sud­denly changed. He began to think about her—what she was think­ing and feel­ing. For the first time he vividly pic­tured to him­self her own per­sonal life, her thoughts, her desires, and the idea that she might and must have a life of her own seemed to him so ter­ri­fy­ing that he hastily drove it away. This was the abyss he was ter­ri­fied of look­ing into. To trans­fer him­self by thought and feel­ing into another being was a spir­i­tual activ­ity that was alien to Karenin. He regarded it as a harm­ful and dan­ger­ous abuse of fancy.
….Ques­tions about her feel­ings, about what has been tak­ing place or may take place in her soul—that’s none of my busi­ness, that’s the busi­ness of her con­science and con­cerns reli­gion, he said to him­self, with a feel­ing of relief at the aware­ness of hav­ing found a juridi­cal point on which he could duly hang the cir­cum­stance that had arisen.
Con­se­quently, Karenin said to him­self, ques­tions con­cern­ing her feel­ings and all that—are ques­tions for her con­science, which can­not be any of my busi­ness, while my own duties are clearly defined. As the head of a fam­ily, I am the per­son who is bound to guide her and there­fore is partly respon­si­ble; I must point out the dan­ger I see, warn her, and even make use of my author­ity. I must speak to her plainly.
AK Pg 150–151

She was look­ing at him so sim­ply, so cheer­fully, that no one who didn’t know her as he did would have been able to notice any­thing unnat­ural in either the sounds or the sense of what she said. But for him, who knew her, who knew that when he went to bed five min­utes late she would notice it and ask the rea­son, for him who knew that she would imme­di­ately tell him all her joys, plea­sures, and wor­ries instantly—for him to see now that she did not want to notice his state, did not want to say a word about her­self, meant a great deal. He saw that the depths of her soul, which had always been open to him before, were now closed. That was the least of it: by her tone he saw that she was not even embar­rassed at this, but seemed to be say­ing to him straight out: Yes, it is closed, and that’s how it ought to be and will be from now on. Now he had a feel­ing such as a man might have, on return­ing home and find­ing his own house locked up. But per­haps the key can still be found, Karenin thought.
AK, p 153

But mar­riage was far­ther away from [Levin] now than ever before. The place was taken; now, when in his imag­i­na­tion he would put some other girl he knew into it he felt it was com­pletely impos­si­ble. In addi­tion, the mem­ory of her refusal and of the role he had played in it tor­mented him with shame. No mat­ter how much he told him­self that he was not in the least to blame, the rec­ol­lec­tion of it, together with other shame­ful mem­o­ries, would make him start and blush. In his past, as in every man’s, there had been actions he knew were wrong, for which his con­scious should have tor­mented him; but the mem­ory of these bad actions of his did not tor­ment him nearly so much as these triv­ial, shame­ful mem­o­ries. Such wounds never close up. And among these rec­ol­lec­tions there now stood her refusal, and the pathetic fig­ure he must have cut in the eyes of the oth­ers that evening. But time and work had their effect. The painful mem­o­ries become more and more cov­ered up in his mind by the com­mon­place but impor­tant events of coun­try life. With each week that went by he thought about Kitty less and less often. He was impa­tiently wait­ing for the news that she had already been mar­ried or was about to be, hop­ing this news would com­pletely cure him, like the pulling of a tooth.
AK, P 159

Even just after Levin’s return from Moscow, when he still started and blushed every time he recalled the shame of hav­ing been refused, he said to him­self: I blushed and started in just the same way, and thought every­thing was over with, when I flunked physics and had to stay on in the sec­ond class; in just the same way I thought myself ruined when I bun­gled that busi­ness of my sister’s that was put in my charge. And what of it? Now that years have gone by when­ever I recall it I’m astounded that it could have upset me so. It’ll be the same with this trou­ble too; as time goes by I’ll be indif­fer­ent to the whole thing.
But three months had gone by and he had still not grown indif­fer­ent, and it was just as painful for him to think of it as it had been at first. He could not be at peace, because after hav­ing dreamed for so long about a fam­ily life, and hav­ing felt that he was ripe for it, nev­er­the­less he was still not mar­ried and was far­ther away from mar­riage than ever before. He him­self felt painfully just what every­one else around him felt too, that it was unwhole­some for a man of his age to live alone. He recalled how, just before leav­ing for Moscow, he had once said to his cat­tle­man Nicholas, a naïve peas­ant he liked to talk to: “ Well, Nicholas, I want to get mar­ried,” and how Nicholas had promptly answered, as though it were some­thing there could be no doubt about, “ and high time too, Mr. Con­stan­tine.”
But mar­riage was far­ther away from him now than ever before. The place was taken; now, when in his imag­i­na­tion he would put some other girl he knew into it he felt it was com­pletely impos­si­ble. In addi­tion, the mem­ory of her refusal and of the role he had played in it tor­mented him with shame. No mat­ter how much he told him­self that he was not in the least to blame, the rec­ol­lec­tion of it, together with other shame­ful mem­o­ries, would make him start and blush. In his past, as in every man’s, there had been actions he knew were wrong, for which his con­science should have tor­mented him; but the mem­ory of these bad actions of his did not tor­ment him nearly so much as these triv­ial, but shame­ful mem­o­ries. Such wounds never closed up. And among these rec­ol­lec­tions there now stood her refusal, and the pathetic fig­ure he must have cut in the eyes of the oth­ers that evening.
AK, P 158–159

Yasvin—a gam­bler and rake who was not only with­out prin­ci­ples, but whose prin­ci­ples were vicious—was Vronsky’s best friend in the reg­i­ment. Vron­sky was fond of him because of his unusual phys­i­cal strength, which he demon­strated prin­ci­pally by being able to drink life a fish and ever going to sleep with­out being affected by it in the least, because of his great strength of char­ac­ter, which he demon­strated in his rela­tions with his supe­ri­ors and com­rades, attract­ing their fear and respect, and also because of his card play­ing, when he would stake tens of thou­sands of rubles and invari­ably, in spite of all the wine he had drunk, play with such skill and dash that he was con­sid­ered the best player in the Eng­lish Club. Vron­sky respected and liked him espe­cially because he felt that Yashvin liked him not for his name and for­tune, but for him­self. And among all the men Vron­sky knew it was only he whom he would have liked to talk with about his love. He felt that in spite of Yashvin’s appar­ent con­tempt for all feel­ing he was the only one—the only one, it seemed to Vronsky—who was capa­ble of under­stand­ing the intense pas­sion that now filled his whole life. Aside from this he was cer­tain that Yashvin in any case would be sure to take no plea­sure in gos­sip and scan­dal, but would have a proper under­stand­ing of this feel­ing of his, that is, he would real­ize and believe that this love was not a joke, not a pas­time, but some­thing more seri­ous and impor­tant.
Vron­sky did not speak about his love to him, but he knew Yashvin knew every­thing, under­stood every­thing prop­erly, and it was pleas­ant for him to see all this in his eyes.
AK Pg 186—187

He was angry with all of them for inter­fer­ing just because he felt at heart that they—all of them–were right. He felt that the that bound him to Anna was not a momen­tary infat­u­a­tion which would pass away, as soci­ety love affairs pass away with­out leav­ing any trace in the life of either one or the other except agree­able or dis­agree­able mem­o­ries. He felt the full tor­ment of her posi­tion and his own, all the dif­fi­culty of hid­ing their love, exposed as they were to the eyes of the whole world, of lying and deceiv­ing; and of lying, deceiv­ing, schem­ing, and think­ing of oth­ers just when the pas­sion that bound them together was so pow­er­ful that both of them were obliv­i­ous of every­thing but their love.
AK P 194

But though she tried to look calm her lips were quiv­er­ing.
“For­give me for hav­ing come, but I couldn’t get through the day with­out see­ing you,” he con­tin­ued in French, which he always spoke to her in order to avoid say­ing the Russ­ian you, which was impos­si­bly cold, or the dan­ger­ously inti­mate Russ­ian thou.
AK P 197

Glad­i­a­tor and Diana were approach­ing it together and almost at the iden­ti­cal instant; simul­ta­ne­ously they rose above the brook and soared over it on to the other side; lightly, as though on wings, Frou-Frou soared up behind them but at just the same moment Vron­sky felt he was in the air he sud­denly saw, almost beneath the hoofs of his own horse, Kuzu­vloyov, floun­der­ing around with Diana on the other side of the brook (Kuzov­lyov had let go the reins after the jump, and the horse had sent him fly­ing over her head.) It was only later that Vron­sky learned these details; what he saw now was only that directly beneath Frou-Frou’s legs, just where she had to alight, Diana’s leg or head might turn up. But like a falling cat Frou-Frou exerted her legs and back dur­ing the jump and clear­ing the other horse hur­tled on.
AK P 208

Yashvin over­took him with his cap and led him home; half an hour later Vron­sky was him­self again. But for a long time the thought of this race remained in his heart as the bit­ter­est and most ago­niz­ing mem­ory of his life.
AK P 212

She said all these things gaily, quickly, and with a pecu­liar sparkle in her eyes; but Karenin no longer ascribed any mean­ing now to this tone of hers. All he heard was what she said, which he under­stood in its direct sense only. And he replied to her sim­ply, even though ban­ter­ingly. The whole con­ver­sa­tion was per­fectly com­mon­place, but after­ward Anna could never recall this whole brief scene with­out an ago­niz­ing twinge of shame.
AK P 217

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Kitty danced in the first pair; luck­ily for her she did not have to speak, since Kor­sun­sky kept run­ning back and forth man­ag­ing his domain. Vron­sky and Anna were sit­ting almost oppo­site her. She saw them with her far­sighted eyes and she saw them close by as well, when they met in the fig­ures; the more she saw them the more she was con­vinced that her hap­pi­ness was com­plete. She saw that in this crowded room they felt by them­selves. And on Vronsky’s face, which was always so res­olute and self-possessed, she saw that expres­sion of bewil­der­ment and sub­mis­sion which had star­tled her, an expres­sion like that of an intel­li­gent dog when it feels guilty.
AK Pg. 86–87

The next morn­ing Levin left Moscow and arrived home toward evening. In the train on the way he dis­cussed pol­i­tics and the new rail­roads with his neigh­bors, and just as in Moscow he was dis­tressed by his con­fu­sion of ideas, by a dis­sat­is­fac­tion with him­self, and by a vague sense of shame about some­thing or other. But when he got out at his sta­tion, and rec­og­nized his one-eyed coach­man Ignat, with his coat col­lar turned up, and when he saw his rug­cov­ered sleigh in the dim light from the sta­tion win­dow, and his horses with their plaited tails, and their har­ness with its rings and tas­sels, and when Ignat, while putting every­thing away told him the local news—how the con­trac­tor had come, and how Pava had had a calf—he felt his con­fu­sion clear­ing up a lit­tle, and his shame and dis­sat­is­fac­tion with him­self pass­ing away. He felt this at the mere sight of Ignat and the horses; but when he put on the sheep­skin coat that had been brought for him, and sat down well wrapped up in the sleigh and started off turn­ing over in his mind the instruc­tions to be given about the estate and watch­ing the side horse, a for­mer sad­dle horse from the Don, used up but still spir­ited, he began to under­stand what had been hap­pen­ing to him in a com­pletely dif­fer­ent way. He felt he was him­self again and had no desire to be any dif­fer­ent. Now he only wanted to be bet­ter than he had been before. First of all he decided that from that day on he would no longer set his hopes on the extra­or­di­nary hap­pi­ness that mar­riage was to have given him, and there­fore would not belit­tle the present so much. Sec­ondly, he would never per­mit him­self to be car­ried away by base pas­sion, the rec­ol­lec­tion of which had tor­mented him so when he had been mak­ing up his mind to pro­pose. Then, recall­ing his brother Nicholas, he deter­mined that he would never again allow him­self to for­get him, but would keep track of and watch out for him so as to be ready to help if he was hav­ing a hard time. That, he felt, was going to come soon. Then his brother’s talk about com­mu­nism, which he had treated so lightly at the time, now made him reflect. He thought a com­plete trans­for­ma­tion of eco­nomic con­di­tions was non­sense, but he had always felt the injus­tice of his own abun­dance in com­par­i­son with the mis­ery of the peo­ple, and now he deter­mined that in order to feel him­self com­pletely in the right, even though he had always worked hard and lived fru­gally, he would now work still harder and allow him­self even less lux­ury. And all this seemed to him so easy to carry out that he spent the whole trip in the most agree­able reverie. Toward nine o’clock in the evening he reached his house, with a robust feel­ing of hope for a new and bet­ter life.
AK P 97

“Well, to tell the truth, Anna, I’m not very anx­ious for Kitty to marry him. It’s much bet­ter for it to be bro­ken up, if Vron­sky is able to fall in love with you in one day.”
“Dear God, that would be so silly!” said Anna, and again a deep flush of plea­sure passed over her face at hear­ing the thought at the back of her mind expressed in words. “So, that’s why I’m leav­ing, after hav­ing made an enemy of Kitty, whome I became so attached to. What a dar­ling she is! But you’ll smooth things over, Dolly, won’t you?
Dolly could scarcely refrain from smil­ing. She loved Anna, but it was pleas­ant for her to see that she too had her weak­nesses.
“An enemy? That’s impos­si­ble!”
AK P 104

Still with the same pre­oc­cu­pa­tion she had had that whole day, Anna set­tled her­self in for the trip with sat­is­fac­tion and delib­er­a­tion; with her deft lit­tle hands she unlocked her red bag, took out a small pil­low which she placed on her knees, locked the bag again and care­fully wrap­ping up her feet set­tled down com­fort­ably. An invalid woman was already going to bed. Two other women started up a con­ver­sa­tion with her; the fat old one was wrap­ping up her feet and mak­ing remarks about the heat­ing. Anna said a few words in reply, but not expect­ing any amuse­ment from the con­ver­sa­tion asked Annushka to get her read­ing lamp; she fas­tened it to the arm of the seat and took a paper knife and an Eng­lish novel out of her hand­bag. For a while she couldn’t read. At first she was dis­turbed by the bustling and walk­ing about; then, when the train started, it was impos­si­ble not to lis­ten to the noises; then the snow, beat­ing on the left win­dow and stick­ing to it, the sight of the con­duc­tor pass­ing by, bun­dled up and cov­ered with snow on one side, and the con­ver­sa­tions about what a ter­ri­ble snow­storm was rag­ing out­side, all dis­tracted her atten­tion. Far­ther on it was just the same; the same jolt­ing and clat­ter, the same snow beat­ing on the win­dow, the same rapid changes from steam­ing heat to cold and back again to heat, the same faces gleam­ing in the semi­dark­ness, and the same voices; Anna began to read and to under­stand what she was read­ing. Annushka was already doz­ing, her broad hands, with one of the gloves torn, hold­ing the red bag on her lap. Anna under­stood what she was read­ing, but it was unpleas­ant for her to read, that is, to fol­low the reflec­tion of the lives of other peo­ple. She had too strong a desire to live her­self. If she was read­ing about the hero­ine of a novel tend­ing an invalid, she felt like walk­ing inaudi­bly about the invalid’s room; if she read about a Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment mak­ing a speech, she felt like mak­ing the speech; if she read about Lady Mary rid­ing to hounds, teas­ing her sister-in-law and astound­ing every­one with her bold­ness, she felt like doing all that her­self. But there was noth­ing to be done, so she forced her­self to read, her lit­tle hands toy­ing with the smooth paper knife.Portrait Tol­stoy
AK Pg 104–105

Vron­sky did not even try to sleep that night. He sat in his arm­chair, some­times star­ing straight ahead of him, some­times look­ing round at the peo­ple going in and out, and if even before he had struck and upset peo­ple who didn’t know him by his look of unshak­able seren­ity, now he seemed even prouder and more self-sufficient. He looked at peo­ple as though they were objects. A ner­vous young man sit­ting oppo­site him, a clerk in the local courts, hated him for this stare. The young man kept ask­ing him for a light, started talk­ing to him, and even jos­tled him, in order to make him see that he was a man, not an object, but Vronksy kept look­ing at him just as he did at the lamp; the young man started gri­mac­ing, feel­ing his self-control dwin­dling away under the strain of this man who refused to acknowl­edge his exis­tence.
Vron­sky saw noth­ing and no one. He felt like a King, not because he believed he had made any impres­sion on Anna—he still didn’t believe that—but because the effect she had had on him made him happy and proud.
Pg 110

“She’s unique!” said the host­ess.
”Mar­velous!” said some­one else.
The effect pro­duced by what­ever Princes Myakgy said was always the same; its secret con­sisted of her say­ing sim­ple things that made sense, even when, as now, they were not quite to the point. In the soci­ety she lived in remarks like this had the effect of the wit­ti­est jokes. Princess Myagky didn’t under­stand why they had this effect, but she knew they did and exploited it.
Since every­one had been lis­ten­ing to Princess Myagky and the con­ver­sa­tion around the ambassador’s wife had come to a stop, the host­ess tried to unify the whole com­pany: she turned to the ambassador’s wife:
“Are you quite sure you don’t want any tea? You should come over and join us.”
“No, we’re really very com­fort­able here,” answered the ambassador’s wife smil­ingly, and wen on with the con­ver­sa­tion that had begun. Rooms in Tolstoy’s Manor
This con­ver­sa­tion was very agree­able. The Karenins, hus­band and wife, were being run down.
“Anna’s changed a great deal since her trip to Moscow. There’s some­thing odd about her,” said a woman who was a friend of hers.
“The prin­ci­pal change is that she’s brought the shadow of Alexis Vron­sky back with her,” said the ambassador’s wife.
“And why not? You know the Grimm fairy tale, ‘The Man with­out a shadow.’ It’s a pun­ish­ment for some­thing or other. I never could under­stand why it was a pun­ish­ment. But it must be unpleas­ant for a woman to be with­out a shadow.”
“Yes, but women with a shadow usu­ally end badly,” said Anna’s friend.
“Bad cess to your tongue,” Princess Myagky, hear­ing this remark, said sud­denly. &rlquo;Anna is a won­der­ful woman. I don’t like her hus­band, but I like her very much indeed.”
“But why don’t you like her hus­band? He’s such a remark­able man,” said the ambassador’s wife. “My hus­band says there are very few states­men like him in Europe.”
“My hus­band tells me the same thing, but I don’t believe it,” said Princess Myagky. “If our hus­bands didn’t tell us that we would see things as they are, and to my mind Karenin is sim­ply stu­pid. I say this only in a whisper…Doesn’t that clear every­thing up? Before, when I was ordered to con­sider him intel­li­gent, I kept on try­ing to and I con­sid­ered myself stu­pid for not see­ing how intel­li­gent he was; but the moment I said, ‘he’s stu­pid,’ but said it in a whis­per, every­thing became quite clear. Isn’t that so?”
“How mali­cious you are today!”
“Not in the least. I have no other way out. One of the two of us is stu­pid. Well, as you know, it’s never pos­si­ble to say that about your­self.”
“No one is sat­is­fied with his for­tune, but every­one is sat­is­fied with his wit,” said the attache, quot­ing some French verse. Sophia Tol­stoy
“That’s just it,” said Princess Myagky, turn­ing to him quickly. “But the point is I’m not going to let you have Anna. She’s so won­der­ful, so charm­ing! What can she do if every one falls in love with her and fol­lows her around like a shadow?”
“But I wasn’t think­ing of con­demn­ing her,” said Anna’s friend, to jus­tify her­self.
”If no one fol­lows us about like a shadow that doesn’t prove we have the right to con­demn any­one else.”
And hav­ing prop­erly dis­posed of Anna’s friend, Princess Myagky got up and together with the ambassador’s wife went over to the table where a gen­eral con­ver­sa­tion was going on about the King of Prus­sia.
AK Pg 142–143

He saw she was say­ing some­thing she had to force her­self to say, not what she wanted to.
“If you love me as you say,” she whis­pered, “allow me to be at peace.”
His face lit up. “Surely you know that for me you are all of life; but I don’t know how to give you peace and can­not do it. All of me, love—yes. I’m inca­pable of think­ing of you and of myself sep­a­rately. For myself you and I are one. And I can­not fore­see any pos­si­bil­ity of peace either for myself or for you. I see a pos­si­bil­ity of despair, of unhappiness—or I see a pos­si­bil­ity of hap­pi­ness, and of what hap­pi­ness! Surely that is pos­si­ble” he added with his lips alone, but she heard him.
She bent all the power of her mind to say what she ought to say; but instead of that she fixed her eyes on him, full of love, and said noth­ing.
At last! He thought, enrap­tured. Just when I was begin­ning to despair, when it seemed as though the end would never come—at last! She loves me! She admits!
“Then do this for me, never say such things to me, and let us be good friends,” she said, in words, though her eyes said some­thing quite dif­fer­ent.
Pg 146–147

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.
In Moscow, for the first time, after the course and lux­u­ri­ous life of Peters­burg, [Vron­sky] expe­ri­enced the delight of friend­ship with a sweet, inno­cent soci­ety girl who was in love with him. It never even entered his head that there might be any­thing wrong about his rela­tions with Kitty. At balls he danced chiefly with her; he went call­ing on the fam­ily. He talked the usual soci­ety talk with her; all sorts of non­sense, but non­sense that he invol­un­tar­ily put a spe­cial mean­ing into for her. In spite of his say­ing noth­ing to her that he might not have said in pub­lic, he felt that she was grow­ing more and more depen­dent on him, and the more he felt this the pleas­an­ter it was for him, and the more ten­der his own feel­ing grew for her. He did not know that his behav­ior toward Kitty had a cer­tain name; that he was lead­ing a young girl into temp­ta­tion with no inten­tion of mar­ry­ing her, and that this seduc­tion was one of the evil actions habit­ual among bril­liant young men like him­self. He thought him­self the first to dis­cover this plea­sure, and he enjoyed his dis­cov­ery.
….But as Vron­sky left the Shcherbatsky’s that evening, though he did not even sus­pect what her par­ents were say­ing, he had the feel­ing that the secret spir­i­tual bond that existed between him and Kitty had been strength­ened that evening with such force that he had to do some­thing about it. But he had no notion what could or should be done.
That’s what’s so delight­ful about it, he thought, as he left the Shcherb­taskys’, tak­ing with him as always an agree­able sen­sa­tion of purity and fresh­ness, partly due to his not hav­ing smoked the whole evening, together with a novel feel­ing of ten­der­ness at her love for him—the delight­ful thing is that noth­ing was said by her or by me, but we under­stood each other so well, in the invis­i­ble con­ver­sa­tion of looks and over­tones, that tonight it was clearer than ever that she told me she loves me. And so sweetly, so sim­ply, above all so trust­ingly! I myself feel bet­ter, purer. I feel that I have a heart and that there’s a great deal of good in me. Those sweet lov­ing eyes! When she said, “and very much…”
But then what? Well, nothing…It’s all right for me, and it’s all right for her. And he began think­ing of how he might fin­ish his evening.
AK P 59–60

.
Vron­sky, stand­ing side by side with Oblon­sky, [who has just told him that Levin has pro­posed to Kitty and was declined], watch­ing the cars and the peo­ple com­ing out, had for­got­ten his mother com­pletely. What he had just heard about Kitty had excited him and made him happy. He squared his chest uncon­sciously; his eyes shone. He felt like a con­queror.
“Count­ess Vron­sky is in this com­part­ment,” said the smart­look­ing con­duc­tor, com­ing up to him.
The conductor’s words aroused him and made him think of his mother and their forth­com­ing meet­ing. At heart he had no respect for his mother, and with­out admit­ting it to him­self did not love her, but in accor­dance with the ideas of the cir­cle he lived in and because of his upbring­ing, he could not imag­ine any other rela­tion­ship with his mother but one of the most respect­ful obe­di­ence, and the more respect­ful and obe­di­ent he was in appear­ance the less he respected and loved her at heart. P 63–64

.
Kitty came in directly after din­ner. She knew Anna, though not at all well, and was com­ing to her sister’s now full of fears as to how she would be received by this Peters­burg soci­ety woman whose praises were being sung by every­body. But Anna liked her—Kitty saw that at once. Anna plainly admired her beauty and youth, and Kitty could not even recover her poise before she fell not only under Anna’s influ­ence, but infat­u­ated with her, in the way young girls are capa­ble of falling in love with older mar­ried women. Anna was not at all like a soci­ety woman, or like the mother of an eight-year-old son, but would rather have resem­bled a twenty-year-old girl in the sup­ple­ness of her move­ments, her fresh­ness, and the vivac­ity that played about her face and kept break­ing through in a smile or a look, if it had not been for the grave and occa­sion­ally sad expres­sion in her eyes, which struck Kitty and attracted her. Kitty felt that Anna was com­pletely sim­ple and hid noth­ing, but that she had within her another, higher world of inter­ests, com­plex and poet­i­cal, that were beyond Kitty’s reach.
….Next week, it’s going to be a splen­did one. One of those balls that are always gay.”
“And are there any that are always gay?” said Anna with ten­der irony.
“It’s strange, but there are. It’s always gay at the Bor­ishchevs’, at the Nikitins’ too, while at the Meshkovs’ it’s always bor­ing. Surely you’ve noticed it?”
“No, my dear, for me there are no such balls ay longer where it’s always gay,” said Anna, and in her eyes Kitty saw that spe­cial world that was closed to her. “For me there are only balls which are less dif­fi­cult and bor­ing…”
“But how can a ball be bor­ing for you?”
“But why shouldn’t it be bor­ing for me at a ball? asked Anna.
Kitty noticed that Anna knew what the answer to this would be.
“Because you’re always pret­tier than any­one else.”
Anna had a capac­ity for blush­ing. She blushed and said: “In the first place, that’s never so; sec­ondly, even if that were to be so what use would it be to me?”
“Are you going to this ball?” asked Kitty.
“I think it’ll be impos­si­ble not to. Here, take it,” she said to Tanya, who was pulling of a loosely fit­ting ring from her white, slen­der, taper­ing fin­ger.
AK P 75

.
“But what did his mother tell you?”
“Oh, such a lot! I know he’s her favorite, but even so it’s obvi­ous how chival­rous he is…For instance, she told me he wanted to give up his entire for­tune to his brother, and that as a child he did some­thing else that was very unusual, he saved a woman from drown­ing. I n one word—a hero,” said Anna, smil­ing and think­ing about the two hun­dred rubles [Vron­sky] had given away at the sta­tion.
But she said noth­ing about the two hun­dred rubles. For some rea­son she found it unpleas­ant to think of. She felt there was some­thing about it that con­cerned her, the sort of thing it shouldn’t have been. [In fact, Vron­sky was so cher­i­ta­ble out of pride in their mutual attrac­tion]
AK P 78

.
Dolly came out of her room for the grownups’ tea. Oblon­sky did not come out; doubt­less he had left his wife’s room by the back door.
“I’m afraid you’ll be cold upstairs,” remarked Dolly to Anna. “I’d like to move you down­stairs, we can be closer to each other.”
“Oh really, please don’t worry about me,” Anna replied, scru­ti­niz­ing Dolly’s face to see whether or not there had been a rec­on­cil­i­a­tion.
“There’ll be too much light for you here,” answered her sister-in-law.
“I assure you I always sleep like a dor­mouse any­where.”
“What’s all this?” Oblosnky asked his wife as he came out of his study.
By his tone both Kitty and Anna knew at once that there had been a rec­on­cil­i­a­tion.
“I want to move Anna down­stairs, only the cur­tains have to be changed. No one else can do it, I’ll have to myself,” Dolly answered, turn­ing to him.
Heaven only knows whether they’re com­pletely rec­on­ciled, Anna thought when she heard Dolly’s tone, chilly and com­posed.
AK Pg 78

.
Kitty had been see­ing Anna every day, was in love with her, and invari­ably imag­ined her in lilac. But now, when she saw her in black, she felt she had never real­ized her full charm before. She saw her now as some­thing com­pletely new and unex­pected. Now she real­ized that Anna could never be in lilac, and that her charm con­sisted of just that—she always stood out from her dress; it was never con­spic­u­ous. The black dress with its rich lace was also unno­tice­able on her: it was merely a frame, what was vis­i­ble was only her­self, sim­ple, nat­ural, ele­gant, and at the same time gay and full of life.
She her­self very erect as usual; she was talk­ing to the host, with her head turned toward him slightly, when Kitty came over to the group.
“No, I shan’t be the one to throw the first stone,” she was say­ing in answer to some­thing he had said. “Although I don’t under­stand it,” she went on, shrug­ging her shoul­ders; then with a ten­der pro­tect­ing smile she turned at once to Kitty. Tak­ing in her dress with a swift fem­i­nine glance, she made a motion with her head, scarcely per­cep­ti­ble but under­stood by Kitty, in approval of her dress and her beauty.
AK Pg 83

.
Why is she so annoyed with him, thought Kitty, who had noticed Anna’s inten­tional dis­re­gard of Vrosnky’s bow. Vron­sky came over to Kitty: he reminded her that he had the first quadrille and regreted not haing had the plea­sure of see­ing her for such a long time. Kitty, full of admi­ra­tion, watched Anna waltzhing while she lis­tened to him. She was expect­ing him to ask her for a waltz, but he did not: she glanced at him in sur­prise. He flushed and hur­riedly asked her to waltz, but he had no sooner put his arm around her slen­der waist and taken the first step when the music sud­denly stopped. Kitty looked at his face, which was so close to her, and for a long time after­ward, for sev­eral years, that look full of love that she gave him then and that he did not respond to, cut her to the heart in an agony of shame.
AK Pg 84

.
But as she was danc­ing the final quadrille with one of the bor­ing young men it was impos­si­ble to refuse, she hap­pened to find her­self fac­ing Vron­sky and Anna. She had not been together with Anna since the very begin­ning; now she sud­denly saw her again, this time in a new and unex­pected light. She saw in her the ela­tion with suc­cess she knew so well. She saw that Anna was drunk with the wine of the rap­ture she had aroused. Kitty knew this feel­ing and knew its signs, and she saw them in Anna—the quiv­er­ing light flash­ing in her eyes, the smile of hap­pi­ness and ela­tion that curled her lips invol­un­tar­ily, and the grace­ful pre­ci­sion, accu­racy and light­ness of her move­ments. Tolstoy’s Par­lor Room
But who is it? Kitty asked her­self: everyone—or just one? With­out giv­ing any help to the dis­tressed young man she was danc­ing with, who had lost the thread of the con­ver­sa­tion and couldn’t pick it up again, and seem­ingly under the spell of the merry, resound­ing, peremp­tory cries of Kor­sun­sky, who first ordered every­one to form a grand rond, then a chaîne, she kept watch­ing, and her heart sank more and more.
Every time Vron­sky spoke to Anna a joy­ous light flared up in her eyes, and a smile of plea­sure curved her red lips. She seemed to be mak­ing an effort to hide these signs of joy, but they passed over her face of their own accord. Kitty looked at him in hor­ror: But what’s hap­pen­ing to him? What Kitty saw so clearly in the mir­ror of Anna’s face she saw in him too. What had become of his unchange­ably calm, firm man­ner, and the calm non­cha­lance of his expres­sion? No—now, when­ever he spoke to her he bowed his head a lit­tle as though he wanted to fall down in front of her; in his eyes there was noth­ing but an expres­sion of sub­mis­sion and ter­ror. “I don’t wish to offen­sive,” that expres­sion seemed to keep say­ing, “but I want to save myself and I don’t know how.” There was a look on his face Kitty had never seen before. Smolensk Krem­lin
They were talk­ing about peo­ple they both knew, and car­ry­ing on the most triv­ial con­ver­sa­tion, but it seemed to Kitty that every word they said was deci­sive for their fate and hers. What was strange was that even though they really were speak­ing about how ridicu­lous Ivan Ivanovich was with his French accent, or whether a bet­ter match might be found for the Elet­sky girl, nev­er­the­less these words meant some­thing to them, which they felt just as Kitty did. The entire ball, the entire world—everything was over­laid by a mist in Kitty’s heart. Only the strict school of train­ing she had gone through propped her up and forced her to do what was required of her, that is, dance, answer ques­tions, talk, and even smile. But before the mazurka began, when chairs were already being set out for it and sev­eral cou­ples had moved from the small to the large ball­room, a moment of despair and ter­ror laid hold of her. She had refused five men who had asked for the mazurka, and now she was not in it. There was not even a hope of her being asked, just because she had had too great a suc­cess and it could never have entered anyone’s head that she had not already been asked. She ought to have told her mother she was feel­ing ill and then gone home, but she lacked the strength. She felt shat­tered.
She went off to the far end of the small draw­ing room and sank into an easy chair. Her airy skirts stood out like a cloud from her slen­der fig­ure; one thin, bare, del­i­cate girl­ish arm dropped nerve­lessly and was lost in the pink folds of her tunic; the other held a fan with which, with rapid, short strokes, she fanned her glow­ing face. But though she looked like a but­ter­fly that had just set­tled on a blade of grass and was about to flut­ter off at any moment and spread its rain­bow wings, her heart was crushed by a fright­ful despair.
But I may be wrong, per­haps it wasn’t that way. And again she recalled every­thing she had seen.
“Kitty, what does this mean?” said Count­ess Norston, com­ing over on the car­pet to her sound­lessly. “I don’t under­stand.”
Kitty’s lower lip quiv­ered; she got up quickly.
“Kitty aren’t you danc­ing the mazurka?”
“No—no,” said Kitty, her voice tremu­lous with tears.
“He asked for the mazurka in front of me,” said Count­ess Norston, know­ing Kitty would under­stand who “he” and “she” were. “She said, ‘aren’t you danc­ing with Princess Shcherbatsky?’”
“Oh! It’s all the same to me!” Kitty replied.
No one but her­self under­stood her posi­tion, no one knew that she had refused a man whom she may have loved, and refused him because she had trusted another. Pg. 85–86.

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Here it is. Let’s say you’re mar­ried, you love your wife, but you’re attracted by another woman.”
“Excuse me, but I absolutely can­not under­stand that—exactly as I couldn’t under­stand how after eat­ing my fill here I could go past a bak­ery and steal a roll.”
Oblonsky’s eyes glis­tened more than usual.
“And why not? A roll some­times has a smell you just can’t resist. ‘What bliss it is, when I have con­quered My own earth­bound desires But even if I fail, at least, I’ve had me that much plea­sure!’”
“….Don’t steal rolls.”
Oblon­sky burst out laugh­ing. “Ah, the moral­ist! But you can under­stand, there are two women: one of them insists only on her rights and those rights are your love, which you can’t give her, while the other sac­ri­fices every­thing for you and demands noth­ing. What should you do? How should you act? It’s a dread­ful tragedy.”Onion domes of Moscow
“If you want my real opin­ion about this, I must tell you I don’t believe in the tragedy of it, and this is why: in my opin­ion, love—both kinds of love, which you remem­ber Plato defines in his Symposium—both these kinds serve as a touch­stone for peo­ple. Some peo­ple under­stand only one kind, oth­ers the other. It’s futilre for those who under­stand non-Platonic love to talk about tragedy. In love like that there can be no tragedy. ‘Thank you kindly for the plea­sure, good-by!’—that’s your whole tragedy. And there can’t be any tragedy in Pla­tonic love because in such love every­thing is clear and pure, because—”
Just at this moment Levin recalled his own sins, and the inner strug­gle he was under­go­ing: he added unex­pect­edly: “Though per­haps you may be right. It’s very possible…But I don’t know, I really don’t know.”
AK Pg 42–44

Now she was afraid that Vron­sky might limit him­self to a mere flir­ta­tion. She saw that her daugh­ter was already in love with him, but con­soled her­self with the thought that he was an hon­or­able man and would not do that. But at the same time, with man­ners as free as they were, she knew how easy it was to turn a young girl’s head, and what a light view men gen­er­ally take of us such a mis­deed. The week before Kitty had told her mother of a con­ver­sa­tion she had with Vron­sky dur­ing a mazurka. This con­ver­sa­tion calmed the Princess to some extent; but she could not feel entirely at ease. Vron­sky had told Kitty that both he and his brother were so used to doing what­ever their mother wanted that they would never decide on any­thing impor­tant at all with­out con­sult­ing her. “I’m look­ing for­ward with spe­cial plea­sure now to Mama’s arrival from Peters­burg,” he had said.
Kitty had reported this with­out attach­ing any spe­cial mean­ing to it. But her mother under­stood it dif­fer­ently. She knew the old lady was expected from one day to the next, she knew she would be happy over her son’s choice, and it seemed strange to her that for fear of hurt­ing his mother he did not make a pro­posal; but she so much wanted the mar­riage itself, and, above all, longed for relief from her anx­i­ety, that she believed it. Painful as it as for her now to wit­ness the unhap­pi­ness of her old­est daugh­ter Dolly, who was prepar­ing to leave her hus­band, the Princess’s anx­i­ety about her youngest daughter’s fate, now about to be decided, absorbed all her emo­tions. Levin’s arrival that day had given her an addi­tional cause for alarm. She was afraid that Kitty, who had seemed to have some feel­ing for Levin at one point, might refuse Vron­sky out of an exces­sive sense of honor, and that Levin’s arrival would con­fuse and delay things just as they were about to be con­cluded.
….No, with eyes like that she couldn’t tell a lie, thought her mother, smil­ing at her excite­ment and hap­pi­ness. The Princess was smil­ing at how enor­mous and impor­tant the poor girl must think what was going on in her own soul.
AK Pg 47–48

She was a dried-up, sal­low, ner­vous, sickly woman with glit­ter­ing black eyes. She was fond of Kitty, and her affec­tion for her, like the affec­tion all mar­ried women have for unmar­ried girls, was expressed in her desire to marry Kitty off in accor­dance with her own ideal of hap­pi­ness, which was being mar­ried to Vron­sky. She had always dis­liked Levin, whom she had often met there at the begin­ning of the win­ter. Her con­stant and favorite reac­tion when­ever she met him con­sisted of mak­ing fun of him.
“I love it when from the height of his majesty he looks down at me: either he cuts short his intel­li­gent con­ver­sa­tion because I’m stu­pid, or else he patron­izes me. That’s what I adore—he patron­izes me! I’m sim­ply delighted that he can’t bear me,” she would say about him.
She was right; Levin actu­ally couldn’t bear her; he despised her because of just the thing she prided her­self on and regarded as a merit—her ner­vous­ness, and her refined con­tempt for and aloof­ness from every­thing coarse and com­mon.
Between Levin and Count­ess Nord­ston a rela­tion­ship had grown up that is seen quite fre­quently in soci­ety, when two peo­ple out­wardly remain­ing on friendly terms despise one another to such a point that they can­not treat the other seri­ously and can­not even be offended by each other.
Count­ess Nord­ston pounced on Levin instantly.
“Ah, Levin! You’ve come back to our depraved Baby­lon,” she said, hold­ing out her tiny yel­low hand to him and recall­ing some­thing he had once said at the begin­ning of the win­ter, about Moscow being Baby­lon. “Is it that Baby­lon has reformed or that you’ve been spoiled?” she added with a sneer, look­ing at Kitty.
“I’m extremely flat­tered, Count­ess, at your remem­ber­ing my remark,” Levin retorted; he had had time to recover his self-possession and imme­di­ately entered into their rela­tion­ship of mali­cious ban­ter. “It obvi­ously had a pow­er­ful effect on you.”
AK Pg 51–52

Rightly or wrongly Levin could not help stay­ing on now; he had to dis­cover the sort of man she loved.
There are peo­ple who on meet­ing a suc­cess­ful rival are instantly ready to dis­re­gard every­thing good about him and see noth­ing but the bad; there are oth­ers, on the con­trary, who want more than any­thing else to dis­cover those qual­i­ties that have enabled their lucky rival to win out over them, and with an aching pain in their heart look for noth­ing but the best in him. Levin was one of the lat­ter.
AK Pg 53

When the party was over Kitty reported her con­ver­sa­tion with Levin to her mother; in spite of all her com­pas­sion the thought that she had been pro­posed to delighted her. She had no doubt of her hav­ing behaved prop­erly, but for a long time she could not fall asleep. There was one impres­sion that pur­sued her relentlessly—Levin’s face, his eye­brows knit together and the mourn­ful look in his kind eyes as he stood lis­ten­ing to her father and glanc­ing at her and at Vron­sky. And she began to feel so sorry for him that tears came to her eyes. But then at once she thought of the one she had taken instead. She vividly imag­ined that res­olute, vir­ile face, that noble seren­ity, and the kind­ness he always showed every­one in every­thing; she recalled the love for her­self of the one she she loved, and joy filled her heart once again as she lay back on the pil­low with a smile of hap­pi­ness. Such a pity, such a pity, she said to her­self; but what can I do? It’s not my fault. But an inner voice said some­thing else. Whether she regret­ted hav­ing lured Levin on, or hav­ing resued him, she had no idea. But her hap­pi­ness was poi­soned by doubts. Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy! She repeated to her­self until she fell asleep.Portrait Leo Tol­stoy, circa 1880 to 1886
All this time one of the fre­quently repeated scenes between the par­ents about their favorite daugh­ter was going on down­stairs, in the Prince’s lit­tle study.
“What? This is what!” the Prince shouted, fling­ing his arms out and then instantly wrap­ping his squirrel-lined dress­ing gown around him. “That you have no pride, no dig­nity, you dis­grace your daugh­ter, you ruin her by all this vile, idi­otic match­mak­ing!”
“But please, for God’s sake, Prince, what is it I’ve done?” said the Princess, on the verge of tears.
Con­tented and sat­is­fied after her con­ver­sa­tion with Kitty, she had come to say good night to the Prince as usual, and thought she had no inten­tion of telling him about Levin’s pro­posal and Kitty’s refusal, she hinted to him that she thought the Vron­sky sit­u­a­tion was com­pletely set­tled and would be decided the moment his mother arrived. At these words the Prince exploded there and then and began shout­ing out all sorts of inde­cent words.
“What have you done? First of all this: you’ve been entic­ing a suitor, and all Moscow is going to talk about it, and rightly so. If you’re going to give evening par­ties invite every­one, and not only hand-picked suit­ors. Invite all the whippersnappers”—as the Prince called the young men of Moscow—“get in a pianist, and let them dance around, not the way you did it tonight—suitors and pair­ing every­one off! It’s hor­ri­ble, hor­ri­ble, for me to see that sort of thing, and now you’ve had your way and turned the child’s head. Levin is a thou­sand times the bet­ter man. As for that Peters­burg fop, they make them on a machine, they’re all accord­ing to the same pat­tern, and all trash! And even if he were a Prince of the Blood, Kitty doesn’t need him!” Red Square Moscow
“But what did I do?”
“Just this—“ the Prince cried out furi­ously.
“I know that if I were to lis­ten to you,” the Princess inter­rupted, “we’d never get Kitty mar­ried off! If that’s so we’ll have to go to the coun­try.”
“That would be bet­ter.”
“Just a moment—you think I’m ensar­ing them, but it’s not so in the least: a young man, a very fine young man, has fallen in love, and I think she—“
“So you think! And what if she falls in love too, while he has about as much idea of mar­ry­ing her as I? Oh, if only I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes!—‘ah, spir­i­tu­al­ism, ah, Nice, ah, the ball—!’” And at each word the Prince, pre­tend­ing to imi­tate his wife, gave a curt­sey. “And what if we really ruin lit­tle Kitty, and she really does take it into her head to—“
“But why do you think that?”
“I don’t think it, I know it; women don’t have eyes for that, but we do. I see a man whose inten­tions are serious—Levin; then I see a popin­jay like that popin­jay, whose only thought is his own amuse­ment.”
“Oh well, once you get some­thing into your head—“
“And you’ll remem­ber it, but then it’ll be too late, just as it was with poor lit­tle Dolly.”
“All right then, very well, let’s not talk about it,” the Princess stopped him, at the thought of the unfor­tu­nate Dolly.
“Splen­did, good night!”
And mak­ing the sign of the cross over each other as they kissed, but each one feel­ing that they were cling to their sep­a­rate opin­ions, they sep­a­rate for the night.
At first the Princess had been firmly con­vinced that that evening had set­tled Kitty’s future, and that there could be no doubt about Vronsky’s inten­tions; but what her hus­band said upset her. When she reached her own room, ter­ri­fied at the uncer­tainty of the future, she repeated to her­self sev­eral times, just as Kitty had: Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy!
AK Pg 57–59 Tro­phy for What They Said

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