Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART TWO CHAPTER 26
Chapter 26
THE external relations of Alexey Alexandrovitch and his wife had remained unchanged.
The sole difference lay in the fact that he was more busily occupied
than ever. As in former years, at the beginning of the spring he had gone to a foreign
watering-place for the sake of his health, deranged by the winter’s work that every
year grew heavier. And just as always he returned in July and at once fell to work
as usual with increased energy. As usual, too, his wife had moved for the summer
to a villa out of town, while he remained in Petersburg. From the date of their conversation
after the party at Princess Tverskaya’s he had never spoken again to Anna
of his suspicions and his jealousies, and that habitual tone of his bantering mimicry
was the most convenient tone possible for his present attitude to his wife. He was
a little colder to his wife. He simply seemed to be slightly displeased with her for
that first midnight conversation, which she had repelled. In his attitude to her there
was a shade of vexation, but nothing more. “You would not be open with me,” he
seemed to say, mentally addressing her; “so much the worse for you. Now you may
beg as you please, but I won’t be open with you. So much the worse for you!” he
said mentally, like a man who, after vainly attempting to extinguish a fire, should fly
in a rage with his vain efforts and say, “Oh, very well then! you shall burn for this!”
This man, so subtle and astute in official life, did not realize all the senselessness of
such an attitude to his wife. He did not realize it, because it was too terrible to him to
realize his actual position, and he shut down and locked and sealed up in his heart
that secret place where lay hid his feelings towards his family, that is, his wife and
son. He who had been such a careful father, had from the end of that winter become
peculiarly frigid to his son, and adopted to him just the same bantering tone he used
with his wife. “Aha, young man!” was the greeting with which he met him.
Alexey Alexandrovitch asserted and believed that he had never in any previous
year had so much official business as that year. But he was not aware that he sought
work for himself that year, that this was one of the means for keeping shut that
secret place where lay hid his feelings towards his wife and son and his thoughts
about them, which became more terrible the longer they lay there. If anyone had
had the right to ask Alexey Alexandrovitch what he thought of his wife’s behavior,
the mild and peaceable Alexey Alexandrovitch would have made no answer, but he
would have been greatly angered with any man who should question him on that
subject. For this reason there positively came into Alexey Alexandrovitch’s face a
look of haughtiness and severity whenever anyone inquired after his wife’s health.
Alexey Alexandrovitch did not want to think at all about his wife’s behavior, and he
actually succeeded in not thinking about it at all.
Alexey Alexandrovitch’s permanent summer villa was in Peterhof, and the Countess
Lidia Ivanovna used as a rule to spend the summer there, close to Anna, and
constantly seeing her. That year Countess Lidia Ivanovna declined to settle in Peterhof,
was not once at Anna Arkadyevna’s, and in conversation with Alexey Alexandrovitch
hinted at the unsuitability of Anna’s close
intimacy with Betsy and Vronsky. Alexey Alexandrovitch sternly cut her short,
roundly declaring his wife to be above suspicion, and from that time began to avoid
Countess Lidia Ivanovna. He did not want to see, and did not see, that many people
191