Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART FOUR CHAPTER 12
Chapter 12
CONNECTED with the conversation that had sprung up on the rights of women
there were certain questions as to the inequality of rights in marriage improper
to discuss before the ladies. Pestsov had several times during dinner touched upon
these questions, but Sergey Ivanovitch and Stepan Arkadyevitch carefully drew him
off them.
When they rose from the table and the ladies had gone out, Pestsov did not follow
them, but addressing Alexey Alexandrovitch, began to expound the chief ground
of inequality. The inequality in marriage, in his opinion, lay in the fact that the
infidelity of the wife and the infidelity of the husband are punished unequally, both
by the law and by public opinion. Stepan Arkadyevitch went hurriedly up to Alexey
Alexandrovitch and offered him a cigar.
“No, I don’t smoke,” Alexey Alexandrovitch answered calmly, and as though purposely
wishing to show that he was not afraid of the subject, he turned to Pestsov
with a chilly smile.
“I imagine that such a view has a foundation in the very nature of things,” he said,
and would have gone on to the drawing room. But at this point Turovtsin broke suddenly
and unexpectedly into the conversation, addressing Alexey Alexandrovitch.
“You heard, perhaps, about Pryatchnikov?” said Turovtsin, warmed up by the
champagne he had drunk, and long waiting for an opportunity to break the silence
that had weighed on him. “Vasya Pryatchnikov,” he said, with a good-natured smile
on his damp, red lips, addressing himself principally to the most important guest,
Alexey Alexandrovitch, “they told me today he fought a duel with Kvitsky at Tver,
and has killed him.”
Just as it always seems that one bruises oneself on a sore place, so Stepan Arkadyevitch
felt now that the conversation would by ill luck fall every moment on Alexey
Alexandrovitch’s sore spot. He would again have got his brother-in-law away, but
Alexey Alexandrovitch himself inquired, with curiosity:
“What did Pryatchnikov fight about?”
“His wife. Acted like a man, he did! Called him out and shot him!”
“Ah!” said Alexey Alexandrovitch indifferently, and lifting his eyebrows, he went
into the drawing room.
“How glad I am you have come,” Dolly said with a frightened smile, meeting him
in the outer drawing room. “I must talk to you. Let’s sit here.”
Alexey Alexandrovitch, with the same expression of indifference, given him by
his lifted eyebrows, sat down beside Darya Alexandrovna, and smiled affectedly.
“It’s fortunate,” said he, “especially as I was meaning to ask you to excuse me, and
to be taking leave. I have to start tomorrow.”
Darya Alexandrovna was firmly convinced of Anna’s innocence, and she felt herself
growing pale and her lips quivering with anger at this frigid, unfeeling man,
who was so calmly intending to ruin her innocent friend.
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