Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART FOUR CHAPTER 19
Chapter 19
THE mistake made by Alexey Alexandrovitch in that, when preparing for seeing
his wife, he had overlooked the possibility that her repentance might be sincere,
and he might forgive her, and she might not die–this mistake was two months after
his return from Moscow brought home to him in all its significance. But the mistake
made by him had arisen not simply from his having overlooked that contingency,
but also from the fact that until that day of his interview with his dying wife, he
had not known his own heart. At his sick wife’s bedside he had for the first time
in his life given way to that feeling of sympathetic suffering always roused in him
by the sufferings of others, and hitherto looked on by him with shame as a harmful
weakness. And pity for her, and remorse for having desired her death, and most
of all, the joy of forgiveness, made him at once conscious, not simply of the relief
of his own sufferings, but of a spiritual peace he had never experienced before. He
suddenly felt that the very thing that was the source of his sufferings had become
the source of his spiritual joy; that what had seemed insoluble while he was judging,
blaming, and hating, had become clear and simple when he forgave and loved.
He forgave his wife and pitied her for her sufferings and her remorse. He forgave
Vronsky, and pitied him, especially after reports reached him of his despairing action.
He felt more for his son than before. And he blamed himself now for having
taken too little interest in him. But for the little newborn baby he felt a quite peculiar
sentiment, not of pity, only, but of tenderness. At first, from a feeling of compassion
alone, he had been interested in the delicate little creature, who was not his child,
and who was cast on one side during her mother’s illness, and would certainly have
died if he had not troubled about her, and he did not himself observe how fond he
became of her. He would go into the nursery several times a day, and sit there for
a long while, so that the nurses, who were at first afraid of him, got quite used to
his presence. Sometimes for half an hour at a stretch he would sit silently gazing at
the saffron-red, downy, wrinkled face of the sleeping baby, watching the movements
of the frowning brows, and the fat little hands, with clenched fingers, that rubbed
the little eyes and nose. At such moments particularly, Alexey Alexandrovitch had
a sense of perfect peace and inward harmony, and saw nothing extraordinary in his
position, nothing that ought to be changed.
But as time went on, he saw more and more distinctly that however natural the
position now seemed to him, he would not long be allowed to remain in it. He
felt that besides the blessed spiritual force controlling his soul, there was another, a
brutal force, as powerful, or more powerful, which controlled his life, and that this
force would not allow him that humble peace he longed for. He felt that everyone
was looking at him with inquiring wonder, that he was not understood, and that
something was expected of him. Above all, he felt the instability and unnaturalness
of his relations with his wife.
When the softening effect of the near approach of death had passed away, Alexey
Alexandrovitch began to notice that Anna was afraid of him, ill at ease with him,
and could not look him straight in the face. She seemed to be wanting, and not
daring, to tell him something; and as though foreseeing their present relations could
not continue, she seemed to be expecting something from him.
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