Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART FIVE CHAPTER 4
“Blessed is the name of our God, from the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,”
the little old priest answered in a submissive, piping voice, still fingering something
at the lectern. And the full chorus of the unseen choir rose up, filling the whole
church, from the windows to the vaulted roof, with broad waves of melody. It grew
stronger, rested for an instant, and slowly died away.
They prayed, as they always do, for peace from on high and for salvation, for the
Holy Synod, and for the Tsar; they prayed, too, for the servants of God, Konstantin
and Ekaterina, now plighting their troth.
“Vouchsafe to them love made perfect, peace and help, O Lord, we beseech Thee,”
the whole church seemed to breathe with the voice of the head deacon.
Levin heard the words, and they impressed him. “How did they guess that it is
help, just help that one wants?” he thought, recalling all his fears and doubts of late.
“What do I know? what can I do in this fearful business,” he thought, “without help?
Yes, it is help I want now.”
When the deacon had finished the prayer for the Imperial family, the priest turned
to the bridal pair with a book: “Eternal God, that joinest together in love them that
were separate,” he read in a gentle, piping voice: “who hast ordained the union of
holy wedlock that cannot be set asunder, Thou who didst bless Isaac and Rebecca
and their descendants, according to Thy Holy Covenant; bless Thy servants, Konstantin
and Ekaterina, leading them in the path of all good works. For gracious and
merciful art Thou, our Lord, and glory be to Thee, the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Ghost, now and ever shall be.”
“Amen!” the unseen choir sent rolling again upon the air.
“‘Joinest together in love them that were separate.’ What deep meaning in those
words, and how they correspond with what one feels at this moment,” thought
Levin. “Is she feeling the same as I?”
And looking round, he met her eyes, and from their expression he concluded that
she was understanding it just as he was. But this was a mistake; she almost completely
missed the meaning of the words of the service; she had not heard them, in
fact. She could not listen to them and take them in, so strong was the one feeling
that filled her breast and grew stronger and stronger. That feeling was joy at the
completion of the process that for the last month and a half had been going on in
her soul, and had during those six weeks been a joy and a torture to her. On the day
when in the drawing room of the house in Arbaty Street she had gone up to him in
her brown dress, and given herself to him without a word–on that day, at that hour,
there took place in her heart a complete severance from all her old life, and a quite
different, new, utterly strange life had begun for her, while the old life was actually
going on as before. Those six weeks had for her been a time of the utmost bliss and
the utmost misery. All her life, all her desires and hopes were concentrated on this
one man, still uncomprehended by her, to whom she was bound by a feeling of alternate
attraction and repulsion, even less comprehended than the man himself, and
all the while she was going on living in the outward conditions of her old life. Living
the old life, she was horrified at herself, at her utter insurmountable callousness to
all her own past, to things, to habits, to the people she had loved, who loved her–to
her mother, who was wounded by her indifference, to her kind, tender father, till
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