Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART FIVE CHAPTER 21
but this friend had a post in the Department of Education in a remote part of Russia.
Of the people in Petersburg the most intimate and most possible were his chief
secretary and his doctor.
Mihail Vassilievitch Sludin, the chief secretary, was a straightforward, intelligent,
good-hearted, and conscientious man, and Alexey Alexandrovitch was aware of his
personal goodwill. But their five years of official work together seemed to have put
a barrier between them that cut off warmer relations.
After signing the papers brought him, Alexey Alexandrovitch had sat for a long
while in silence, glancing at Mihail Vassilievitch, and several times he attempted to
speak, but could not. He had already prepared the phrase: “You have heard of my
trouble?” But he ended by saying, as usual: “So you’ll get this ready for me?” and
with that dismissed him.
The other person was the doctor, who had also a kindly feeling for him; but there
had long existed a taciturn understanding between them that both were weighed
down by work, and always in a hurry.
Of his women friends, foremost amongst them Countess Lidia Ivanovna, Alexey
Alexandrovitch never thought. All women, simply as women, were terrible and
distasteful to him.
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