Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART SEVEN CHAPTER 18
“Oh, no, oh, no, not at all! please understand me,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch,
touching his hand again, as though feeling sure this physical contact would soften
his brother-in-law. “All I say is this: her position is intolerable, and it might be
alleviated by you, and you will lose nothing by it. I will arrange it all for you, so that
you’ll not notice it. You did promise it, you know.”
“The promise was given before. And I had supposed that the question of my son
had settled the matter. Besides, I had hoped that Anna Arkadyevna had enough
generosity...” Alexey Alexandrovitch articulated with difficulty, his lips twitching
and his face white.
“She leaves it all to your generosity. She begs, she implores one thing of you–to
extricate her from the impossible position in which she is placed. She does not ask
for her son now. Alexey Alexandrovitch, you are a good man. Put yourself in her
position for a minute. The question of divorce for her in her position is a question of
life and death. If you had not promised it once, she would have reconciled herself
to her position, she would have gone on living in the country. But you promised it,
and she wrote to you, and moved to Moscow. And here she’s been for six months in
Moscow, where every chance meeting cuts her to the heart, every day expecting an
answer. Why, it’s like keeping a condemned criminal for six months with the rope
round his neck, promising him perhaps death, perhaps mercy. Have pity on her, and
I will undertake to arrange everything. Vos scrupules...”
“I am not talking about that, about that...” Alexey Alexandrovitch interrupted
with disgust. “But, perhaps, I promised what I had no right to promise.”
“So you go back from your promise?”
“I have never refused to do all that is possible, but I want time to consider how
much of what I promised is possible.”
“No, Alexey Alexandrovitch!” cried Oblonsky, jumping up, “I won’t believe that!
She’s unhappy as only an unhappy woman can be, and you cannot refuse in such...”
“As much of what I promised as is possible. Vous professez d’être libre penseur. But
I as a believer cannot, in a matter of such gravity, act in opposition to the Christian
law.”
“But in Christian societies and among us, as far as I’m aware, divorce is allowed,”
said Stepan Arkadyevitch. “Divorce is sanctioned even by our church. And we
see...”
“It is allowed, but not in the sense...”
“Alexey Alexandrovitch, you are not like yourself,” said Oblonsky, after a brief
pause. “Wasn’t it you (and didn’t we all appreciate it in you?) who forgave everything,
and moved simply by Christian feeling was ready to make any sacrifice? You
said yourself: if a man take thy coat, give him thy cloak also, and now...”
“I beg,” said Alexey Alexandrovitch shrilly, getting suddenly onto his feet, his face
white and his jaws twitching, “I beg you to drop this...to drop...this subject!”
“Oh, no! Oh, forgive me, forgive me if I have wounded you,” said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, holding out his hand with a smile of embarrassment; “but like a messenger
I have simply performed the commission given me.”
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