Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART SEVEN CHAPTER 21
“Don’t take any notice,” said Lidia Ivanovna, and she lightly moved a chair up for
Alexey Alexandrovitch. “I have observed...” she was beginning, when a footman
came into the room with a letter. Lidia Ivanovna rapidly ran her eyes over the note,
and excusing herself, wrote an answer with extraordinary rapidity, handed it to the
man, and came back to the table. “I have observed,” she went on, “that Moscow
people, especially the men, are more indifferent to religion than anyone.”
“Oh, no, countess, I thought Moscow people had the reputation of being the
firmest in the faith,” answered Stepan Arkadyevitch.
“But as far as I can make out, you are unfortunately one of the indifferent ones,”
said Alexey Alexandrovitch, turning to him with a weary smile.
“How anyone can be indifferent!” said Lidia Ivanovna.
“I am not so much indifferent on that subject as I am waiting in suspense,” said
Stepan Arkadyevitch, with his most deprecating smile. “I hardly think that the time
for such questions has come yet for me.”
Alexey Alexandrovitch and Lidia Ivanovna looked at each other.
“We can never tell whether the time has come for us or not,” said Alexey Alexandrovitch
severely. “We ought not to think whether we are ready or not ready. God’s
grace is not guided by human considerations: sometimes it comes not to those that
strive for it, and comes to those that are unprepared, like Saul.”
“No, I believe it won’t be just yet,” said Lidia Ivanovna, who had been meanwhile
watching the movements of the Frenchman. Landau got up and came to them.
“Do you allow me to listen?” he asked.
“Oh, yes; I did not want to disturb you,” said Lidia Ivanovna, gazing tenderly at
him; “sit here with us.”
“One has only not to close one’s eyes to shut out the light,” Alexey Alexandrovitch
went on.
“Ah, if you knew the happiness we know, feeling His presence ever in our hearts!”
said Countess Lidia Ivanovna with a rapturous smile.
“But a man may feel himself unworthy sometimes to rise to that height,” said
Stepan Arkadyevitch, conscious of hypocrisy in admitting this religious height, but
at the same time unable to bring himself to acknowledge his free-thinking views
before a person who, by a single word to Pomorsky, might procure him the coveted
appointment.
“That is, you mean that sin keeps him back?” said Lidia Ivanovna. “But that is
a false idea. There is no sin for believers, their sin has been atoned for. Pardon,”
she added, looking at the footman, who came in again with another letter. She read
it and gave a verbal answer: “Tomorrow at the Grand Duchess’s, say.” “For the
believer sin is not,” she went on.
“Yes, but faith without works is dead,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, recalling the
phrase from the catechism, and only by his smile clinging to his independence.
“There you have it–from the epistle of St. James,” said Alexey Alexandrovitch,
addressing Lidia Ivanovna, with a certain reproachfulness in his tone. It was unmistakably
a subject they had discussed more than once before. “What harm has been
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