Anna Karenina

Mihailov was working when Vronsky and Golenishtchev's cards arrived. He'd been at his big picture. At home he raged at his wife for not putting off the landlady asking money. 'You're fool enough always, and when you explain in Italian you're three times as foolish.' 'Leave me in peace, for God's sake!' he shrieked with tears, stopping his ears, going to his working room and closing the door. 'Idiotic woman!' He worked with peculiar fervor. 'Never did he work with such fervor and success as when things went ill, especially when he quarreled with his wife.' He was sketching a man in violent rage. Found an old sketch - dirty, candle-grease spotted. The tallow spot gave the man a new pose. He recalled a cigar shopkeeper's vigorous face with prominent chin - sketched this chin onto the figure. Laughed with delight. 'The figure from a lifeless imagined thing had become living.' Finishing when the cards came. He made peace with his wife, put on olive-green overcoat and went to studio. The successful figure already forgotten. Now delighted about these Russians' visit. Of his picture on the easel: 'no one had ever painted a picture like it.' Not better than Raphael, but 'what he tried to convey, no one ever had conveyed.' Yet others' criticisms agitated him deeply. Walking to the door, he was 'struck by the soft light on Anna's figure as she stood in the shade of the entrance.' He absorbed this impression. The visitors, unimpressed by Golenishtchev's account, were less so by Mihailov's appearance - thick-set, middle height, brown hat, olive-green coat, ordinary face, timid yet anxious to keep dignity. Unpleasant impression. 'Please step in,' he said, trying to look indifferent.