Anna Karenina

From the moment Karenin understood "from his interviews with Betsy and with Stepan Arkadyevitch that all that was expected of him was to leave his wife in peace, without burdening her with his presence, and that his wife herself desired this, he felt so distraught that he could come to no decision of himself." He didn't know what he wanted now, and met everything "with unqualified assent." Only when Anna left and the English governess asked "whether she should dine with him or separately" did he "clearly comprehended his position, and was appalled by it." Most difficult was that "he could not in any way connect and reconcile his past with what was now." "He could not now reconcile his immediate past, his tenderness, his love for his sick wife, and for the other man's child with what was now the case, that is with the fact that, as it were, in return for all this he now found himself alone, put to shame, a laughing-stock, needed by no one, and despised by everyone." For two days after Anna's departure, Karenin "strained every nerve of his being... simply to preserve an appearance of composure, and even of indifference." He "attained his aim: no one could have detected in him signs of despair." But on the second day, when "Korney gave him a bill from a fashionable draper's shop, which Anna had forgotten to pay," and the clerk asked, "if you direct us to apply to her excellency, would you graciously oblige us with her address?"—Karenin "turning round, he sat down at the table. Letting his head sink into his hands, he sat for a long while in that position, several times attempted to speak and stopped short." Left alone, "Alexey Alexandrovitch recognized that he had not the strength to keep up the line of firmness and composure any longer." He canceled his carriage, refused visitors, didn't go to dinner. "He felt that he could not endure the weight of universal contempt and exasperation, which he had distinctly seen in the face of the clerk and of Korney, and of everyone, without exception, whom he had met during those two days." The chapter shifts to his history. His parents died when he was young. An uncle, "a favorite of the late Tsar, had brought them up." He started his career with medals and prominence, "and from that time forward he had devoted himself exclusively to political ambition." He'd never formed close friendships. "His brother had been the person nearest to his heart," but he died shortly after Karenin's marriage. "While he was governor of a province, Anna's aunt, a wealthy provincial lady, had thrown him—middle-aged as he was, though young for a governor—with her niece." The aunt insinuated "that he had already compromised the girl, and that he was in honor bound to make her an offer. He made the offer, and concentrated on his betrothed and his wife all the feeling of which he was capable." "The attachment he felt to Anna precluded in his heart every need of intimate relations with others." Now "among all his acquaintances he had not one friend." He had official connections but "his relations with these people were confined to one clearly defined channel, and had a certain routine from which it was impossible to depart." His chief secretary was closest, but "their five years of official work together seemed to have put a barrier between them that cut off warmer relations." He'd prepared the phrase "You have heard of my trouble?" but couldn't say it. His doctor also had "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."