Chapter 42 — Anna Karenina

Karenin saw nothing improper in Anna sitting apart with Vronsky until he noticed that everyone else did; then impropriety became real by reflection. At home he reads about the Papacy until one o'clock, rubs his forehead, and paces instead of sleeping because a domestic problem now demands the kind of thinking his official life never trained him for: not policy but a wife's heart moving outside his control.

He insists jealousy insults a wife, yet the image of Anna loving someone else opens a chasm under the bridge of his artificial existence. He tries to classify her feelings as religion's business and his duty as guidance, drafts a four-point speech on public opinion, marriage, their son, and her unhappiness, and cracks his finger joints for precision as if preparing a council report that must not sound like fear.

When carriage wheels stop and her light step sounds on the stairs, he is ready with sentences and frightened of using them. He has rehearsed reason and duty; he does not know whether kindness or authority will come out first when she walks in glowing from another man's escort and the smell of a room that has been watching them both all evening.