He who was so intelligent and subtle in official business, did not understand all the madness of such an attitude towards his wife. He did not understand it, because it was too dreadful for him to recognize his real position, and in his soul he closed, locked and sealed the drawer in which he kept his feelings for his family - that is, his wife and son. He who had been an attentive father had become especially cold towards his son since the end of that winter, and took the same bantering attitude towards him as towards his wife. ‘Ah! young man!’ was the way he addressed him.
Alexei Alexandrovich thought and said that he had never had so much official business in any other year as he had that year; but he did not realize that he had invented things for himself to do that year, that this was one way of not opening the drawer where his feelings for his wife and family and his thoughts about them lay, becoming more dreadful the longer they lay there. If anyone had had the right to ask Alexei Alexandrovich what he thought about his wife’s behaviour, the mild, placid Alexei Alexandrovich would have made no reply, but would have become very angry with the man who had asked him about it. And that was why there was something proud and stern in the expression of Alexei Alexandrovich’s face when he was asked about his wife’s health. He did not want to think anything about his wife’s behaviour and feelings, and in fact did not think anything about them.
Alexei Alexandrovich’s permanent country house was in Peterhof, and Countess Lydia Ivanovna usually spent the summers there, too, in the neighbourhood and in constant contact with Anna. This year Countess Lydia Ivanovna refused to live in Peterhof, never once visited Anna Arkadyevna, and hinted to Alexei Alexandrovich at the awkwardness of Anna’s closeness to Betsy and Vronsky. Alexei Alexandrovich sternly interrupted her, expressing the thought that his wife was above suspicion, and after that he began to avoid Countess Lydia Ivanovna. He did not want to see, and did not see, that in society many were already looking askance at his wife; he did not want to understand, and did not understand, why his wife insisted especially on moving to Tsarskoe, where Betsy lived, which was not far from the camp of Vronsky’s regiment. He did not allow himself to think of it, and did not think of it; but, nevertheless, in the depths of his soul, without ever saying it to himself and having not only no proofs of it but even no suspicions, he knew without doubt that he was a deceived husband, and it made him deeply unhappy.
How many times during his eight years of happy life with his wife, looking at other people’s unfaithful wives and deceived husbands, had Alexei Alexandrovich said to himself: ‘How can one let it come to that? How can one not undo this ugly situation?’ But now, when the disaster had fallen on his head, he not only did not think of how to undo the situation, but did want to know about it at all - did not want to know precisely because it was too terrible, too unnatural.
Since his return from abroad, Alexei Alexandrovich had been to the country house twice. Once he had dinner, the other time he spent the evening with guests, but neither time did he spend the night, as he had usually done in previous years.
The day of the races was a very busy day for Alexei Alexandrovich; but, having made a schedule for himself that morning, he decided that immediately after an early dinner he would go to see his wife at their country house and from there to the races, which the whole court would attend and which he, too, had to attend. He would visit his wife, because he had decided to see her once a week for propriety’s sake. Besides, according to the established rule, that day being the fifteenth, he had to give her money for her expenses.
With his customary control over his mind, having pondered all this about his wife, he did not allow his thoughts to go further into what concerned her.
