‘Stiva says
He simply could not understand how, at this moment of their reunion, she could think about her son, about divorce. Was it not all the same?
‘Don’t talk about it, don’t think,’ he said, turning her hand in his own and trying to draw her attention to himself; but she still would not look at him.
‘Ah, why didn’t I die, it would be better!’ she said, and tears streamed silently down both her cheeks; but she tried to smile so as not to upset him.
To decline a flattering and dangerous assignment to Tashkent would have been, to Vronsky’s former way of thinking, disgraceful and impossible. But now he declined it without a moment’s reflection and, noticing the disapproval of his act in high places, he at once resigned his commission.
A month later Alexei Alexandrovich was left alone in his apartment with his son, and Anna went abroad with Vronsky without obtaining a divorce and resolutely abandoning the idea.
Part Five
I
Princess Shcherbatsky thought that to have the wedding before Lent, which was only five weeks away, was impossible, because half of the trousseau would not be ready by then; but she could not help agreeing with Levin that after Lent would be too late, since Prince Shcherbatsky’s old aunt was very ill and might die soon, and the mourning would delay the wedding still longer. And therefore, deciding to divide the trousseau into two parts, a larger and a smaller, the princess agreed to have the wedding before Lent. She decided to prepare the smaller part of the trousseau at once and send the larger part later, and she was very angry with Levin for being quite unable to tell her seriously whether he agreed to it or not. This disposition was the more convenient as immediately after the wedding the young people were going to the country, where the things in the larger trousseau would not be needed.
Levin continued in the same state of madness, in which it seemed to him that he and his happiness constituted the chief and only goal of all that existed, and that there was no longer any need for him to think or worry about anything, that everything was being and would be done for him by others. He even had no plans or goals for his future life; he left it for others to decide, knowing that it would all be wonderful. His brother Sergei Ivanovich, Stepan Arkadyich and the princess directed him in what he had to do. He was simply in complete agreement with everything suggested to him. His brother borrowed money for him, the princess advised leaving Moscow after the wedding, Stepan Arkadyich advised going abroad. He agreed to everything. ‘Do as you like, if it amuses you. I’m happy, and my happiness can be no greater or smaller whatever you do,’ he thought. When he told Kitty of Stepan Arkadyich’s advice about going abroad, he was very surprised that she did not agree to it, but had certain requirements of her own regarding their future life. She knew that Levin had work in the country that he loved. He could see that she not only did not understand this work but had no wish to understand it. That did not prevent her, however, from considering this work very important. And therefore she knew that their home would be in the country and wanted to go, not abroad where she was not going to live, but where their home would be. This definitely expressed intention surprised Levin. But since it was all the same to him, he at once asked Stepan Arkadyich, as if it were his duty, to go to the country and arrange everything there as he knew how to do, with that taste of which he had so much.
‘Listen, though,’ Stepan Arkadyich asked Levin one day, after he came back from the country where he had arranged everything for the young people’s arrival, ‘do you have a certificate that you’ve been to confession?’
‘No, why?’
‘You can’t go to the altar without it.’
‘Ai, ai, ai!’ Levin cried. ‘I bet it’s a good nine years since I last prepared for communion.1 I never thought of it.’
‘You’re a fine one!’ Stepan Arkadyich said, laughing. ‘And you call me a nihilist! This won’t do, however. You’ve got to confess and take communion.’
‘But when? There are only four days left.’
