Anna Karenina(page 4)

63 of 1759
on the ice. There were crack skaters there, showing off
their skill, and learners clinging to chairs with timid,
awkward movements, boys, and elderly people skating
with hygienic motives. They seemed to Levin an elect
band of blissful beings because they were here, near her.
All the skaters, it seemed, with perfect self-possession,
skated towards her, skated by her, even spoke to her, and
were happy, quite apart from her, enjoying the capital ice
and the fine weather.
Nikolay Shtcherbatsky, Kitty’s cousin, in a short jacket
and tight trousers, was sitting on a garden seat with his
skates on. Seeing Levin, he shouted to him:
‘Ah, the first skater in Russia! Been here long? Firstrate
ice—do put your skates on.’
‘I haven’t got my skates,’ Levin answered, marveling at
this boldness and ease in her presence, and not for one
second losing sight of her, though he did not look at her.
He felt as though the sun were coming near him. She was
in a corner, and turning out her slender feet in their high
boots with obvious timidity, she skated towards him. A
boy in Russian dress, desperately waving his arms and
bowed down to the ground, overtook her. She skated a
little uncertainly; taking her hands out of the little muff
that hung on a cord, she held them ready for emergency,

Anna Karenina(page 3)

he went up to Oblonsky with some papers, and began,
under pretense of asking a question, to explain some
objection. Stepan Arkadyevitch, without hearing him out,
laid his hand genially on the secretary’s sleeve.
‘No, you do as I told you,’ he said, softening his words
with a smile, and with a brief explanation of his view of
the matter he turned away from the papers, and said: ‘So
do it that way, if you please, Zahar Nikititch.’
The secretary retired in confusion. During the
consultation with the secretary Levin had completely
recovered from his embarrassment. He was standing with
his elbows on the back of a chair, and on his face was a
look of ironical attention.
‘I don’t understand it, I don’t understand it,’ he said.
‘What don’t you understand?’ said Oblonsky, smiling as
brightly as ever, and picking up a cigarette. He expected
some queer outburst from Levin.
‘I don’t understand what you are doing,’ said Levin,
shrugging his shoulders. ‘How can you do it seriously?’
‘Why not?’

Anna Karenina(page 2)

20 of 1759
‘How is mamma?’ he asked, passing his hand over his
daughter’s smooth, soft little neck. ‘Good morning,’ he
said, smiling to the boy, who had come up to greet him.
He was conscious that he loved the boy less, and always
tried to be fair; but the boy felt it, and did not respond
with a smile to his father’s chilly smile.
‘Mamma? She is up,’ answered the girl.
Stepan Arkadyevitch sighed. ‘That means that she’s not
slept again all night,’ he thought.
‘Well, is she cheerful?’
The little girl knew that there was a quarrel between
her father and mother, and that her mother could not be
cheerful, and that her father must be aware of this, and
that he was pretending when he asked about it so lightly.
And she blushed for her father. He at once perceived it,
and blushed too.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘She did not say we must do
our lessons, but she said we were to go for a walk with
Miss Hoole to grandmamma’s.’

Anna Karenina(page 1)

Anna Karenina
2 of 1759
PART ONE
Anna Karenina
3 of 1759
Chapter 1
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is
unhappy in its own way.
Everything was in confusion in the Oblonskys’ house.
The wife had discovered that the husband was carrying on
an intrigue with a French girl, who had been a governess
in their family, and she had announced to her husband
that she could not go on living in the same house with
him. This position of affairs had now lasted three days, and
not only the husband and wife themselves, but all the
members of their family and household, were painfully
conscious of it. Every person in the house felt that there
was so sense in their living together, and that the stray
people brought together by chance in any inn had more in
common with one another than they, the members of the
family and household of the Oblonskys. The wife did not
leave her own room, the husband had not been at home
for three days. The children ran wild all over the house;
the English governess quarreled with the housekeeper, and
wrote to a friend asking her to look out for a new