to
say, one in which only the guilty wife would be repudiated, was
impossible of attainment. He saw that the complex conditions of
the life they led made the coarse proofs of his wife's guilt,
required by the law, out of the question; he saw that a certain
refinement in that life would not admit of such proofs being
brought forward, even if he had them, and that to bring forward
such proofs would damage him in the public estimation more than
it would her.

An attempt at divorce could lead to nothing but a public scandal,
which would be a perfect godsend to his enemies for calumny and
attacks on his high position in society. His chief object, to
define the position with the least amount of disturbance
possible, would not be attained by divorce either. Moreover, in
the event of divorce, or even of an attempt to obtain a divorce,
it was obvious that the wife broke off all relations with the
husband and threw in her lot with the lover. And in spite of the
complete, as he supposed, contempt and indifference he now felt
for his wife, at the bottom of his heart Alexey Alexandrovitch
still had one feeling left in regard to her--a disinclination to
see her free to throw in her lot with Vronsky, so that her crime
would be to her advantage. The mere notion of this so
exasperated Alexey Alexandrovitch, that directly it rose to his
mind he groaned with inward agony, and got up and changed his
place in the carriage, and for a long while after, he sat with
scowling brows, wrapping his numbed and bony legs in the fleecy
rug.

"Apart from formal divorce, One might still do like Karibanov,
Paskudin, and that good fellow Dram--that is, separate from
one's wife," he went on thinking, when he had regained his
composure. But this step too presented the same drawback of
public scandal as a divorce, and what was more, a separation,
quite as much as a regular divorce, flung his wife into the arms
of Vronsky. "No, it's out of the question, out of the question!"
he said again, twisting his rug about him again. "I cannot be
unhappy, but neither she nor he ought to be happy."

The feeling of jealousy, which had tortured him during the period
of uncertainty, had passed away at the instant when the tooth had
been with agony extracted by his wife's words. But that feeling
had been replaced by another, the desire, not merely that she
should not be triumphant, but that she should get due punishment
for her crime. He did not acknowledge