e those composed gestures, heard that
shrill, childish, and sarcastic voice, her aversion for him
extinguished her pity for him, and she felt only afraid, but at
all costs she wanted to make clear her position.

"I cannot be your wife while I..." she began.

He laughed a cold and malignant laugh.

"The manner of life you have chosen is reflected, I suppose, in
your ideas. I have too much respect or contempt, or both...I
respect your past and despise your present...that I was far from
the interpretation you put on my words."

Anna sighed and bowed her head.

"Though indeed I fail to comprehend how, with the independence
you show," he went on, getting hot, "--announcing your infidelity
to your husband and seeing nothing reprehensible in it,
apparently--you can see anything reprehensible in performing a
wife's duties in relation to your husband."

"Alexey Alexandrovitch! What is it you want of me?"

"I want you not to meet that man here, and to conduct yourself so
that neither the world nor the servants can reproach you...not to
see him. That's not much, I think. And in return you will enjoy
all the privileges of a faithful wife without fulfilling her
duties. That's all I have to say to you. Now it's time for me
to go. I'm not dining at home." He got up and moved towards the
door.

Anna got up too. Bowing in silence, he let her pass before him.

Chapter 24

The night spent by Levin on the haycock did not pass without
result for him. The way in which he had been managing his land
revolted him and had lost all attraction for him. In spite of
the magnificent harvest, never had there been, or, at least,
never it seemed to him, had there been so many hindrances and so
many quarrels between him and the peasants as that year, and the
origin of these failures and this hostility was now perfectly
comprehensible to him. The delight he had experienced in the
work itself, and the consequent greater intimacy with the
peasants, the envy he felt of them, of their life, the desire to
adopt that life, which had been to him that night not a dream but
an intention, the execution of which he had thought out in detail
--all this had so transformed his view of the farming of the land
as he had managed it, that he could not take his former interest
in it, and could not help seeing that unpleasant relation between
him and the workpeople which was the foundation of it all. The
herd of improved cows such as Pava, t