"If I urge her to leave her husband, it would mean—unite her life with mine. Am I ready for that? How can I elope with her when I have no money? Let us admit that I could manage that. ... But how can I take her away while I am connected with the service? If I should decide upon this, I should have to get money, and throw up my commission."
And he fell into thought. The question of resigning, or not, brought him face to face with another interest of his life known only to himself, though it formed the principal spur to his action.
Ambition had been the dream of his childhood and youth, a dream which he did not confess even to himself, but which was nevertheless a passion so strong that now it fought with his love. His first advances in society, and in his military career, had been brilliant, but two years before he had made a serious blunder. Wishing to show his independence, and to cause a sensation, he refused a promotion offered him, with the hope that his refusal would put a still higher value upon him. But it seemed that he was too confident, and since then he had been neglected. Finding himself reduced nolens volens to the position of an independent man, he accepted it, behaving with perfect propriety and wisdom, as if he had nothing to complain of, and counted himself slighted by no one, but asked only to be left in peace to amuse himself as he pleased.
In reality, as the year went on, and even before he went to Moscow, this pleasure had begun to pall on him. He felt that this independent position of a man capable of doing anything, but caring to do nothing, was beginning to grow tame, that many people were beginning to think that he was incapable of doing anything, instead of being a good, honorable young fellow.
His relations with Madame Karenin, by making such a sensation and attracting attention to him, for a time calmed the gnawings of the worm of ambition; but lately this worm had begun to gnaw with renewed energy. Serpukhovskoï—the friend of his childhood, belonging to his own circle, a chum of his in the School
