You’re afraid of spiders, and I of these vermin. Most likely you’ve not made a study of spiders and don’t know their character; and so it is with me." "It’s very well for you to talk like that; it’s very much like that gentleman in Dickens who used to fling all difficult questions over his right shoulder. But to deny the facts is no answer. What’s to be done—you tell me that, what’s to be done? Your wife gets older, while you’re full of life. Before you’ve time to look round, you feel that you can’t love your wife with love, however much you may esteem her. And then all at once love turns up, and you’re done for, done for," Stepan Arkadyevitch said with weary despair. Levin half smiled. "Yes, you’re done for," resumed Oblonsky. "But what’s to be done?" "Don’t steal rolls." Stepan Arkadyevitch laughed outright. "Oh, moralist! But you must understand, there are two women; one insists only on her rights, and those rights are your love, which you can’t give her; and the other sacrifices everything for you and asks for nothing. What are you to do? How are you to act? There’s a fearful tragedy in it." "If you care for my profession of faith as regards that, I’ll tell you that I don’t believe there was any tragedy about it. And this is why. To my mind, love ... both the sorts of love, which you remember Plato defines in his Banquet, served as the test of men. Some men only understand one sort, and some only the other. And those who only know the non-platonic love have no need to talk of tragedy. In such love there can be no sort of tragedy. ‘I’m much obliged for the gratification, my humble respects’—that’s all the tragedy. And in platonic love there can be no tragedy, because in that love all is clear and pure, because...." At that instant Levin recollected his own sins and the inner conflict he had lived through. And he added unexpectedly: "But perhaps you are right. Very likely ... I don’t know, I don’t know." "It’s this, don’t you see," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, "you’re very much all
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