“Yes, I want a little air. It’s very hot in here.” And she opened the door.
The driving snow and the wind rushed to meet her and struggled with her
over the door. But she enjoyed the struggle.
She opened the door and went out. The wind seemed as though lying in
wait for her; with gleeful whistle it tried to snatch her up and bear her off,
but she clung to the cold door post, and holding her skirt got down onto the
platform and under the shelter of the carriages. The wind had been powerful
on the steps, but on the platform, under the lee of the carriages, there was a
lull. With enjoyment she drew deep breaths of the frozen, snowy air, and
standing near the carriage looked about the platform and the lighted station.
Chapter 30
The raging tempest rushed whistling between the wheels of the carriages,
about the scaffolding, and round the corner of the station. The carriages,
posts, people, everything that was to be seen was covered with snow on one
side, and was getting more and more thickly covered. For a moment there
would come a lull in the storm, but then it would swoop down again with
such onslaughts that it seemed impossible to stand against it. Meanwhile
men ran to and fro, talking merrily together, their steps crackling on the
platform as they continually opened and closed the big doors. The bent
shadow of a man glided by at her feet, and she heard sounds of a hammer
upon iron. “Hand over that telegram!” came an angry voice out of the
stormy darkness on the other side. “This way! No. 28!” several different
voices shouted again, and muffled figures ran by covered with snow. Two
gentlemen with lighted cigarettes passed by her. She drew one more deep
breath of the fresh air, and had just put her hand out of her muff to take hold
of the door post and get back into the carriage, when another man in a
military overcoat, quite close beside her, stepped between her and the
flickering light of the lamp post. She looked round, and the same instant
recognized Vronsky’s face. Putting his hand to the peak of his cap, he
bowed to her and asked, Was there anything she wanted? Could he be of
any service to her? She gazed rather a long while at him without answering,
and, in spite of the shadow in which he was standing, she saw, or fancied
she saw, both the expression of his face and his eyes. It was again that
expression of reverential ecstasy which had so worked upon her the day
before. More than once she had told herself during the past few days, and
again only a few moments before, that Vronsky was for her only one of the
hundreds of young men, forever exactly the same, that are met everywhere,
that she would never allow herself to bestow a thought upon him. But now
at the first instant of meeting him, she was seized by a feeling of joyful
pride. She had no need to ask why he had come. She knew as certainly as if
he had told her that he was here to be where she was.
“I didn’t know you were going. What are you coming for?” she said,
letting fall the hand with which she had grasped the door post. And
irrepressible delight and eagerness shone in her face.
“What am I coming for?” he repeated, looking straight into her eyes.
“You know that I have come to be where you are,” he said; “I can’t help it.”
At that moment the wind, as it were, surmounting all obstacles, sent the
snow flying from the carriage roofs, and clanked some sheet of iron it had
torn off, while the hoarse whistle of the engine roared in front, plaintively
and gloomily. All the awfulness of the storm seemed to her more splendid
now. He had said what her soul longed to hear, though she feared it with her
reason. She made no answer, and in her face he saw conflict.
“Forgive me, if you dislike what I said,” he said humbly.
He had spoken courteously, deferentially, yet so firmly, so stubbornly,
that for a long while she could make no answer.
“It’s wrong, what you say, and I beg you, if you’re a good man, to forget
what you’ve said, as I forget it,” she said at last.
“Not one word, not one gesture of yours shall I, could I, ever forget….”
“Enough, enough!” she cried trying assiduously to give a stern
expression to her face, into which he was gazing greedily. And clutching at
the cold door post, she clambered up the steps and got rapidly into the
corridor of the carriage. But in the little corridor she paused, going over in
her imagination what had happened. Though she could not recall her own
words or his, she realized instinctively that the momentary conversation had
brought them fearfully closer; and she was panic-stricken and blissful at it.
After standing still a few seconds, she went into the carriage and sat down
in her place. The overstrained condition which had tormented her before did
not only come back, but was intensified, and reached such a pitch that she
