was afraid every minute that something would snap within her from the
excessive tension. She did not sleep all night. But in that nervous tension,
and in the visions that filled her imagination, there was nothing
disagreeable or gloomy: on the contrary there was something blissful,
glowing, and exhilarating. Towards morning Anna sank into a doze, sitting
in her place, and when she waked it was daylight and the train was near
Petersburg. At once thoughts of home, of husband and of son, and the
details of that day and the following came upon her.
At Petersburg, as soon as the train stopped and she got out, the first
person that attracted her attention was her husband. “Oh, mercy! why do his
ears look like that?” she thought, looking at his frigid and imposing figure,
and especially the ears that struck her at the moment as propping up the
brim of his round hat. Catching sight of her, he came to meet her, his lips
falling into their habitual sarcastic smile, and his big, tired eyes looking
straight at her. An unpleasant sensation gripped at her heart when she met
his obstinate and weary glance, as though she had expected to see him
different. She was especially struck by the feeling of dissatisfaction with
herself that she experienced on meeting him. That feeling was an intimate,
familiar feeling, like a consciousness of hypocrisy, which she experienced
in her relations with her husband. But hitherto she had not taken note of the
feeling, now she was clearly and painfully aware of it.
“Yes, as you see, your tender spouse, as devoted as the first year after
marriage, burned with impatience to see you,” he said in his deliberate,
high-pitched voice, and in that tone which he almost always took with her, a
tone of jeering at anyone who should say in earnest what he said.
“Is Seryozha quite well?” she asked.
“And is this all the reward,” said he, “for my ardor? He’s quite well….”
Chapter 31
Vronsky had not even tried to sleep all that night. He sat in his armchair,
looking straight before him or scanning the people who got in and out. If he
had indeed on previous occasions struck and impressed people who did not
know him by his air of unhesitating composure, he seemed now more
haughty and self-possessed than ever. He looked at people as if they were
things. A nervous young man, a clerk in a law court, sitting opposite him,
hated him for that look. The young man asked him for a light, and entered
into conversation with him, and even pushed against him, to make him feel
that he was not a thing, but a person. But Vronsky gazed at him exactly as
he did at the lamp, and the young man made a wry face, feeling that he was
losing his self-possession under the oppression of this refusal to recognize
him as a person.
Vronsky saw nothing and no one. He felt himself a king, not because he
believed that he had made an impression on Anna—he did not yet believe
that,—but because the impression she had made on him gave him happiness
and pride.
What would come of it all he did not know, he did not even think. He felt
that all his forces, hitherto dissipated, wasted, were centered on one thing,
and bent with fearful energy on one blissful goal. And he was happy at it.
He knew only that he had told her the truth, that he had come where she
was, that all the happiness of his life, the only meaning in life for him, now
lay in seeing and hearing her. And when he got out of the carriage at
Bologova to get some seltzer water, and caught sight of Anna, involuntarily
his first word had told her just what he thought. And he was glad he had
told her it, that she knew it now and was thinking of it. He did not sleep all
night. When he was back in the carriage, he kept unceasingly going over
every position in which he had seen her, every word she had uttered, and
before his fancy, making his heart faint with emotion, floated pictures of a
possible future.
When he got out of the train at Petersburg, he felt after his sleepless night
as keen and fresh as after a cold bath. He paused near his compartment,
waiting for her to get out. “Once more,” he said to himself, smiling
unconsciously, “once more I shall see her walk, her face; she will say
something, turn her head, glance, smile, maybe.” But before he caught sight
of her, he saw her husband, whom the station-master was deferentially
escorting through the crowd. “Ah, yes! The husband.” Only now for the
first time did Vronsky realize clearly the fact that there was a person
attached to her, a husband. He knew that she had a husband, but had hardly
believed in his existence, and only now fully believed in him, with his head
and shoulders, and his legs clad in black trousers; especially when he saw
this husband calmly take her arm with a sense of property.
Seeing Alexey Alexandrovitch with his Petersburg face and severely self-
confident figure, in his round hat, with his rather prominent spine, he
believed in him, and was aware of a disagreeable sensation, such as a man
might feel tortured by thirst, who, on reaching a spring, should find a dog, a
sheep, or a pig, who has drunk of it and muddied the water. Alexey
Alexandrovitch’s manner of walking, with a swing of the hips and flat feet,
particularly annoyed Vronsky. He could recognize in no one but himself an
indubitable right to love her. But she was still the same, and the sight of her
affected him the same way, physically reviving him, stirring him, and filling
his soul with rapture. He told his German valet, who ran up to him from the
second class, to take his things and go on, and he himself went up to her. He
saw the first meeting between the husband and wife, and noted with a
lover’s insight the signs of slight reserve with which she spoke to her
husband. “No, she does not love him and cannot love him,” he decided to
himself.
At the moment when he was approaching Anna Arkadyevna he noticed
too with joy that she was conscious of his being near, and looked round, and
seeing him, turned again to her husband.
“Have you passed a good night?” he asked, bowing to her and her
husband together, and leaving it up to Alexey Alexandrovitch to accept the
bow on his own account, and to recognize it or not, as he might see fit.
“Thank you, very good,” she answered.
Her face looked weary, and there was not that play of eagerness in it,
peeping out in her smile and her eyes; but for a single instant, as she
glanced at him, there was a flash of something in her eyes, and although the
flash died away at once, he was happy for that moment. She glanced at her
husband to find out whether he knew Vronsky. Alexey Alexandrovitch
looked at Vronsky with displeasure, vaguely recalling who this was.
Vronsky’s composure and self-confidence here struck, like a scythe against
a stone, upon the cold self-confidence of Alexey Alexandrovitch.
“Count Vronsky,” said Anna.
“Ah! We are acquainted, I believe,” said Alexey Alexandrovitch
indifferently, giving his hand.
“You set off with the mother and you return with the son,” he said,
articulating each syllable, as though each were a separate favor he was
bestowing.
“You’re back from leave, I suppose?” he said, and without waiting for a
reply, he turned to his wife in his jesting tone: “Well, were a great many
tears shed at Moscow at parting?”
By addressing his wife like this he gave Vronsky to understand that he
wished to be left alone, and, turning slightly towards him, he touched his
hat; but Vronsky turned to Anna Arkadyevna.
“I hope I may have the honor of calling on you,” he said.
Alexey Alexandrovitch glanced with his weary eyes at Vronsky.
“Delighted,” he said coldly. “On Mondays we’re at home. Most
fortunate,” he said to his wife, dismissing Vronsky altogether, “that I should
just have half an hour to meet you, so that I can prove my devotion,” he
went on in the same jesting tone.
“You lay too much stress on your devotion for me to value it much,” she
responded in the same jesting tone, involuntarily listening to the sound of
Vronsky’s steps behind them. “But what has it to do with me?” she said to
herself, and she began asking her husband how Seryozha had got on
without her.
“Oh, capitally! Mariette says he has been very good, And … I must
disappoint you … but he has not missed you as your husband has. But once
more merci, my dear, for giving me a day. Our dear Samovar will be
delighted.” (He used to call the Countess Lidia Ivanovna, well known in
society, a samovar, because she was always bubbling over with excitement.)
“She has been continually asking after you. And, do you know, if I may
venture to advise you, you should go and see her today. You know how she
takes everything to heart. Just now, with all her own cares, she’s anxious
about the Oblonskys being brought together.”
The Countess Lidia Ivanovna was a friend of her husband’s, and the
center of that one of the coteries of the Petersburg world with which Anna
was, through her husband, in the closest relations.
“But you know I wrote to her?”
“Still she’ll want to hear details. Go and see her, if you’re not too tired,
my dear. Well, Kondraty will take you in the carriage, while I go to my
