“So then we shan’t meet again?”
“Come and dine with me,” said Anna resolutely, angry it seemed with
herself for her embarrassment, but flushing as she always did when she
defined her position before a fresh person. “The dinner here is not good, but
at least you will see him. There is no one of his old friends in the regiment
Alexey cares for as he does for you.”
“Delighted,” said Yashvin with a smile, from which Vronsky could see
that he liked Anna very much.
Yashvin said good-bye and went away; Vronsky stayed behind.
“Are you going too?” she said to him.
“I’m late already,” he answered. “Run along! I’ll catch you up in a
moment,” he called to Yashvin.
She took him by the hand, and without taking her eyes off him, gazed at
him while she ransacked her mind for the words to say that would keep
him.
“Wait a minute, there’s something I want to say to you,” and taking his
broad hand she pressed it on her neck. “Oh, was it right my asking him to
dinner?”
“You did quite right,” he said with a serene smile that showed his even
teeth, and he kissed her hand.
“Alexey, you have not changed to me?” she said, pressing his hand in
both of hers. “Alexey, I am miserable here. When are we going away?”
“Soon, soon. You wouldn’t believe how disagreeable our way of living
here is to me too,” he said, and he drew away his hand.
“Well, go, go!” she said in a tone of offense, and she walked quickly
away from him.
Chapter 32
When Vronsky returned home, Anna was not yet home. Soon after he had
left, some lady, so they told him, had come to see her, and she had gone out
with her. That she had gone out without leaving word where she was going,
that she had not yet come back, and that all the morning she had been going
about somewhere without a word to him—all this, together with the strange
look of excitement in her face in the morning, and the recollection of the
hostile tone with which she had before Yashvin almost snatched her son’s
photographs out of his hands, made him serious. He decided he absolutely
must speak openly with her. And he waited for her in her drawing-room.
But Anna did not return alone, but brought with her her old unmarried aunt,
Princess Oblonskaya. This was the lady who had come in the morning, and
with whom Anna had gone out shopping. Anna appeared not to notice
Vronsky’s worried and inquiring expression, and began a lively account of
her morning’s shopping. He saw that there was something working within
her; in her flashing eyes, when they rested for a moment on him, there was
an intense concentration, and in her words and movements there was that
nervous rapidity and grace which, during the early period of their intimacy,
had so fascinated him, but which now so disturbed and alarmed him.
The dinner was laid for four. All were gathered together and about to go
into the little dining-room when Tushkevitch made his appearance with a
message from Princess Betsy. Princess Betsy begged her to excuse her not
having come to say good-bye; she had been indisposed, but begged Anna to
come to her between half-past six and nine o’clock. Vronsky glanced at
Anna at the precise limit of time, so suggestive of steps having been taken
that she should meet no one; but Anna appeared not to notice it.
“Very sorry that I can’t come just between half-past six and nine,” she
said with a faint smile.
“The princess will be very sorry.”
“And so am I.”
“You’re going, no doubt, to hear Patti?” said Tushkevitch.
“Patti? You suggest the idea to me. I would go if it were possible to get a
box.”
“I can get one,” Tushkevitch offered his services.
“I should be very, very grateful to you,” said Anna. “But won’t you dine
with us?”
Vronsky gave a hardly perceptible shrug. He was at a complete loss to
understand what Anna was about. What had she brought the old Princess
Oblonskaya home for, what had she made Tushkevitch stay to dinner for,
and, most amazing of all, why was she sending him for a box? Could she
possibly think in her position of going to Patti’s benefit, where all the circle
of her acquaintances would be? He looked at her with serious eyes, but she
responded with that defiant, half-mirthful, half-desperate look, the meaning
of which he could not comprehend. At dinner Anna was in aggressively
high spirits—she almost flirted both with Tushkevitch and with Yashvin.
When they got up from dinner and Tushkevitch had gone to get a box at the
opera, Yashvin went to smoke, and Vronsky went down with him to his own
rooms. After sitting there for some time he ran upstairs. Anna was already
dressed in a low-necked gown of light silk and velvet that she had had made
in Paris, and with costly white lace on her head, framing her face, and
particularly becoming, showing up her dazzling beauty.
“Are you really going to the theater?” he said, trying not to look at her.
“Why do you ask with such alarm?” she said, wounded again at his not
looking at her. “Why shouldn’t I go?”
She appeared not to understand the motive of his words.
“Oh, of course, there’s no reason whatever,” he said, frowning.
“That’s just what I say,” she said, willfully refusing to see the irony of his
tone, and quietly turning back her long, perfumed glove.
“Anna, for God’s sake! what is the matter with you?” he said, appealing
to her exactly as once her husband had done.
“I don’t understand what you are asking.”
“You know that it’s out of the question to go.”
“Why so? I’m not going alone. Princess Varvara has gone to dress, she is
going with me.”
He shrugged his shoulders with an air of perplexity and despair.
“But do you mean to say you don’t know?…” he began.
“But I don’t care to know!” she almost shrieked. “I don’t care to. Do I
regret what I have done? No, no, no! If it were all to do again from the
beginning, it would be the same. For us, for you and for me, there is only
one thing that matters, whether we love each other. Other people we need
not consider. Why are we living here apart and not seeing each other? Why
can’t I go? I love you, and I don’t care for anything,” she said in Russian,
glancing at him with a peculiar gleam in her eyes that he could not
understand. “If you have not changed to me, why don’t you look at me?”
