ANNA KARENINA (Collector's Edition). Leo Tolstoy

      ‘No, she doesn’t and can’t love him,’ he decided mentally.

      While he was approaching her from behind he observed with joy that she became aware of his approach and was about to turn but, on recognizing him, again addressed her husband.

      ‘Did you have a good night?’ he inquired, bowing toward them both, and leaving it to Karenin to take the greeting as meant for herself and to recognize him, or not, as he pleased.

      ‘Yes, quite comfortable, thank you,’ she replied.

      Her face seemed tired and had none of that play which showed now in a smile and now in the animation of her eyes; but just for an instant as she looked at him he saw a gleam in her eyes and, though the spark was at once extinguished, that one instant made him happy. She glanced at her husband to see whether he knew Vronsky. Karenin looked at him with displeasure, absently trying to recall who he might be. Vronsky’s calm self-confidence struck like a scythe on a stone against the cold self-confidence of Karenin.

      ‘Count Vronsky,’ said Anna.

      ‘Ah! I believe we have met before,’ said Karenin, extending his hand with indifference. ‘You travelled there with the mother and came back with the son,’ he said, uttering every word distinctly as though it were something valuable he was giving away. ‘I suppose you are returning from furlough?’ he remarked; and without waiting for an answer said to his wife in his playful manner: ‘Well, were many tears shed in Moscow over the parting?’

      By addressing himself thus to his wife he conveyed to Vronsky his wish to be alone with her, and turning to Vronsky he touched his hat. But Vronsky, addressing Anna, said: ‘I hope to have the honour of calling on you.’ Karenin glanced at him with his weary eyes. ‘I shall be very pleased,’ he said coldly. ‘We are at home on Mondays.’ Then having finally dismissed Vronsky he said to his wife in his usual bantering tone: ‘What a good thing it was that I had just half an hour to spare to meet you and was able to show my devotion!’

      ‘You insist too much on your devotion, for me to value it greatly,’ she replied in the same playful tone, while she involuntarily listened to the sound of Vronsky’s footsteps following them. ‘But what does he matter to me?’ she asked herself, and began inquiring of her husband how Serezha had got on during her absence.

      ‘Oh, splendidly! Mariette says he was very sweet. But — I’m sorry to grieve you! — he did not fret after you … like your husband! … But I must thank you once again, my dear, for having made me the present of a day. Our dear Samovar will be in ecstasies.’ (He called the celebrated Countess Lydia Ivanovna samovar because she was always getting heated and boiling over about something.) ‘She was asking after you. And, do you know, if I may advise, you should go and see her to-day. Her heart is always aching about somebody. At present, in addition to all her other worries, she is concerned about the Oblonskys’ reconciliation.’

      Countess Lydia Ivanovna was Anna’s husband’s friend, and the centre of that set in Petersburg Society with which Anna, through her husband, was most closely connected.

      ‘But I wrote to her.’

      ‘Yes, but she wants the particulars. Go and see her, my dear, if you are not too tired… . Kondraty is here with the carriage for you, and I must be off to the Committee. Now I shan’t have to dine alone,’ he went on, no longer in a bantering manner. ‘You can’t think how I used …’ and with a long pressure of her hand and a special kind of smile he helped her into the carriage.

      Chapter 32

      THE first person to meet Anna when she reached home was her son. He ran down the stairs to her regardless of his governess’s cries, and with desperate delight called out: ‘Mama! Mama!’ When he reached her he clung round her neck.

      ‘I told you it was Mama!’ he shouted to the governess. ‘I knew!’ Her son, like his father, produced on Anna a feeling akin to disappointment. Her fancy had pictured him nicer than he was in reality. She had to come down to reality in order to enjoy him as he was. But even as he was, he was charming, with his fair curls, blue eyes, and plump shapely legs in tight-fitting stockings. Anna experienced an almost physical pleasure in feeling his proximity and his caresses, and a moral solace when she met his simple, trustful, and loving gaze and heard his naïve questions. She unpacked the presents which Dolly’s children had sent him, and told him that there was a girl in Moscow whose name was Tanya, who could read and even teach other children.

      ‘And am I worse than she?’ asked Serezha.

      ‘To me, you are the best in the world.’

      ‘I know,’ he said, smiling.

      Before Anna had time to finish her coffee the Countess Lydia Ivanovna was announced. The Countess was a tall, stout woman with a sickly sallow complexion and beautiful, dreamy, black eyes. Anna was fond of her, but to-day she seemed to see her for the first time with all her defects.

      ‘Well, my dear! did you take the olive branch?’ asked the Countess Lydia Ivanovna as soon as she entered the room.

      ‘Yes, it’s all over; but the whole affair was not as serious as we thought,’ Anna replied. ‘My sister-in-law is, in general, too impulsive.’

      But the Countess, who was interested in everything that did not concern her, had a habit of never listening to what interested her, and she interrupted Anna:

      ‘Ah, yes! There is much sorrow and evil in the world, and to-day I am terribly worried.’

      ‘Why! What is the matter?’ asked Anna, trying to suppress a smile.

      ‘I am getting tired of breaking lances uselessly in the cause of truth, and sometimes I feel quite unstrung. That Little Sisters’ affair’ (this was a philanthropic, religio-patriotic society) ‘was going splendidly, but to work with those gentlemen is impossible,’ continued the Countess Lydia Ivanovna with an ironical air of resignation to fate. ‘They took the idea and perverted it, and are now discussing it in such a trivial, petty way! Two or three, your husband among them, understand the full significance of the affair, but the others just drop it. Yesterday I had a letter from Pravdin… .’

      Pravdin was a well-known Panslavist who resided abroad.

      The Countess told Anna what he had written.

      She then went on to tell her of other unpleasantnesses, and of the underhand opposition to the plan for uniting the Churches, and she went away in a hurry, as she had that afternoon to be at a meeting of another society as well as to attend a Slavonic Committee meeting.

      ‘This is all just as it was before, but how is it that I never noticed it before?’ said Anna to herself. ‘Or is it that she is specially irritated this morning? But it is really funny; her aim is to do good, she is a Christian, and yet she is always angry and always has enemies — all on account of Christianity and philanthropy!’

      After the Countess had left, a friend — a high official’s wife arrived and gave Anna all the Petersburg news. At three she also left, promising to come back to dinner.

      Karenin was at the Ministry. Anna, left alone, spent part of the time before dinner in seeing her son have his dinner (he dined apart), in putting her things in order, and in reading and answering the notes and letters that had accumulated on her table.

      The feeling of causeless shame she had felt during the journey, and her agitation, had quite vanished. In her accustomed conditions of life she again felt firm and blameless.

      She thought with wonder of her state the day before. ‘What had happened? Nothing! Vronsky said some silly things, to which it will be easy to put a stop, and I said what was necessary. It is unnecessary and impossible to speak of it to my husband. To speak of it would be to give it an importance