Part Four: Chapter 2

by Leo Tolstoy

　　When he got home, Vronsky found there a note from Anna. Shewrote, "I am ill and unhappy. I cannot come out, but I cannot goon longer without seeing you. Come in this evening. AlexeyAlexandrovitch goes to the council at seven and will be theretill ten." Thinking for an instant of the strangeness of herbidding him come straight to her, in spite of her husband'sinsisting on her not receiving him, he decided to go.

　　Vronsky had that winter got his promotion, was now a colonel, hadleft the regimental quarters, and was living alone. After havingsome lunch, he lay down on the sofa immediately, and in fiveminutes memories of the hideous scenes he had witnessed duringthe last few days were confused together and joined on to amental image of Anna and of the peasant who had played animportant part in the bear hunt, and Vronsky fell asleep. Hewaked up in the dark, trembling with horror, and made haste tolight a candle. "What was it? What? What was the dreadfulthing I dreamed? Yes, yes; I think a little dirty man with adisheveled beard was stooping down doing something, and all of asudden he began saying some strange words in French. Yes, therewas nothing else in the dream," he said to himself. "But why wasit so awful?" He vividly recalled the peasant again and thoseincomprehensible French words the peasant had uttered, and achill of horror ran down his spine.

　　"What nonsense!" thought Vronsky, and glanced at his watch.

　　It was half-past eight already. He rang up his servant, dressedin haste, and went out onto the steps, completely forgetting thedream and only worried at being late. As he drove up to theKarenins' entrance he looked at his watch and saw it was tenminutes to nine. A high, narrow carriage with a pair of grayswas standing at the entrance. He recognized Anna's carriage."She is coming to me," thought Vronsky, "and better she should.I don't like going into that house. But no matter; I can't hidemyself," he thought, and with that manner peculiar to him fromchildhood, as of a man who has nothing to be ashamed of, Vronskygot out of his sledge and went to the door. The door opened, andthe hall porter with a rug on his arm called the carriage.Vronsky, though he did not usually notice details, noticed atthis moment the amazed expression with which the porter glancedat him. In the very doorway Vronsky almost ran up against AlexeyAlexandrovitch. The gas jet threw its full light on thebloodless, sunken face under the black hat and on the whitecravat, brilliant against the beaver of the coat. Karenin'sfixed, dull eyes were fastened upon Vronsky's face. Vronskybowed, and Alexey Alexandrovitch, chewing his lips, lifted hishand to his hat and went on. Vronsky saw him without lookinground get into the carriage, pick up the rug and the opera-glassat the window and disappear. Vronsky went into the hall. Hisbrows were scowling, and his eyes gleamed with a proud and angrylight in them.

　　"What a position!" he thought. "If he would fight, would standup for his honor, I could act, could express my feelings; butthis weakness or baseness.... He puts me in the position ofplaying false, which I never meant and never mean to do."

　　Vronsky's ideas had changed since the day of his conversationwith Anna in the Vrede garden. Unconsciously yielding to theweakness of Anna--who had surrendered herself up to him utterly,and simply looked to him to decide her fate, ready to submit toanything--he had long ceased to think that their tie might endas he had thought then. His ambitious plans had retreated intothe background again, and feeling that he had got out of thatcircle of activity in which everything was definite, he had givenhimself entirely to his passion, and that passion was binding himmore and more closely to her.

　　He was still in the hall when he caught the sound of herretreating footsteps. He knew she had been expecting him, hadlistened for him, and was now going back to the drawing room.

　　"No," she cried, on seeing him, and at the first sound of hervoice the tears came into her eyes. "No; if things are to go onlike this, the end will come much, much too soon."

　　"What is it, dear one?"

　　"What? I've been waiting in agony for an hour, two hours...No,I won't...I can't quarrel with you. Of course you couldn'tcome. No, I won't." She laid her two hands on his shoulders,and looked a long while at him with a profound, passionate, andat the same time searching look. She was studying his face tomake up for the time she had not seen him. She was, every timeshe saw him, making the picture of him in her imagination(incomparably superior, impossible in reality) fit with him as hereally was.