Part I   
Chapter XXIX   
     
COME, it’s all over, and thank God!’ was the first thought that came to Anna Arkadyevna, when she had said good-bye for the last time to her brother, who had stood blocking up the entrance to the carriage till the third bell rang. She sat down on her lounge beside Annushka, and looked about her in the twilight of the sleeping-carriage. ‘Thank God! to-morrow I shall see Seryozha and Alexey Alexandrovitch, and my life will go on in the old way, all nice and as usual.’      1   
  Still in the same anxious frame of mind, as she had been all that day, Anna took pleasure in arranging herself for the journey with great care. With her little deft hands she opened and shut her little red bag, took out a cushion, laid it on her knees, and carefully wrapping up her feet, settled herself comfortably. An invalid lady had already lain down to sleep. Two other ladies began talking to Anna, and a stout elderly lady tucked up her feet, and made observations about the heating of the train. Anna answered a few words, but not foreseeing any entertainment from the conversation, she asked Annushka to get a lamp, hooked it on to the arm of her seat, and took from her bag a paper-knife and an English novel. At first her reading made no progress. The fuss and bustle was disturbing; then when the train had started, she could not help listening to the noises; then the snow beating on the left window and sticking to the pane, and the sight of the muffled guard passing by, covered with snow on one side, and the conversations about the terrible snowstorm raging outside, distracted her attention. Further on, it was continually the same again and again: the same shaking and rattling, the same snow on the window, the same rapid transitions from steaming heat to cold, and back again to heat, the same passing glimpses of the same figures in the twilight, and the same voices, and Anna began to read and to understand what she read. Annushka was already dozing, the red bag on her lap, clutched by her broad hands, in gloves, of which one was torn. Anna Arkadyevna read and understood; but it was distasteful to her to read, that is, to follow the reflection of other people’s lives. She had too great a desire to live herself. If she read that the heroine of the novel were nursing a sick man, she longed to move with noiseless steps about the room of a sick man; if she read of a member of Parliament making a speech, she longed to be delivering the speech; if she read of how Lady Mary had ridden after the hounds, and had provoked her sister-in-law, and had surprised every one by her boldness, she too wished to be doing the same. But there was no chance of doing anything; and twisting the smooth paper-knife in her little hands, she forced herself to read.      2   
  The hero of the novel was already almost reaching his English happiness, a baronetcy and an estate, and Anna was feeling a desire to go with him to the estate, when she suddenly felt that he ought to feel ashamed, and that she was ashamed of the same thing. But what had he to be ashamed of? ‘What have I to be ashamed of?’ she asked herself in injured surprise. She laid down the book and sank against the back of the chair, tightly gripping the paper-cutter in both hands. There was nothing. She went over all her Moscow recollections, All were good, pleasant. She remembered the ball, remembered Vronsky and his face of slavish adoration, remembered all her conduct with him: there was nothing shameful. And for all that, at the same point in her memories, the feeling of shame was intensified, as though some inner voice, just at the point when she thought of Vronsky, were saying to her, ‘Warm, very warm, hot.’ ‘Well, what is it?’ she said to herself resolutely shifting her seat in the lounge. ‘What does it mean? Am I afraid to look it straight in the face? Why, what is it? Can it be that between me and this officer boy there exists, or can exist, any other relations than such as are common with every acquaintance?’ She laughed contemptuously and took up her book again; but now she was definitely unable to follow what she read. She passed the paper-knife over the windowpane, then laid its smooth, cool surface to her cheek, and almost laughed aloud at the feeling of delight that all at once without cause came over her. She felt as though her nerves were strings being strained tighter and tighter on some sort of screwing peg. She felt her eyes opening wider and wider, her fingers and toes twitching nervously, something within oppressing her breathing, while all shapes and sounds seemed in the uncertain half-light to strike her with unaccustomed vividness. Moments of doubt were continually coming upon her, when she was uncertain whether the train were going forwards or backwards, or were standing still altogether; whether it were Annushka at her side or a stranger. ‘What’s that on the arm of the chair, a fur cloak or some beast? And what am I myself? Myself or some other woman?’ She was afraid of giving way to this delirium. But something drew her towards it, and she could yield to it or resist it at will. She got up to rouse herself, and slipped off her plaid and the cape of her warm dress. For a moment she regained her self-possession, and realised that the thin peasant who had come in wearing a long overcoat, with buttons missing from it, was the stoveheater, that he was looking at the thermometer, that it was the wind and snow bursting in after him at the door; but then everything grew blurred again … That peasant with the long waist seemed to be gnawing something on the wall, the old lady began stretching her legs the whole length of the carriage, and filling it with a black cloud; then there was a fearful shrieking and banging, as though some one were being torn to pieces; then there was a blinding dazzle of red fire before her eyes and a wall seemed to rise up and hide everything. Anna felt as though she were sinking down. But it was not terrible, but delightful. The voice of a man muffled up and covered with snow shouted something in her ear. She got up and pulled herself together; she realised that they had reached a station and that this was the guard. She asked Annushka to hand her the cape she had taken off and her shawl, put them on and moved towards the door.      3   
  ‘Do you wish to get out?’ asked Annushka.      4   
  ‘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.      5   
  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 doorpost, and holding her skirt got down on to 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.

Part I   
Chapter XXX   
     
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 doorpost 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 recognised 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, for ever 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.      1   
  ‘I didn’t know you were going. What are you coming for?’ she said, letting fall the hand with which she had grasped the doorpost. And irrepressible delight and eagerness shone in her face.      2   
  ‘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.’      3   
  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.      4   
  ‘Forgive me, if you dislike what I said,’ he said humbly.      5   
  He had spoken courteously, deferentially, yet so firmly, so stubbornly, that for a long while she could make no answer.      6   
  ‘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.      7   
  ‘Not one word not one gesture of yours shall I, could I, ever forget….’      8   
  ‘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 doorpost, 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 realised instinctively that that 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 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.      9   
  At Petersburg, so 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.     10   
  ‘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 any one who should say in earnest what he said.     11   
  ‘Is Seryozha quite well?’ she asked.     12   
  ‘And is this all the reward,’ said he, ‘for my ardour? He’s quite well….     13

Part I   
Chapter XXXI   
     
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 self-possession under the oppression of this refusal to recognise him as a person.      1   
  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.      2   
  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 centred 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.      3   
  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 may be.’ But before he caught sight of her, he saw her husband, whom the stationmaster was deferentially escorting through the crowd. ‘Ah, yes! The husband.’ Only now for the first time did Vronsky realise 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.      4   
  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 recognise 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.      5   
  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.      6   
  ‘Have you had a good night?’ he said, bowing to her and to her husband together, and leaving it to Alexey Alexandrovitch to accept the bow on his own account, and to recognise it or not, as he might see fit.      7   
  ‘Thank you, very good,’ she answered.      8   
  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.      9   
  ‘Count Vronsky,’ said Anna.     10   
  ‘Ah! We are acquainted, I believe,’ said Alexey Alexandrovitch indifferently, giving his hand.     11   
  ‘You set off with the mother and you return with the son,’ he said, articulating each syllable, as though each were a separate favour he was bestowing.     12   
  ‘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?’     13   
  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.     14   
  ‘I hope I may have the honour of calling on you,’ he said.     15   
  Alexey Alexandrovitch glanced with his weary eyes at Vronsky.     16   
  ‘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.     17   
  ‘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.     18   
  ‘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 to-day. You know how she takes everything to heart. Just now, with all her own cares, she’s anxious about the Oblonskys being brought together.’     19   
  The Countess Lidia Ivanovna was a friend of her husband’s, and the centre of that one of the coteries of the Petersburg world with which Anna was, through her husband, in the closest relations.     20   
  ‘But you know I wrote to her?’     21   
  ‘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 committee. I shall not be alone at dinner again,’ Alexey Alexandrovitch went on, no longer in a sarcastic tone. ‘You wouldn’t believe how I’ve missed…’ And with a long pressure of her hand and a meaning smile, he put her in her carriage.

Part I   
Chapter XXXII   
     
THE FIRST person to meet Anna at home was her son. He dashed down the stairs to her, in spite of the governess’s call, and with desperate joy shrieked: ‘Mother! mother!’ Running up to her, he hung on her neck.      1   
  ‘I told you it was mother!’ he shouted to the governess. ‘I knew!’      2   
  And her son, like her husband, aroused in Anna a feeling akin to disappointment. She had imagined him better than he was in reality. She had to let herself drop down to the reality to enjoy him as he really was. But even as he was, he was charming, with his fair curls, his blue eyes, and his plump, graceful little legs in tightly pulled-up stockings. Anna experienced almost physical pleasure in the sensation of his nearness, and his caresses, and moral soothing, when she met his simple, confiding, and loving glance, and heard his naïve questions. Anna took out the presents Dolly’s children had sent him and told her son what sort of a little girl was Tanya at Moscow, and how Tanya could read, and even taught the other children.      3   
  ‘Why, am I not so nice as she?’ asked Seryozha.      4   
  ‘To me you’re nicer than any one in the world.’      5   
  ‘I know that,’ said Seryzoha, smiling.      6   
  Anna had not had time to drink her coffee when the Countess Lidia Ivanovna was announced. The Countess Lidia Ivanovna was a tall, stout woman, with an unhealthily sallow face and splendid, pensive black eyes. Anna liked her, but to-day she seemed to be seeing her for the first time with all her defects.      7   
  ‘Well, my dear, so you took the olive branch?’ inquired Countess Lidia Ivanovna, as soon as she came into the room.      8   
  ‘Yes, it’s all over, but it was all much less serious than we had supposed,’ answered Anna. ‘My belle-sœur is in general too hasty.’      9   
  But Countess Lidia Ivanovna, though she was interested in everything that did not concern her, had a habit of never listening to what interested her; she interrupted Anna—     10   
  ‘Yes, there’s plenty of sorrow and evil in the world. I am so worried to-day.’     11   
  ‘Oh, why?’ asked Anna, trying to suppress a smile.     12   
  ‘I’m beginning to be weary of fruitlessly championing the truth, and sometimes I’m quite unhinged by it. The Society of the Little Sisters’ (this was a religiously-patriotic, philanthropic institution) ‘was going splendidly, but with these gentlemen it’s impossible to do anything,’ added Countess Lidia Ivanovna in a tone of ironical submission to destiny. ‘They pounce on the idea, and distort it, and then work it out so pettily and unworthily. Two or three people, your husband among them, understand all the importance of the thing, but the others simply drag it down. Yesterday Pravdin wrote to me…’     13   
  Pravdin was a well-known Panslavist abroad, and Countess Lidia Ivanovna described the purport of his letter.     14   
  Then the countess told her of more disagreements and intrigues against the work of the unification of the churches, and departed in haste, as she had that day to be at the meeting of some society and also at the Slavonic committee.     15   
  ‘It was all the same before, of course; but why was it I didn’t notice it before?’ Anna asked herself. ‘Or has she been very much irritated to-day? It’s really ludicrous; her object is doing good; she’s a Christian, yet she’s always angry; and she always has enemies, and always enemies in the name of Christianity and doing good.’     16   
  After Countess Lidia Ivanovna another friend came, the wife of a chief secretary, who told her all the news of the town. At three o’clock she too went away, promising to come to dinner. Alexey Alexandrovitch was at the ministry. Anna left alone, spent the time till dinner in assisting at her son’s dinner (he dined apart from his parents) and in putting her things in order, and in reading and answering the notes and letters which had accumulated on her table.     17   
  The feeling of causeless shame, which she had felt on the journey, and her excitement, too, had completely vanished. In the habitual conditions of her life she felt again resolute and irreproachable.     18   
  She recalled with wonder her state of mind on the previous day. ‘What was it? Nothing. Vronsky said something silly, which it was easy to put a stop to, and I answered as I ought to have done. To speak of it to my husband would be unnecessary and out of the question. To speak of it would be to attach importance to what has no importance.’ She remembered how she had told her husband of what was almost a declaration made her at Petersburg by a young man, one of her husband’s subordinates, and how Alexey Alexandrovitch had answered that every woman living in the world was exposed to such incidents, but that he had the fullest confidence in her tact, and could never lower her and himself by jealousy. ‘So then there’s no reason to speak of it? And indeed, thank God, there’s nothing to speak of,’ she told herself.

   
Part I   
Chapter XXXIII   
     
ALEXEY ALEXANDROVITCH came back from the meeting of the ministers at four o’clock, but as often happened, he had not time to come in to her. He went into his study to see the people waiting for him with petitions, and to sign some papers brought him by his chief secretary. At dinner-time (there were always a few people dining with the Karenins) there arrived an old lady, a cousin of Alexey Alexandrovitch, the chief secretary of the department and his wife, and a young man who had been recommended to Alexey Alexandrovitch for the service. Anna went into the drawing-room to receive these guests. Precisely at five o’clock, before the bronze Peter the First clock had struck the fifth stroke, Alexey Alexandrovitch came in, wearing a white tie and evening coat with two stars, as he had to go out directly after dinner. Every minute of Alexey Alexandrovitch’s life was portioned out and occupied. And to make time to get through all that lay before him every day, he adhered to the strictest punctuality. ‘Unhasting and unresting,’ was his motto. He came into the dining-hall, greeted every one, and hurriedly sat down, smiling to his wife.      1   
  ‘Yes, my solitude is over. You wouldn’t believe how uncomfortable’ (he laid stress on the word uncomfortable) ‘it is to dine alone.’      2   
  At dinner he talked a little to his wife about Moscow matters, and, with a sarcastic smile, asked her after Stepan Arkadyevitch; but the conversation was for the most part general, dealing with Petersburg official and public news. After dinner he spent half an hour with his guests, and again, with a smile, pressed his wife’s hand, withdrew, and drove off to the council. Anna did not go out that evening either to the Princess Betsy Tverskoy, who, hearing of her return, had invited her, nor to the theatre, where she had a box for that evening. She did not go out principally because the dress she had reckoned upon was not ready. Altogether, Anna, on turning, after the departure of her guests, to the consideration of her attire, was very much annoyed. She was generally a mistress of the art of dressing well without great expense, and before leaving Moscow she had given her dressmaker three dresses to transform. The dresses had to be altered so that they could not be recognised, and they ought to have been ready three days before. It appeared that two dresses had not been done at all, while the other one had not been altered as Anna had intended. The dressmaker came to explain, declaring that it would be better as she had done it, and Anna was so furious that she felt ashamed when she thought of it afterwards. To regain her serenity completely she went into the nursery, and spent the whole evening with her son, put him to bed herself, signed him with the cross, and tucked him up. She was glad she had not gone out anywhere, and had spent the evening so well. She felt so light-hearted and serene, she saw so clearly that all that had seemed to her so important on her railway journey was only one of the common trivial incidents of fashionable life, and that she had no reason to feel ashamed before any one else or before herself. Anna sat down at the hearth with an English novel and waited for her husband. Exactly at half-past nine she heard his ring, and he came into the room.      3   
  ‘Here you are at last!’ she observed, holding out her hand to him.      4   
  He kissed her hand and sat down beside her.      5   
  ‘Altogether then, I see your visit was a success,’ he said to her.      6   
  ‘Oh yes,’ she said, and she began telling him about everything from the beginning: her journey with Countess Vronsky, her arrival, the accident at the station. Then she described the pity she had felt, first for her brother, and afterwards for Dolly.      7   
  ‘I imagine one cannot exonerate such a man from blame, though he is your brother,’ said Alexey Alexandrovitch severely.      8   
  Anna smiled. She knew that he said that simply to show that family considerations could not prevent him from expressing pressing his genuine opinion. She knew that characteristic in her husband, and liked it.      9   
  ‘I am glad it has all ended so satisfactorily, and that you are back again,’ he went on. ‘Come, what do they say about the new act I have got passed in the council?’     10   
  Anna had heard nothing of this act, and she felt conscience-stricken at having been able so readily to forget what was to him of such importance.     11   
  ‘Here, on the other hand, it has made a great sensation,’ he said, with a complacent smile.     12   
  She saw that Alexey Alexandrovitch wanted to tell her something pleasant to him about it, and she brought him by questions to telling it. With the same complacent smile he told her of the ovations he had received in consequence of the act he had passed.     13   
  ‘I was very, very glad. It shows that at last a reasonable and steady view of the matter is becoming prevalent among us.’     14   
  Having drunk his second cup of tea with cream, and bread, Alexey Alexandrovitch got up, and was going towards his study.     15   
  ‘And you’ve not been anywhere this evening? You’ve been dull, I expect?’ he said.     16   
  ‘Oh no!’ she answered, getting up after him and accompanying him across the room to his study. ‘What are you reading now?’ she asked.     17   
  ‘Just now I’m reading Duc de Lille, Poésie des Enfers,’ he answered. ‘A very remarkable book.’     18   
  Anna smiled, as people smile at the weaknesses of those they love, and, putting her hand under his, she escorted him to the door of the study. She knew his habit, that had grown into a necessity, of reading in the evening. She knew, too, that in spite of his official duties, which swallowed up almost the whole of his time, he considered it his duty to keep up with everything of note that appeared in the intellectual world. She knew, too, that he was really interested in books dealing with politics, philosophy, and theology, that art was utterly foreign to his nature; but, in spite of this, or rather, in consequence of it, Alexey Alexandrovitch never missed over anything in the world of art, but made it his duty to read everything. She knew that in politics, in philosophy, in theology, Alexey Alexandrovitch often had doubts, and made investigations; but on questions of art and poetry, and, above all, of music, of which he was totally devoid of understanding, he had the most distinct and decided opinions. He was fond of talking about Shakespeare, Raphael, Beethoven, of the significance of new schools of poetry and music, all of which were classified by him with very conspicuous consistency.     19   
  ‘Well, God be with you,’ she said at the door of the study, where a shaded candle and a decanter of water were already put by his armchair. ‘And I’ll write to Moscow.’     20   
  He pressed her hand, and again kissed it.     21   
  ‘All the same he’s a good man; truthful, good-hearted, and remarkable in his own line,’ Anna said to herself going back to her room, as though she were defending him to some one who had attacked him and said that one could not love him. ‘But why is it his ears stick out so strangely? Or has he had his hair cut?’     22   
  Precisely at twelve o’clock, when Anna was still sitting at her writing-table, finishing a letter to Dolly, she heard the sound of measured steps in slippers, and Alexey Alexandrovitch, freshly washed and combed, with a book under his arm, came in to her.     23   
  ‘It’s time, it’s time,’ said he, with a meaning smile and he went into their bedroom.     24   
  ‘And what right had he to look at him like that?’ thought Anna, recalling Vronsky’s glance at Alexy Alexandrovitch.     25   
  Undressing, she went into the bedroom; but her face had none of the eagerness which, during her stay at Moscow, had fairly flashed from her eyes and her smile; on the contrary, now the fire seemed quenched in her, hidden somewhere far away.

   
Part I   
Chapter XXXIV   
     
WHEN Vronsky went to Moscow from Petersburg, he had left his large set of rooms in Morskaia to his friend and favourite comrade Petritsky.      1   
  Petritsky was a young lieutenant, not particularly well-connected, and not merely not wealthy, but always hopelessly in debt. Towards evening he was always drunk, and he had often been locked up after all sorts of ludicrous and disgraceful scandals, but he was a favourite both of his comrades and his superior officers. On arriving at twelve o’clock from the station at his flat, Vronsky saw, at the outer door, a hired carriage familiar to him. While still outside his own door, as he rang, he heard masculine laughter, the lisp of a feminine voice, and Petritsky’s voice: ‘If that’s one of the villains, don’t let him in!’ Vronsky told the servant not to announce him, and slipped quietly into the first room. Baroness Shilton, a friend of Petritsky’s, with a rosy little face and flaxen-hair, resplendent in a lilac satin gown, and filling the whole room, like a canary, with her Petrisky, chatter, sat at the round table making coffee. Petritsky, in his overcoat, and the cavalry captain Kamerovsky, in full uniform, probably just come from duty, were sitting each side of her.      2   
  ‘Bravo! Vronsky!’ shouted Petritsky, jumping up, scraping his chair. ‘Our host himself! Baroness, some coffee for him out of the new coffee-pot. Why, we didn’t expect you! Hope you’re satisfied with the ornament of your study,’ he said, indicating the baroness. ‘You know each other, of course?’      3   
  ‘I should think so,’ said Vronsky, with a bright smile, pressing the baroness’s little hand. ‘What next! I’m an old friend.’      4   
  ‘You’re home after a journey,’ said the baroness, ‘so I’m flying. Oh, I’ll be off this minute, if I’m in the way.’      5   
  ‘You’re at home wherever you are, baroness,’ said Vronsky. ‘How do you do, Kamerovsky?’ he added, coldly shaking hands with Kamerovsky.      6   
  ‘There, you never know how to say such pretty things,’ said the baroness, turning to Petritsky.      7   
  ‘No; what’s that for? After dinner I say things quite as good.’      8   
  ‘After dinner there’s no credit in them! Well, then, I’ll make you some coffee, so go and wash and get ready,’ said the baroness, sitting down again, and anxiously turning the screw in the new coffee-pot. ‘Pierre, give me the coffee,’ she said, addressing Petritsky, whom she called Pierre as a contraction of his surname, making no secret of her relations with him. ‘I’ll put it in.’      9   
  ‘You’ll spoil it!’     10   
  ‘No, I won’t spoil it! Well, and your wife?’ said the baroness suddenly, interrupting Vronsky’s conversation with his comrade. ‘We’ve been marrying you here. Have you brought your wife?’     11   
  ‘No, baroness. I was born a Bohemian, and a Bohemian I shall die.’     12   
  ‘So much the better, so much the better. Shake hands on it.’     13   
  And the baroness, detaining Vronsky, began telling him, with many jokes, about her last new plans of life, asking his advice.     14   
  ‘He persists in refusing to give me a divorce! Well, what am I to do?’ (He was her husband.) ‘Now I want to begin a suit against him. What do you advise? Kamerovsky, look after the coffee; it’s boiling over. You see I’m engrossed with business! I want a lawsuit, because I must have my property. Do you understand the folly of it, that on the pretext of my being unfaithful to him,’ she said contemptuously, ‘he wants to get the benefit of my fortune.’     15   
  Vronsky heard with pleasure this light-hearted prattle of a pretty woman, agreed with her, gave her half-joking counsel, and altogether dropped at once into the tone habitual to him in talking to such women. In this Petersburg world all people were divided into utterly opposed classes. One, the lower class, vulgar, stupid, and, above all, ridiculous people, who believe that one husband ought to live with the one wife whom he has lawfully married; that a girl should be innocent, a woman modest, and a man manly, self-controlled, and strong; that one ought to bring up one’s children, earn one’s bread, and pay one’s debts; and various similar absurdities. This was the class of old-fashioned and ridiculous people. But there was another class of people, the real people. To this class they all belonged, and in it the great thing was to be elegant, generous, plucky, gay, to abandon oneself without a blush to every passion, and to laugh at everything else.     16   
  For the first moment only, Vronsky was startled after the impressions of a quite different world that he had brought with him from Moscow. But immediately, as though slipping his feet into old slippers, he dropped back into the light-hearted, pleasant world he had always lived in.     17   
  The coffee was never really made, but spluttered over every one, and boiled away, doing just what was required of it—that is, providing cause for much noise and laughter, and spoiling a costly rug and the baroness’s gown.     18   
  ‘Well now, good-bye, or you’ll never get washed, and I shall have on my conscience the worst sin a gentleman can commit. So you would advise a knife to his throat?’     19   
  ‘To be sure, and manage that your hand may be not far from his lips. He’ll kiss your hand, and all will end satisfactorily,’ answered Vronsky.     20   
  ‘So at the Francais!’ and, with a rustle of her skirts, she vanished.     21   
  Kamerovsky got up too, and Vronsky, not waiting for him to go, shook hands and went off to his dressing-room.     22   
  While he was washing, Petritsky described to him in brief outlines his position, as far as it had changed since Vronsky had left Petersburg. No money at all. His father said he wouldn’t give him any and pay his debts. His tailor was trying to get him locked up, and another fellow, too, was threatening to get him locked up. The colonel of the regiment had announced that if these scandals did not cease he would have to leave. As for the baroness, he was sick to death of her, especially since she’d taken to offering continually to lend him money. But he had found a girl—he’d show her to Vronsky—a marvel, exquisite, in the strict Oriental style, ‘genre of the slave Rebecca, don’t you know.’ He’d had a row, too, with Berkoshov, and was going to send seconds to him, but of course it would come to nothing. Altogether everything was supremely amusing and jolly. And, not letting his comrade enter into further details of his position, Petritsky proceeded to tell him all the interesting news. As he listened to Petritsky’s familiar stories in the familiar setting of the rooms he had spent the last three years in, Vronsky felt a delightful sense of coming back to the careless Petersburg life that he was used to.     23   
  ‘Impossible!’ he cried, letting down the pedal of the washing basin in which he had been sousing his healthy red neck. ‘Impossible!’ he cried at the news that Laura had flung over Fertinghof and had made up to Mileev. ‘And is he as stupid and pleased as ever? Well, and how’s Buzulukov?’     24   
  ‘Oh, there is a tale about Buzulukov—simply lovely!’ cried Petritsky. ‘You know his weakness for balls, and he never misses a single court ball. He went to a big ball in a new helmet. Have you seen the new helmets? Very nice, lighter. Well, so he’s standing…. No, I say, do listen.’     25   
  ‘I am listening,’ answered Vronsky, rubbing himself with a rough towel.     26   
  ‘Up comes the Grand-Duchess with some ambassador or other, and, as ill-luck would have it, she begins talking to him about the new helmets. The Grand-Duchess positively wanted to show the new helmet to the ambassador. They see our friend standing there.’ (Petritsky mimicked how he was standing with the helmet.) ‘The Grand-Duchess asked him to give her the helmet; he doesn’t give it her. What do you think of that? Well, every one’s winking at him, nodding, frowning—give it to her, do! He doesn’t give it her. He’s mute as a fish. Only picture it!… Well, the … what’s his name, whatever he was … tries to take the helmet from him … he won’t give it up!… He pulls it from him and hands it to the Grand-Duchess. “Here, your Highness,” says he, “is the new helmet.” She turned the helmet the other side up, and—just picture it!—plop went a pear and sweetmeats out of it, two pounds of sweetmeats!… He’d been storing them up, the darling!’     27   
  Vronsky burst into roars of laughter. And long afterwards, when he was talking of other things, he broke out into his healthy laugh, showing his strong, close rows of teeth, when he thought of the helmet.     28   
  Having heard all the news, Vronsky, with the assistance of his valet, got into his uniform, and went off to report himself. He intended, when he had done that, to drive to his brother’s, and to Betsy’s, and to pay several visits with a view to beginning to go into that society where he might meet Madame Karenin. As he always did in Petersburg, he left home not meaning to return till late at night.

Part II   
Chapter I   
     
AT the end of the winter, in the Shtcherbatskys’ house, a consultation was being held, which was to pronounce on the state of Kitty’s health and the measures to be taken to restore her failing strength. She had been ill, and as spring came on she grew worse. The family doctor gave her codliver oil, then iron, then nitrate of silver, but as the first and the second and the third were alike in doing no good, and as his advice when spring came was to go abroad, a celebrated physician was called in. The celebrated physician, a very handsome man, still youngish, asked to examine the patient. He maintained with peculiar satisfaction, it seemed, that maiden modesty is a mere relic of barbarism, and that nothing could be more natural than for a man still youngish to handle a young girl naked. He thought it natural because he did it every day, and felt and thought, as it seemed to him, no harm as he did it, and consequently he considered modesty in the girl not merely as a relic of barbarism, but also as an insult to himself.      1   
  There was nothing for it but to submit, since, although all the doctors had studied in the same school, had read the same books, and learned the same science, and though some people said this celebrated doctor was a bad doctor, in the princess’s household and circle it was for some reason accepted that this celebrated doctor alone had some special knowledge, and that he alone could save Kitty. After a careful examination and sounding of the bewildered patient, dazed with shame, the celebrated doctor, having scrupulously washed his hands, was standing in the drawing-room talking to the prince. The prince frowned and coughed, listening to the doctor. As a man who had seen something of life, and neither a fool nor an invalid, he had no faith in medicine, and in his heart was furious at the whole farce, especially as he was perhaps the only one who fully comprehended the cause of Kitty’s illness. ‘Conceited blockhead!’ he thought, as he listened to the celebrated doctor’s chatter about his daughter’s symptoms. The doctor was meantime with difficulty restraining the expression of his contempt for this old gentleman and with difficulty condescending to the level of his intelligence. He perceived that it was no good talking to the old man, and that the principal person in the house was the mother. Before her he decided to scatter his pearls. At that instant the princess came into the drawing-room with the family doctor. The prince withdrew, trying not to show how ridiculous he thought the whole performance. The princess was distracted, and did not know what to do. She felt she had sinned against Kitty.      2   
  ‘Well, doctor, decide our fate,’ said the princess. ‘Tell me everything.’      3   
  ‘Is there hope?’ she meant to say, but her lips quivered, and she could not utter the question. ‘Well, doctor?’      4   
  ‘Immediately, princess. I will talk it over with my colleague, and then I will have the honour of laying my opinion before you.’      5   
  ‘So we had better leave you?’      6   
  ‘As you please.’      7   
  The princess went out with a sigh.      8   
  When the doctors were left alone, the family doctor began timidly explaining his opinion, that there was a commencement of tuberculous trouble, but … and so on. The celebrated doctor listened to him, and in the middle of his sentence looked at his big gold watch.      9   
  ‘Yes,’ said he. ‘But…’     10   
  The family doctor respectfully ceased in the middle of his observations.     11   
  ‘The commencement of the tuberculous process we are not, as you are aware, able to define; till there are cavities, there is nothing definite. But we may suspect it. And there are indications: malnutrition, nervous excitability, and so on. The question stands thus: in presence of indications of tuberculous process, what is to be done to maintain nutrition?’     12   
  ‘But, you know, there are always moral, spiritual causes at the back in these cases,’ the family doctor permitted himself to interpolate with a subtle smile.     13   
  ‘Yes, that’s an understood thing,’ responded the celebrated physician, again glancing at his watch. ‘Beg pardon, is the Yausky bridge done yet, or shall I have to drive round?’ he asked. ‘Ah! it is. Oh, well, then I can do it in twenty minutes. So we were saying the problem may be put thus: to maintain nutrition and to give tone to the nerves. The one is in close connection with the other, one must attack both sides at once.’     14   
  ‘And how about a tour abroad?’ asked the family doctor.     15   
  ‘I’ve no liking for foreign tours. And take note: if there is an early stage of tuberculous process, of which we cannot be certain, a foreign tour will be of no use. What is wanted is means for improving nutrition, and not for lowering it.’ And the celebrated doctor expounded his plan of treatment with Soden waters, a remedy obviously prescribed primarily on the ground that they could do no harm.     16   
  The family doctor listened attentively and respectfully.     17   
  ‘But in favour of foreign travel I would urge the change of habits, the removal from conditions calling up reminiscences. And then the mother wishes it,’ he added.     18   
  ‘Ah! Well, in that case, to be sure, let them go. Only, those German quacks are mischievous.… They ought to be persuaded.… Well, let them go then.’     19   
  He glanced once more at his watch.     20   
  ‘Oh! time’s up already,’ and he went to the door. The celebrated doctor announced to the princess (a feeling of what was due from him dictated his doing so) that he ought to see the patient once more.     21   
  ‘What! another examination!’ cried the mother, with horror.     22   
  ‘Oh no, only a few details, princess.’     23   
  ‘Come this way.’     24   
  And the mother, accompanied by the doctor, went into the drawing-room to Kitty. Wasted and flushed, with a peculiar glitter in her eyes, left there by the agony of shame she had been put through, Kitty stood in the middle of the room. When the doctor came in she flushed crimson, and her eyes filled with tears. All her illness and treatment struck her as a thing so stupid, ludicrous even! Doctoring her seemed to her as absurd as putting together the pieces of a broken vase. Her heart was broken. Why would they try to cure her with pills and powders? But she could not grieve her mother, especially as her mother considered herself to blame.     25   
  ‘May I trouble you to sit down, princess?’ the celebrated doctor said to her.     26   
  He sat down with a smile, facing her, felt her pulse, and again began asking her tiresome questions. She answered him, and all at once got up furious.     27   
  ‘Excuse me, doctor, but there is really no object in this. This is the third time you’ve asked me the same thing.’     28   
  The celebrated doctor did not take offence.     29   
  ‘Nervous irritability,’ he said to the princess, when Kitty had left the room. ‘However, I had finished.…’     30   
  And the doctor began scientifically explaining to the princess, as an exceptionally intelligent woman, the condition of the young princess, and concluded by insisting on the drinking of the waters, which were certainly harmless. At the question: Should they go abroad? the doctor plunged into deep meditation, as though resolving a weighty problem. Finally his decision was pronounced: they were to go abroad, but to put no faith in foreign quacks, and to apply to him in any need.     31   
  It seemed as though some piece of good fortune had come to pass after the doctor had gone. The mother was much more cheerful when she went back to her daughter, and Kitty pretended to be more cheerful. She had often, almost always, to be pretending now.     32   
  ‘Really, I’m quite well, mama. But if you want to go abroad, let’s go!’ she said, and trying to appear interested in the proposed tour, she began talking of the preparations for the journey.   

Part II   
Chapter II   
     
SOON after the doctor, Dolly had arrived. She knew that there was to be a consultation that day, and though she was only just up after her confinement (she had another baby, a little girl, born at the end of the winter), though she had trouble and anxiety enough of her own, she had left her tiny baby and a sick child, to come and hear Kitty’s fate, which was to be decided that day.      1   
  ‘Well, well?’ she said, coming into the drawing-room, without taking off her hat. ‘You’re all in good spirits. Good news, then?’      2   
  They tried to tell her what the doctor had said, but it appeared that though the doctor had talked distinctly enough and at great length, it was utterly impossible to report what he had said. The only point of interest was that it was settled they should go abroad.      3   
  Dolly could not help sighing. Her dearest friend, her sister, was going away. And her life was not a cheerful one. Her relations with Stepan Arkadyevitch after their reconciliation had become humiliating. The union Anna had cemented turned out to be of no solid character, and family harmony was breaking down again at the same point. There had been nothing definite, but Stepan Arkadyevitch was hardly ever at home; money, too, was hardly ever forthcoming, and Dolly was continually tortured by suspicions of infidelity, which she tried to dismiss, dreading the agonies of jealousy she had been through already. The first onslaught of jealousy, once lived through, could never come back again, and even the discovery of infidelities could never now affect her as it had the first time. Such a discovery now would only mean breaking up family habits, and she let herself be deceived, despising him and still more herself for the weakness. Besides this, the care of her large family was a constant worry to her: first, the nursing of her young baby did not go well; then the nurse had gone away, now one of the children had fallen ill.      4   
  ‘Well, how are all of you?’ asked her mother.      5   
  ‘Ah, mamma, we have plenty of troubles of our own. Lili is ill, and I’m afraid it’s scarlatina. I have come here now to hear about Kitty, and then I shall shut myself up entirely, if—God forbid—it should be scarlatina.’      6   
  The old prince too had come in from his study after the doctor’s departure, and after presenting his cheek to Dolly, and saying a few words to her, he turned to his wife—      7   
  ‘How have you settled it? you’re going? Well, and what do you mean to do with me?’      8   
  ‘I suppose you had better stay here, Alexandre,’ said his wife.      9   
  ‘That’s as you like.’     10   
  ‘Mamma, why shouldn’t father come with us?’ said Kitty. ‘It’ll be nicer for him and for us too.’     11   
  The old prince got up and stroked Kitty’s hair. She lifted her head and looked at him with a forced smile. It always seemed to her that he understood her better than any one in the family, though he did not say much about her. Being the youngest, she was her father’s favourite, and she fancied that his love gave him insight. When now her glance met his blue kindly eyes looking intently at her, it seemed to her that he saw right through her, and understood all that was not good that was passing within her. Reddening, she stretched out towards him expecting a kiss, but he only patted her hair and said—     12   
  ‘These stupid chignons! There’s no getting at the real daughter, one simply strokes the bristles of dead women. Well, Dolinka,’ he turned to his elder daughter, ‘what’s your young buck about, hey?’     13   
  ‘Nothing, father,’ answered Dolly, understanding that her husband was meant. ‘He’s always out; I scarcely ever see him,’ she could not resist adding with a sarcastic smile.     14   
  ‘Why, hasn’t he gone into the country yet—to see about selling that forest?’     15   
  ‘No, he’s still getting ready for the journey.’     16   
  ‘Oh, that’s it!’ said the prince. ‘And so am I to be getting ready for a journey too? At your service,’ he said to his wife, sitting down. ‘And I tell you what, Katia,’ he went on to his younger daughter, ‘you must wake up one fine day and say to yourself: Why, I’m quite well, and merry, and going out again with father for an early morning walk in the frost. Hey?’     17   
  What her father said seemed simple enough, yet at these words Kitty became confused and overcome like a detected criminal. ‘Yes, he sees it all, he understands it all, and in these words he’s telling me that though I’m ashamed, I must get over my shame.’ She could not pluck up spirit to make any answer. She tried to begin, and all at once burst into tears, and rushed out of the room.     18   
  ‘See what comes of your jokes!’ the princess pounced down on her husband. ‘You’re always…’ she began a string of reproaches.     19   
  The prince listened to the princess’s scolding rather a long while without speaking, but his face was more and more frowning.     20   
  ‘She’s so much to be pitied, poor child, so much to be pitied, and you don’t feel how it hurts her to hear the slightest reference to the cause of it. Ah! to be so mistaken in people!’ said the princess, and by the change in her tone both Dolly and the prince knew she was speaking of Vronsky. ‘I don’t know why there aren’t laws against such base, dishonourable people.’     21   
  ‘Ah, I can’t bear to hear you!’ said the prince gloomily, getting up from his low chair, and seeming anxious to get away, yet stopping in the doorway. ‘There are laws, madam, and since you’ve challenged me to it, I’ll tell you who’s to blame for it all: you and you, you and nobody else. Laws against such young gallants there have always been, and there still are! Yes, if there has been nothing that ought not to have been, old as I am, I’d have called him out to the barrier, the young dandy. Yes, and now you physic her and call in these quacks.’     22   
  The prince apparently had plenty more to say, but soon as the princess heard this tone she subsided at once, and became penitent, as she always did on serious occasions.     23   
  ‘Alexandre, Alexandre,’ she whispered, moving to him and beginning to weep.     24   
  As soon as she began to cry the prince too calmed down. He went up to her.     25   
  ‘There, that’s enough, that’s enough! You’re wretched too, I know. It can’t be helped. There’s no great harm done. God is merciful … thanks … he said, not knowing what he was saying, as he responded to the tearful kiss of the princess that he felt on his hand. And the prince went out of the room.     26   
  Before this, as soon as Kitty went out of the room in tears, Dolly, with her motherly, family instincts, had promptly perceived that here a woman’s work lay before her, and she prepared to do it. She took off her hat, and, morally speaking, tucked up her sleeves and prepared for action. While her mother was attacking her father, she tried to restrain her mother, so far as filial reverence would allow. During the prince’s outburst she was silent; she felt ashamed for her mother, and tender towards her father for so quickly being kind again. But when her father left them she made ready for what was the chief thing needful—to go to Kitty and console her.     27   
  ‘I’d been meaning to tell you something for a long while, mamma: did you know that Levin meant to make Kitty an offer when he was here the last time? He told Stiva so.’     28   
  ‘Well, what then? I don’t understand.…’     29   
  ‘So did Kitty perhaps refuse him? … She didn’t tell you so?’     30   
  ‘No, she has said nothing to me either of one or the other; she’s too proud. But I know it’s all on account of the other.’     31   
  ‘Yes, but suppose she has refused Levin, and she wouldn’t have refused him if it hadn’t been for the other, I know. And then, he has deceived her so horribly.’     32   
  It was too terrible for the princess to think how she had sinned against her daughter, and she broke out angrily.     33   
  ‘Oh, I really don’t understand! Nowadays they will all go their own way, and mothers haven’t a word to say in anything, and then…’     34   
  ‘Mamma, I’ll go up to her.’     35   
  ‘Well, do. Did I tell you not to?’ said her mother.

Part II   
Chapter III   
     
WHEN she went into Kitty’s little room, a pretty, pink little room, full of knick-knacks in vieux saxe, as fresh, and pink, and white, and gay as Kitty herself had been two months ago, Dolly remembered how they had decorated the room the year before together, with what love and gaiety. Her heart turned cold when she saw Kitty sitting on a low chair near the door, her eyes fixed immovably on a corner of the rug. Kitty glanced at her sister, and the cold, rather ill-tempered, expression of her face did not change.      1   
  ‘I’m just going now, and I shall have to keep in and you won’t be able to come to see me,’ said Dolly, sitting down beside her. ‘I want to talk to you.’      2   
  ‘What about?’ Kitty asked swiftly, lifting her head in dismay.      3   
  ‘What should it be, but your trouble?’      4   
  ‘I have no trouble.’      5   
  ‘Nonsense, Kitty. Do you suppose I could help knowing? I know all about it. And believe me, it’s of so little consequence…. We’ve all been through it.’      6   
  Kitty did not speak, and her face had a stern expression.      7   
  ‘He’s not worth your grieving over him,’ pursued Darya Alexandrovna, coming straight to the point.      8   
  ‘No, because he has treated me with contempt,’ said Kitty, in a breaking voice. ‘Don’t talk of it! Please, don’t talk of it!’      9   
  ‘But who can have told you so? No one has said that. I’m certain he was in love with you, and would still be in love with you, if it hadn’t…’     10   
  ‘Oh, the most awful thing of all for me is this sympathising!’ shrieked Kitty, suddenly flying into a passion. She turned round on her chair, flushed crimson, and rapidly moving her fingers, pinched the clasp of her belt first with one hand and then with the other. Dolly knew this trick her sister had of clenching her hands when she was much excited; she knew, too, that in moments of excitement Kitty was capable of forgetting herself and saying a great deal too much, and Dolly would have soothed her, but it was too late.     11   
  ‘What, what is it you want to make me feel, eh?’ said Kitty quickly. ‘That I’ve been in love with a man who didn’t care a straw for me, and that I’m dying of love for him? And this is said to me by my own sister, who imagines that … that … that she’s sympathising with me!… I don’t want these condolences and humbug!’     12   
  ‘Kitty, you’re unjust.’     13   
  ‘Why are you tormenting me?’     14   
  ‘But I … quite the contrary … I see you’re unhappy.…’     15   
  But Kitty in her fury did not hear her.     16   
  ‘I’ve nothing to grieve over and be comforted about. I am too proud ever to allow myself to care for a man who does not love me.’     17   
  ‘Yes, I don’t say so either.… Only one thing. Tell me the truth,’ said Darya Alexandrovna, taking her by the hand: ‘tell me, did Levin speak to you?…’     18   
  The mention of Levin’s name seemed to deprive Kitty of the last vestige of self-control. She leaped up from her chair, and flinging her clasp on the ground, she gesticulated rapidly with her hands and said—     19   
  ‘Why bring Levin in too? I can’t understand what you want to torment me for. I’ve told you, and I say it again, that I have some pride, and never, never would I do as you’re doing—go back to a man who’s deceived you, who has cared for another woman. I can’t understand it! You may, but I can’t!’     20   
  And saying these words she glanced at her sister, and seeing that Dolly sat silent, her head mournfully bowed, Kitty, instead of running out of the room, as she had meant to do, sat down near the door, and hid her face in her handkerchief.     21   
  The silence lasted for two minutes: Dolly was thinking of herself. That humiliation of which she was always conscious came back to her with a peculiar bitterness when her sister reminded her of it. She had not looked for such cruelty in her sister, and she was angry with her. But suddenly she heard the rustle of a skirt, and with it the sound of heartrending, smothered sobbing, and felt arms about her neck. Kitty was on her knees before her.     22   
  ‘Dolinka, I am so, so wretched!’ she whispered penitently. And the sweet face covered with tears hid itself in Darya Alexandrovna’s skirt.     23   
  As though tears were the indispensable oil, without which the machinery of mutual confidence could not run smoothly between the two sisters, the sisters after their tears talked, not of what was uppermost in their minds, but, though they talked of outside matters, they understood each other. Kitty knew that the word she had uttered in anger about her husband’s infidelity and her humiliating position, had cut her poor sister to the heart, but that she had forgiven her. Dolly for her part knew all she had wanted to find out. She felt certain that her surmises were correct; that Kitty’s misery, her inconsolable misery, was due precisely to the fact that Levin had made her an offer and she had refused him, and Vronsky had deceived her, and that she was fully prepared to love Levin and to detest Vronsky. Kitty said not a word of that; she talked of nothing but her spiritual condition.     24   
  ‘I have nothing to make me miserable,’ she said, getting calmer; ‘but can you understand that everything has become hateful, loathsome, coarse to me, and I myself most of all? You can’t imagine what loathsome thoughts I have about everything.’     25   
  ‘Why, whatever loathsome thoughts can you have?’ asked Dolly, smiling.     26   
  ‘The most utterly loathsome and coarse; I can’t tell you. It’s not unhappiness, or low spirits, but much worse. As though everything that was good in me was all hidden away, and nothing was left but the most loathsome. Come, how am I to tell you?’ she went on, seeing the puzzled look in her sister’s eyes. ‘Father began saying something to me just now.… It seems to me he thinks all I want is to be married. Mother takes me to a ball: it seems to me she only takes me to get me married off as soon as may be, and be rid of me. I know it’s not the truth, but I can’t drive away such thoughts. Eligible suitors, as they call them—I can’t bear to see them. It seems to me they’re taking stock of me and summing me up. In old days to go anywhere in a balldress was a simple joy to me, I admired myself; now I feel ashamed and awkward. And then! The doctor.… Then…’ Kitty hesitated; she wanted to say further that ever since this change had taken place in her, Stepan Arkadyevitch had become insufferably repulsive to her, and that she could not see him without the grossest and most hideous conceptions rising before her imagination.     27   
  ‘Oh well, everything presents itself to me in the coarsest, most loathsome light,’ she went on. ‘That’s my illness. Perhaps it will pass off.’     28   
  ‘But you mustn’t think about it.’     29   
  ‘I can’t help it. I’m never happy except with the children at your house.’     30   
  ‘What a pity you can’t be with me!’     31   
  ‘Oh yes, I’m coming. I’ve had scarlatina, and I’ll persuade mamma to let me.’     32   
  Kitty insisted on having her way, and went to stay at her sister’s, and nursed the children all through the scarlatina, for scarlatina it turned out to be. The two sisters brought all the six children successfully through it, but Kitty was no better in health, and in Lent the Shtcherbatskys went abroad.

Part II   
Chapter IV   
     
THE HIGHEST Petersburg society is essentially one: in it every one knows every one else, every one even visits every one else. But this great set has its subdivisions. Anna Arkadyevna Karenin had friends and close ties in three different circles of this highest society. One circle was her husband’s government, official set, consisting of his colleagues and subordinates, brought together in the most various and capricious manner, and belonging to different social strata. Anna found it difficult now to recall the feeling of almost awe-stricken reverence which she had at first entertained for these persons. Now she knew all of them as people know one another in a country town; she knew their habits and weaknesses, and where the shoe pinched each one of them. She knew their relations with one another and with the head authorities, knew who was for whom, and how each one maintained his position, and where they agreed and disagreed. But that circle of political, masculine interests had never interested her, in spite of Countess Lidia Ivanovna’s influence, and she avoided it.      1   
  Another little set with which Anna was in close relations was the one by means of which Alexey Alexandrovitch had made his career. The centre of this circle was the Countess Lidia Ivanovna. It was a set made up of elderly, ugly, benevolent, and godly women, and clever, learned, and ambitious men. One of the clever people belonging to the set had called it ‘the conscience of Petersburg society.’ Alexey Alexandrovitch had the highest esteem for this circle; and Anna, with her special gift for getting on with every one, had in the early days of her life in Petersburg made friends in this circle also. Now, since her return from Moscow, she had come to feel this set insufferable. It seemed to her that both she and all of them were insincere, and she felt so bored and ill at ease in that world that she went to see the Countess Lidia Ivanovna as little as possible.      2   
  The third circle with which Anna had ties was pre-eminently the fashionable world—the world of balls, of dinners, of sumptuous dresses, the world that hung on to the court with one hand, so as to avoid sinking to the level of the demi-monde. For the demi-monde the members of that fashionable world believed that they despised, though their tastes were not merely similar, but in fact identical. Her connection with this circle was kept up through Princess Betsy Tverskoy, her cousin’s wife, who had an income of a hundred and twenty thousand roubles, and who had taken a great fancy to Anna ever since she first came out, showed her much attention, and drew her into her set, making fun of Countess Lidia Ivanovna’s coterie.      3   
  ‘When I’m old and ugly I’ll be the same,’ Betsy used to say; ‘but for a pretty young woman like you it’s early days for that house of charity.’      4   
  Anna had at first avoided as far as she could Princess Tverskoy’s world, because it necessitated an expenditure beyond her means, and besides in her heart she preferred the first circle. But since her visit to Moscow she had done quite the contrary. She avoided her serious-minded friends, and went out into the fashionable world. There she met Vronsky, and experienced an agitating joy at those meetings. She met Vronsky specially often at Betsy’s, for Betsy was a Vronsky by birth and his cousin. Vronsky was everywhere where he had any chance of meeting Anna, and speaking to her, when he could, of his love. She gave him no encouragement, but every time she met him there surged up in her heart that same feeling of quickened life that had come upon her that day in the railway carriage when she saw him for the first time. She was conscious herself that her delight sparkled in her eyes and curved her lips into a smile, and she could not quench the expression of this delight.      5   
  At first Anna sincerely believed that she was displeased with him for daring to pursue her. Soon after her return from Moscow, on arriving at a soiree where she had expected to meet him, and not finding him there, she realised distinctly from the rush of disappointment that she had been deceiving herself, and that this pursuit was not merely not distasteful to her, but that it made the whole interest of her life.      6   
  The celebrated singer was singing for the second time, and all the fashionable world was in the theatre. Vronsky, seeing his cousin from his stall in the front row, did not wait till the entr’acte, but went to her box.      7   
  ‘Why didn’t you come to dinner?’ she said to him. ‘I marvel at the second-sight of lovers,’ she added with a smile, so that no one but he could hear; ‘she wasn’t there. But come after the opera.’      8   
  Vronsky looked inquiringly at her. She nodded. He thanked her by a smile, and sat down beside her.      9   
  ‘But how I remember your jeers!’ continued Princess Betsy, who took a peculiar pleasure in following up this passion to a successful issue. ‘What’s become of all that? You’re caught, my dear boy.’     10   
  ‘That’s my one desire, to be caught,’ answered Vronsky, with his serene, good-humoured smile. ‘If I complain of anything it’s only that I’m not caught enough, to tell the truth. I begin to lose hope.’     11   
  ‘Why, whatever hope can you have?’ said Betsy, offended on behalf of her friend. ‘Entendons nous.…’ But in her eyes there were gleams of light that betrayed that she understood perfectly and precisely as he did what hope he might have.     12   
  ‘None whatever,’ said Vronsky, laughing and showing his even rows of teeth. ‘Excuse me,’ he added, taking an opera-glass out of her hand, and proceeding to scrutinise, over her bare shoulder, the row of boxes facing them. ‘I’m afraid I’m becoming ridiculous.’     13   
  He was very well aware that he ran no risk of being ridiculous in the eyes of Betsy or any other fashionable people. He was very well aware that in their eyes the position of an unsuccessful lover of a girl, or of any woman free to marry, might be ridiculous. But the position of a man pursuing a married woman, and, regardless of everything, staking his life on drawing her into adultery, has something fine and grand about it, and can never be ridiculous; and so it was with a proud and gay smile under his moustaches that he lowered the opera-glass and looked at his cousin.     14   
  ‘But why was it you didn’t come to dinner?’ she said, admiring him.     15   
  ‘I must tell you about that. I was busily employed, and doing what, do you suppose? I’ll give you a hundred guesses, a thousand … you’d never guess. I’ve been reconciling a husband with a man who’d insulted his wife. Yes, really!’     16   
  ‘Well, did you succeed?’     17   
  ‘Almost.’     18   
  ‘You really must tell me about it,’ she said, getting up. ‘Come to me in the next entr’acte.’     19   
  ‘I can’t; I’m going to the French theatre.’     20   
  ‘From Nilsson?’ Betsy queried in horror, though she could not herself have distinguished Nilsson’s voice from any chorus girl’s.     21   
  ‘Can’t help it. I’ve an appointment there, all to do with my mission of peace.’     22   
  ‘“Blessed are the peacemakers; theirs is the kingdom of heaven,”’ said Betsy, vaguely recollecting she had heard some similar saying from some one. ‘Very well, then, sit down, and tell me what it’s all about.’     23   
  And she sat down again.