"I don't want to drive you away."
"Only don't change anything, leave everything as it is," he said
in a shaky voice. "Here's your husband."
At that instant Alexey Alexandrovitch did in fact walk into the
room with his calm, awkward gait.
Glancing at his wife and Vronsky, he went up to the lady of the
house, and sitting down for a cup of tea, began talking in his
deliberate, always audible voice, in his habitual tone of banter,
ridiculing someone.
"Your Rambouillet is in full conclave," he said, looking round at
all the party; "the graces and the muses."
But Princess Betsy could not endure that tone of his--
"sneering," as she called it, using the English word, and like a
skillful hostess she at once brought him into a serious
conversation on the subject of universal conscription. Alexey
Alexandrovitch was immediately interested in the subject, and
began seriously defending the new imperial decree against
Princess Betsy, who had attacked it.
Vronsky and Anna still sat at the little table.
"This is getting indecorous," whispered one lady, with an
expressive glance at Madame Karenina, Vronsky, and her husband.
"What did I tell you?" said Anna's friend.
But not only those ladies, almost everyone in the room, even the
Princess Myakaya and Betsy herself, looked several times in the
direction of the two who had withdrawn from the general circle,
as though that were a disturbing fact. Alexey Alexandrovitch was
the only person who did not once look in that direction, and was
not diverted from the interesting discussion he had entered upon.
Noticing the disagreeable impression that was being made on
everyone, Princess Betsy slipped someone else into her place to
listen to Alexey Alexandrovitch, and went up to Anna.
"I'm always amazed at the clearness and precision of your
husband's language," she said. "The most transcendental ideas
seem to be within my grasp when he's speaking."
"Oh, yes!" said Anna, radiant with a smile of happiness, and not
understanding a word of what Betsy had said. She crossed over to
the big table and took part in the general conversation.
Alexey Alexandrovitch, after staying half an hour, went up to his
wife and suggested that they should go home together. But she
answered, not looking at him, that she was staying to supper.
Alexey Alexandrovitch made his bows and withdrew.
The fat old Tatar, Madame Karenina's coachman, was with
difficulty holding one of her pair of grays, chilled with the
cold and rearing at the entrance. A footman stood opening the
carriage door. The hall porter stood holding open the great door
of the house. Anna Arkadyevna, with her quick little hand, was
unfastening the lace of her sleeve, caught in the hook of her fur
cloak, and with bent head listening to the words Vronsky murmured
as he escorted her down.