Anna Karenina - Part 3

"We've come to fetch you. Your _lessive_ lasted a good time

today," said Petritsky. "Well, is it over?"

"It is over," answered Vronsky, smiling with his eyes only, and

twirling the tips of his mustaches as circumspectly as though

after the perfect order into which his affairs had been brought

any over-bold or rapid movement might disturb it.

"You're always just as if you'd come out of a bath after it,"

said Petritsky. "I've come from Gritsky's" (that was what they

called the colonel); "they're expecting you."

Vronsky, without answering, looked at his comrade, thinking of

something else.

"Yes; is that music at his place?" he said, listening to the

familiar sounds of polkas and waltzes floating across to him.

"What's the fête?"

"Serpuhovskoy's come."

"Aha!" said Vronsky, "why, I didn't know."

The smile in his eyes gleamed more brightly than ever.

Having once made up his mind that he was happy in his love, that

he sacrificed his ambition to it--having anyway taken up this

position, Vronsky was incapable of feeling either envious of

Serpuhovskoy or hurt with him for not coming first to him when he

came to the regiment. Serpuhovskoy was a good friend, and he was

delighted he had come.

"Ah, I'm very glad!"

The colonel, Demin, had taken a large country house. The whole

party were in the wide lower balcony. In the courtyard the first

objects that met Vronsky's eyes were a band of singers in white

linen coats, standing near a barrel of vodka, and the robust,

good-humored figure of the colonel surrounded by officers. He

had gone out as far as the first step of the balcony and was

loudly shouting across the band that played Offenbach's

quadrille, waving his arms and giving some orders to a few

soldiers standing on one side. A group of soldiers, a

quartermaster, and several subalterns came up to the balcony with

Vronsky. The colonel returned to the table, went out again onto

the steps with a tumbler in his hand, and proposed the toast, "To

the health of our former comrade, the gallant general, Prince

Serpuhovskoy. Hurrah!"

The colonel was followed by Serpuhovskoy, who came out onto the

steps smiling, with a glass in his hand.

"You always get younger, Bondarenko," he said to the

rosy-checked, smart-looking quartermaster standing just before

him, still youngish looking though doing his second term of

service.

It was three years since Vronsky had seen Serpuhovskoy. He

looked more robust, had let his whiskers grow, but was still the

same graceful creature, whose face and figure were even more

striking from their softness and nobility than their beauty. The

only change Vronsky detected in him was that subdued, continual

radiance of beaming content which settles on the faces of men who

are successful and are sure of the recognition of their success

by everyone. Vronsky knew that radiant air, and immediately

observed it in Serpuhovskoy.