"What a position!" he thought. "If he would fight, would stand

up for his honor, I could act, could express my feelings; but

this weakness or baseness.... He puts me in the position of

playing false, which I never meant and never mean to do."

Vronsky's ideas had changed since the day of his conversation

with Anna in the Vrede garden. Unconsciously yielding to the

weakness of Anna--who had surrendered herself up to him utterly,

and simply looked to him to decide her fate, ready to submit to

anything--he had long ceased to think that their tie might end

as he had thought then. His ambitious plans had retreated into

the background again, and feeling that he had got out of that

circle of activity in which everything was definite, he had given

himself entirely to his passion, and that passion was binding him

more and more closely to her.

He was still in the hall when he caught the sound of her

retreating footsteps. He knew she had been expecting him, had

listened for him, and was now going back to the drawing room.

"No," she cried, on seeing him, and at the first sound of her

voice the tears came into her eyes. "No; if things are to go on

like 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't

come. No, I won't." She laid her two hands on his shoulders,

and looked a long while at him with a profound, passionate, and

at the same time searching look. She was studying his face to

make up for the time she had not seen him. She was, every time

she saw him, making the picture of him in her imagination

(incomparably superior, impossible in reality) fit with him as he

really was.




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