"You met him?" she asked, when they had sat down at the table in

the lamplight. "You're punished, you see, for being late."

"Yes; but how was it? Wasn't he to be at the council?"

"He had been and come back, and was going out somewhere again.

But that's no matter. Don't talk about it. Where have you been?

With the prince still?"

She knew every detail of his existence. He was going to say that

he had been up all night and had dropped asleep, but looking at

her thrilled and rapturous face, he was ashamed. And he said he

had had to go to report on the prince's departure.

"But it's over now? He is gone?"

"Thank God it's over! You wouldn't believe how insufferable it's

been for me."

"Why so? Isn't it the life all of you, all young men, always

lead?" she said, knitting her brows; and taking up the crochet

work that was lying on the table, she began drawing the hook out

of it, without looking at Vronsky.

"I gave that life up long ago," said he, wondering at the change

in her face, and trying to divine its meaning. "And I confess,"

he said, with a smile, showing his thick, white teeth, "this week

I've been, as it were, looking at myself in a glass, seeing that

life, and I didn't like it."

She held the work in her hands, but did not crochet, and looked

at him with strange, shining, and hostile eyes.

"This morning Liza came to see me--they're not afraid to call on

me, in spite of the Countess Lidia Ivanovna," she put in--"and

she told me about your Athenian evening. How loathsome!"

"I was just going to say..."

She interrupted him. "It was that Thèrése you used to know?"

"I was just saying..."

"How disgusting you are, you men! How is it you can't understand

that a woman can never forget that," she said, getting more and

more angry, and so letting him see the cause of her irritation,

"especially a woman who cannot know your life? What do I know?

What have I ever known?" she said, "what you tell me. And how

do I know whether you tell me the truth?..."

"Anna, you hurt me. Don't you trust me? Haven't I told you that

I haven't a thought I wouldn't lay bare to you?"




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