Anna Karenina - Part 5

Vronsky for the first time experienced a feeling of anger against

Anna, almost a hatred for her willfully refusing to understand

her own position. This feeling was aggravated by his being

unable to tell her plainly the cause of his anger. If he had

told her directly what he was thinking, he would have said: "In that dress, with a princess only too well known to everyone,

to show yourself at the theater is equivalent not merely to

acknowledging your position as a fallen woman, but is flinging

down a challenge to society, that is to say, cutting yourself off

from it forever."

He could not say that to her. "But how can she fail to see it,

and what is going on in her?" he said to himself. He felt at the

same time that his respect for her was diminished while his sense

of her beauty was intensified.

He went back scowling to his rooms, and sitting down beside

Yashvin, who, with his long legs stretched out on a chair, was

drinking brandy and seltzer water, he ordered a glass of the same

for himself.

"You were talking of Lankovsky's Powerful. That's a fine horse,

and I would advise you to buy him," said Yashvin, glancing at

his comrade's gloomy face. "His hind-quarters aren't quite

first-rate, but the legs and head--one couldn't wish for anything

better."

"I think I will take him," answered Vronsky.

Their conversation about horses interested him, but he did not

for an instant forget Anna, and could not help listening to the

sound of steps in the corridor and looking at the clock on the

chimney piece.

"Anna Arkadyevna gave orders to announce that she has gone to the

theater."

Yashvin, tipping another glass of brandy into the bubbling water,

drank it and got up, buttoning his coat.

"Well, let's go," he said, faintly smiling under his mustache,

and showing by this smile that he knew the cause of Vronsky's

gloominess, and did not attach any significance to it.

"I'm not going," Vronsky answered gloomily.

"Well, I must, I promised to. Good-bye, then. If you do, come

to the stalls; you can take Kruzin's stall," added Yashvin as he

went out.

"No, I'm busy."

"A wife is a care, but it's worse when she's not a wife," thought

Yashvin, as he walked out of the hotel.

Vronsky, left alone, got up from his chair and began pacing up

and down the room.

"And what's today? The fourth night.... Yegor and his wife are

there, and my mother, most likely. Of course all Petersburg's

there. Now she's gone in, taken off her cloak and come into the

light. Tushkevitch, Yashvin, Princess Varvara," he pictured them

to himself.... "What about me? Either that I'm frightened or

have given up to Tushkevitch the right to protect her? From

every point of view--stupid, stupid!... And why is she putting

me in such a position?" he said with a gesture of despair.