Anna Karenina - Part 5

There were, as always, the same ladies of some sort with officers

of some sort in the back of the boxes; the same gaily dressed

women--God knows who--and uniforms and black coats; the same

dirty crowd in the upper gallery; and among the crowd, in the

boxes and in the front rows, were some forty of the _real_ people.

And to those oases Vronsky at once directed his attention, and

with them he entered at once into relation.

The act was over when he went in, and so he did not go straight

to his brother's box, but going up to the first row of stalls

stopped at the footlights with Serpuhovskoy, who, standing with

one knee raised and his heel on the footlights, caught sight of

him in the distance and beckoned to him, smiling.

Vronsky had not yet seen Anna. He purposely avoided looking in

her direction. But he knew by the direction of people's eyes

where she was. He looked round discreetly, but he was not

seeking her; expecting the worst, his eyes sought for Alexey

Alexandrovitch. To his relief Alexey Alexandrovitch was not in

the theater that evening.

"How little of the military man there is left in you!"

Serpuhovskoy was saying to him. "A diplomat, an artist,

something of that sort, one would say."

"Yes, it was like going back home when I put on a black coat,"

answered Vronsky, smiling and slowly taking out his opera glass.

"Well, I'll own I envy you there. When I come back from abroad

and put on this," he touched his epaulets, "I regret my

freedom."

Serpuhovskoy had long given up all hope of Vronsky's career, but

he liked him as before, and was now particularly cordial to him.

"What a pity you were not in time for the first act!"

Vronsky, listening with one ear, moved his opera glass from the

stalls and scanned the boxes. Near a lady in a turban and a bald

old man, who seemed to wave angrily in the moving opera glass,

Vronsky suddenly caught sight of Anna's head, proud, strikingly

beautiful, and smiling in the frame of lace. She was in the

fifth box, twenty paces from him. She was sitting in front, and

slightly turning, was saying something to Yashvin. The setting

of her head on her handsome, broad shoulders, and the restrained

excitement and brilliance of her eyes and her whole face reminded

him of her just as he had seen her at the ball in Moscow. But he

felt utterly different towards her beauty now. In his feeling

for her now there was no element of mystery, and so her beauty,

though it attracted him even more intensely than before, gave him

now a sense of injury. She was not looking in his direction, but

Vronsky felt that she had seen him already.