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Anna Karenina - Part 5

Page 26

"How glad I am to meet you!" said Vronsky, showing his strong

white teeth in a friendly smile.

"I heard the name Vronsky, but I didn't know which one. I'm

very, very glad!"

"Let's go in. Come, tell me what you're doing."

"I've been living here for two years. I'm working."

"Ah!" said Vronsky, with sympathy; "let's go in." And with the

habit common with Russians, instead of saying in Russian what he

wanted to keep from the servants, he began to speak in French.

"Do you know Madame Karenina? We are traveling together. I am

going to see her now," he said in French, carefully scrutinizing

Golenishtchev's face.

"Ah! I did not know" (though he did know), Golenishtchev answered

carelessly. "Have you been here long?" he added.

"Four days," Vronsky answered, once more scrutinizing his

friend's face intently.

"Yes, he's a decent fellow, and will look at the thing properly,"

Vronsky said to himself, catching the significance of

Golenishtchev's face and the change of subject. "I can introduce

him to Anna, he looks at it properly."

During those three months that Vronsky had spent abroad with

Anna, he had always on meeting new people asked himself how the

new person would look at his relations with Anna, and for the

most part, in men, he had met with the "proper" way of looking at

it. But if he had been asked, and those who looked at it

"properly" had been asked, exactly how they did look at it, both

he and they would have been greatly puzzled to answer.

In reality, those who in Vronsky's opinion had the "proper" view

had no sort of view at all, but behaved in general as well-bred

persons do behave in regard to all the complex and insoluble

problems with which life is encompassed on all sides; they

behaved with propriety, avoiding allusions and unpleasant

questions. They assumed an air of fully comprehending the import

and force of the situation, of accepting and even approving of

it, but of considering it superfluous and uncalled for to put all

this into words.

Vronsky at once divined that Golenishtchev was of this class, and

therefore was doubly pleased to see him. And in fact,

Golenishtchev's manner to Madame Karenina, when he was taken to

call on her, was all that Vronsky could have desired. Obviously

without the slightest effort he steered clear of all subjects

which might lead to embarrassment.

He had never met Anna before, and was struck by her beauty, and

still more by the frankness with which she accepted her position.

She blushed when Vronsky brought in Golenishtchev, and he was

extremely charmed by this childish blush overspreading her candid

and handsome face. But what he liked particularly was the way in

which at once, as though on purpose that there might be no

misunderstanding with an outsider, she called Vronsky simply

Alexey, and said they were moving into a house they had just

taken, what was here called a palazzo. Golenishtchev liked this

direct and simple attitude to her own position. Looking at

Anna's manner of simple-hearted, spirited gaiety, and knowing

Alexey Alexandrovitch and Vronsky, Golenishtchev fancied that he

understood her perfectly. He fancied that he understood what she

was utterly unable to understand: how it was that, having made

her husband wretched, having abandoned him and her son and lost

her good name, she yet felt full of spirits, gaiety, and

happiness.

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