Anna Karenina - Part 5

On arriving in Petersburg, Vronsky and Anna stayed at one of the

best hotels; Vronsky apart in a lower story, Anna above with

her child, its nurse, and her maid, in a large suite of four

rooms.

On the day of his arrival Vronsky went to his brother's. There

he found his mother, who had come from Moscow on business. His

mother and sister-in-law greeted him as usual: they asked him

about his stay abroad, and talked of their common acquaintances,

but did not let drop a single word in allusion to his connection

with Anna. His brother came the next morning to see Vronsky, and

of his own accord asked him about her, and Alexey Vronsky told

him directly that he looked upon his connection with Madame

Karenina as marriage; that he hoped to arrange a divorce, and

then to marry her, and until then he considered her as much a

wife as any other wife, and he begged him to tell their mother

and his wife so.

"If the world disapproves, I don't care," said Vronsky; "but if

my relations want to be on terms of relationship with me, they

will have to be on the same terms with my wife."

The elder brother, who had always a respect for his younger

brother's judgment, could not well tell whether he was right or

not till the world had decided the question; for his part he had

nothing against it, and with Alexey he went up to see Anna.

Before his brother, as before everyone, Vronsky addressed Anna

with a certain formality, treating her as he might a very

intimate friend, but it was understood that his brother knew

their real relations, and they talked about Anna's going to

Vronsky's estate.

In spite of all his social experience Vronsky was, in consequence

of the new position in which he was placed, laboring under a

strange misapprehension. One would have thought he must have

understood that society was closed for him and Anna; but now some

vague ideas had sprung up in his brain that this was only the

case in old-fashioned days, and that now with the rapidity of

modern progress (he had unconsciously become by now a partisan of

every sort of progress) the views of society had changed, and

that the question whether they would be received in society was

not a foregone conclusion. "Of course," he thought, "she would

not be received at court, but intimate friends can and must look

at it in the proper light." One may sit for several hours at a

stretch with one's legs crossed in the same position, if one

knows that there's nothing to prevent one's changing one's

position; but if a man knows that he must remain sitting so with

crossed legs, then cramps come on, the legs begin to twitch and

to strain towards the spot to which one would like to draw them.

This was what Vronsky was experiencing in regard to the world.

Though at the bottom of his heart he knew that the world was shut

on them, he put it to the test whether the world had not changed

by now and would not receive them. But he very quickly perceived

that though the world was open for him personally, it was closed

for Anna. Just as in the game of cat and mouse, the hands raised

for him were dropped to bar the way for Anna.