"Well, how are you getting on? Has your debt been paid you?" she
asked Yashvin.
"Oh, pretty fair; I fancy I shan't get it all, but I shall get a
good half. And when are you off?" said Yashvin, looking at
Vronsky, and unmistakably guessing at a quarrel.
"The day after tomorrow, I think," said Vronsky.
"You've been meaning to go so long, though."
"But now it's quite decided," said Anna, looking Vronsky straight
in the face with a look which told him not to dream of the
possibility of reconciliation.
"Don't you feel sorry for that unlucky Pyevtsov?" she went on,
talking to Yashvin.
"I've never asked myself the question, Anna Arkadyevna, whether
I'm sorry for him or not. You see, all my fortune's here"--he
touched his breast pocket--"and just now I'm a wealthy man. But
today I'm going to the club, and I may come out a beggar. You
see, whoever sits down to play with me--he wants to leave me
without a shirt to my back, and so do I him. And so we fight it
out, and that's the pleasure of it."
"Well, but suppose you were married," said Anna, "how would it be
for your wife?"
Yashvin laughed.
"That's why I'm not married, and never mean to be."
"And Helsingfors?" said Vronsky, entering into the conversation
and glancing at Anna's smiling face. Meeting his eyes, Anna's
face instantly took a coldly severe expression as though she were
saying to him: "It's not forgotten. It's all the same."
"Were you really in love?" she said to Yashvin.
"Oh heavens! ever so many times! But you see, some men can play
but only so that they can always lay down their cards when the
hour of a _rendezvous_ comes, while I can take up love, but only
so as not to be late for my cards in the evening. That's how I
manage things."
"No, I didn't mean that, but the real thing." She would have
said _Helsingfors_, but would not repeat the word used by Vronsky.
Voytov, who was buying the horse, came in. Anna got up and went
out of the room.
Before leaving the house, Vronsky went into her room. She would
have pretended to be looking for something on the table, but
ashamed of making a pretense, she looked straight in his face
with cold eyes.
"What do you want?" she asked in French.
"To get the guarantee for Gambetta, I've sold him," he said, in a
tone which said more clearly than words, "I've no time for
discussing things, and it would lead to nothing."