‘Forgive me if what I have said is unpleasant for you,’ he said submissively.
He spoke courteously, respectfully, but so firmly and stubbornly that for a long time she was unable to make any reply.
‘What you’re saying is bad, and I beg you, if you are a good man, to forget it, as I will forget it,’ she said at last.
‘Not one of your words, not one of your movements will I ever forget, and I cannot...’
‘Enough, enough!’ she cried out, trying in vain to give a stern expression to her face, into which he peered greedily. And, placing her hand on the cold post, she went up the steps and quickly entered the vestibule of the carriage. But in this little vestibule she stopped, pondering in her imagination what had just happened. Though she could remember neither his words nor her own, she sensed that this momentary conversation had brought them terribly close, and this made her both frightened and happy. She stood for a few seconds, went into the carriage, and took her seat. The magical, strained condition that had tormented her at the beginning not only renewed itself, but grew stronger and reached a point where she feared that something wound too tight in her might snap at any moment. She did not sleep all night. But in that strain and those reveries that filled her imagination there was nothing unpleasant or gloomy; on the contrary, there was something joyful, burning, and exciting. Towards morning Anna dozed off in her seat, and when she woke up it was already white, bright, and the train was pulling into Petersburg. At once thoughts of her home, her husband, her son, and the cares of the coming day and those to follow surrounded her.
In Petersburg, as soon as the train stopped and she got off, the first face that caught her attention was that of her husband. ‘Ah, my God! what’s happened with his ears?’ she thought, looking at his cold and imposing figure and especially struck now by the cartilage of his ears propping up the brim of his round hat. Seeing her, he came to meet her, composing his lips into his habitual mocking smile and looking straight at her with his big weary eyes. Some unpleasant feeling gnawed at her heart as she met his unwavering and weary gaze, as if she had expected him to look different. She was especially struck by the feeling of dissatisfaction with herself that she experienced on meeting him. This was an old, familiar feeling, similar to that state of pretence she experienced in her relations with her husband; but previously she had not noticed it, while now she was clearly and painfully aware of it.
‘Yes, as you see, your tender husband, tender as in the second year of marriage, is burning with desire to see you,’ he said in his slow, high voice and in the tone he almost always used with her, a tone in mockery of someone who might actually mean what he said.
‘Is Seryozha well?’ she asked.
‘Is that all the reward I get for my ardour?’ he said. ‘He’s well, he’s well ...’
XXXI
Vronsky did not even try to fall asleep all that night. He sat in his seat, now staring straight ahead of him, now looking over the people going in and out, and if he had struck and troubled strangers before by his air of imperturbable calm, he now seemed still more proud and self-sufficient. He looked at people as if they were things. A nervous young man across from him, who served on the circuit court, came to hate him for that look. The young man lit a cigarette from his, tried talking to him, and even jostled him, to let him feel that he was not a thing but a human being, but Vronsky went on looking at him as at a lamppost, and the young man grimaced, feeling that he was losing his self-possession under the pressure of this non-recognition of himself as a human being and was unable to fall asleep because of it.
Vronsky did not see anything or anybody. He felt himself a king, not because he thought he had made an impression on Anna - he did not believe that yet - but because the impression she had made on him gave him happiness and pride.
What would come of it all, he did not know and did not even consider. He felt that all his hitherto dissipated and dispersed forces were gathered and directed with terrible energy towards one blissful goal. And he was happy in that. He knew only that he had told her the truth, that he was going where she was, that the whole happiness of life, the sole meaning of life, he now found in seeing and hearing her. And when he got off the train at Bologoye for a drink of seltzer water, and saw Anna, his first words involuntarily told her just what he thought. And he was glad he had said it to her, that she now knew it and was thinking about it. He did not sleep all night. Returning to his carriage, he kept running through all the attitudes in which he had seen her, all her words, and in his imagination floated pictures of the possible future, making his heart stand still.
When he got off the train in Petersburg he felt animated and fresh after his sleepless night, as after a cold bath. He stopped by his carriage, waiting for her to get out. ‘One more time,’ he said to himself, smiling involuntarily, ‘I’ll see her walk, her face; she’ll say something, turn her head, look, perhaps smile.’ But even before seeing her, he saw her husband, whom the stationmaster was courteously conducting through the crowd. ‘Ah, yes, the husband!’ Only now did Vronsky understand clearly for the first time that the husband was a person connected with her. He knew she had a husband, but had not believed in his existence and fully believed in it only when he saw him, with his head, his shoulders, his legs in black trousers; and especially when he saw this husband calmly take her arm with a proprietary air.
Seeing Alexei Alexandrovich with his fresh Petersburg face41, his sternly self-confident figure, his round hat and slightly curved back, he believed in him and experienced an unpleasant feeling, like that of a man suffering from thirst who comes to a spring and finds in it a dog, a sheep or a pig who has both drunk and muddied the water. The gait of Alexei Alexandrovich, swinging his whole pelvis and his blunt feet, was especially offensive to Vronsky. Only for himself did he acknowledge the unquestionable right to love her. But she was still the same, and her appearance still affected him in the same way, physically reviving, arousing his soul, and filling it with happiness. He told his German footman, who came running from second class, to take his things and go, and he himself went up to her. He saw the first meeting of husband and wife and, with the keen-sightedness of a man in love, noticed signs of the slight constraint with which she talked to her husband. ‘No, she does not and cannot love him,’ he decided to himself.
As he came up to Anna Arkadyevna from behind, he noticed with joy that she, sensing his approach, looked around and, recognizing him, turned back to her husband.
‘Did you have a good night?’ he said, bowing to her and her husband together, and giving Alexei Alexandrovich a chance to take this bow to his own account and recognize him or not, as he wished.
‘Very good, thank you,’ she replied.
Her face seemed tired, and there was none of that play of animation in it which begged to come out now in her smile, now in her eyes; yet for a moment, as she glanced at him, something flashed in her eyes and, although this fire went out at once, he was happy in that moment. She looked at her husband to see whether he knew Vronsky. Alexei Alexandrovich was looking at Vronsky with displeasure, absently trying to recall who he was. Vronsky’s calm and self-confidence here clashed like steel against stone with the cold self-confidence of Alexei Alexandrovich.
‘Count Vronsky,’ said Anna.
‘Ah! We’re acquainted, I believe,’ Alexei Alexandrovich said with indifference, offering his hand. ‘You went with the mother and came back with the son,’ he said, articulating distinctly, as if counting out each word. ‘You must be returning from leave?’ he said and, without waiting for an answer, addressed his wife in his bantering tone: ‘So, were there many tears shed in Moscow over the parting?’