‘I don’t even want to know!’ she almost shouted. ‘I don’t. Do I repent of what I’ve done? No, no, no! If it were all to be done over again, it would be the same. For us, for me and for you, only one thing matters: whether we love each other. There are no other considerations. Why do we live separately here and not see each other? Why can’t I go? I love you, and it makes no difference to me,’ she said in Russian, glancing at him with eyes that had a peculiar, incomprehensible gleam, ‘as long as you haven’t changed. Why don’t you look at me?’
He looked at her. He saw all the beauty of her face and of her attire, which had always been so becoming to her. But now it was precisely her beauty and elegance that irritated him.
‘My feeling cannot change, you know that, but I ask you not to go, I implore you,’ he said again in French, with a tender plea in his voice, but with coldness in his eyes.
She did not hear the words but saw the coldness of his eyes and answered with irritation:
‘And I ask you to tell me why I shouldn’t go.’
‘Because it may cause you to be ...’ he faltered.
‘I understand nothing. Yashvin
XXXIII
Vronsky experienced for the first time a feeling of vexation, almost of anger, with Anna for her deliberate refusal to understand her position. This feeling was intensified by his being unable to explain to her the cause of his vexation. If he had told her directly what he thought, he would have said: ‘To appear in the theatre in that attire and with that notorious princess is not only to acknowledge your position as a ruined woman but also to throw down a challenge to society - that is, to renounce it for ever.’
He could not say that to her. ‘But how can she not understand it, and what is going on inside her?’ he said to himself. He felt that his respect for her was decreasing at the same time as his consciousness of her beauty increased.
Frowning, he returned to his rooms and, sitting down by Yashvin, who had stretched his long legs out on a chair and was drinking cognac with seltzer water, ordered the same for himself.
‘You mentioned Lankovsky’s Powerful. A fine horse, I advise you to buy him,’ Yashvin said, glancing at his friend’s gloomy face. ‘He’s got a low-slung rump, but for legs and head you couldn’t ask for better.’
‘I think I’ll take him,’ replied Vronsky.
The conversation about horses interested him, but he did not forget Anna for a moment, involuntarily listened for the sound of steps in the corridor and kept glancing at the clock on the mantelpiece.
‘Anna Arkadyevna asked me to tell you, sir, that she has gone to the theatre.’
Yashvin, having poured another glass of cognac into the fizzy water, drank it and got up, buttoning his jacket.
‘Well, shall we go?’ he said, smiling slightly under his moustache, and showing by this smile that he understood the reason for Vronsky’s gloominess but attached no importance to it.
‘I’m not going,’ Vronsky said gloomily.
‘But I have to go, I promised. Well, good-bye. Or else come to the stalls, you can take Krasinsky’s seat,’ Yashvin added on his way out.
‘No, I’ve got things to do.’
‘A wife’s a worry, a non-wife’s even worse,’ thought Yashvin as he left the hotel.
Vronsky, left alone, got up from his chair and began pacing the room.
‘What’s today? The fourth subscription ... Yegor’s there with his wife, and probably my mother. That means all Petersburg is there. She’s gone in now, taken off her fur coat, come out to the light. Tushkevich, Yashvin, Princess Varvara ...’ he pictured it to himself. ‘What about me? Am I afraid, or did I pass it on to Tushkevich to chaperone her? However you look at it, it’s stupid, stupid ... And why does she put me in such a position?’ he said, waving his arm.
In that movement he brushed against the little table on which the seltzer water and decanter of cognac stood and almost knocked it over. He went to catch it, dropped it, kicked the table in vexation, and rang the bell.
‘If you want to work for me,’ he said to the valet as he came in, ‘then remember your duty. No more of this. You must clean it up.’
The valet, feeling that it was not his fault, was about to vindicate himself but, glancing at his master, realized from his look that he had better keep silent; squirming, he hastily got down on the rug and began sorting out the whole glasses and bottles from the broken.
‘That’s not for you to do. Send a lackey to clean up, and lay out a tailcoat for me.’
*
