The terrible snowstorm tore and whistled between the wheels of the carriages, over the posts and around the corner of the station. Carriages, posts, people, everything visible was covered with snow on one side and getting covered more and more. The storm would subside for a moment, but then return again in such gusts that it seemed impossible to withstand it. Meanwhile, people were running, exchanging merry talk, creaking over the planks of the platform, and ceaselessly opening and closing the big doors. The huddled shadow of a man slipped under her feet, and there was the noise of a hammer striking iron. ‘Give me the telegram!’ a gruff voice came from across the stormy darkness. ‘This way, please!’ ‘Number twenty-eight!’ various other voices shouted, and bundled-up, snow-covered people ran by. Two gentlemen with the fire of cigarettes in their mouths walked past her. She breathed in once more, to get her fill of air, and had already taken her hand from her muff to grasp the post and go into the carriage, when near her another man, in a military greatcoat, screened her from the wavering light of the lantern. She turned and in the same moment recognized the face of Vronsky. Putting his hand to his visor, he bowed to her and asked if she needed anything, if he might be of service to her. She peered at him for quite a long time without answering and, though he was standing in the shadow, she could see, or thought she could see, the expression of his face and eyes. It was again that expression of respectful admiration which had so affected her yesterday. More than once she had told herself during those recent days and again just now that for her Vronsky was one among hundreds of eternally identical young men to be met everywhere, that she would never allow herself even to think of him; but now, in the first moment of meeting him, she was overcome by a feeling of joyful pride. She had no need to ask why he was there. She knew it as certainly as if he had told her that he was there in order to be where she was.
‘I didn’t know you were going. Why are you going?’ she said, letting fall the hand that was already holding the post. And irrepressible joy and animation shone on her face.
‘Why am I going?’ he repeated, looking straight into her eyes. ‘You know I am going in order to be where you are,’ he said, ‘I cannot do otherwise.’
And just then, as if overcoming an obstacle, the wind dumped snow from the roof of the carriage, blew some torn-off sheet of iron about, and from ahead a low train whistle howled mournfully and drearily. All the terror of the blizzard seemed still more beautiful to her now. He had said the very thing that her soul desired but that her reason feared. She made no reply, and he saw a struggle in her face.
‘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.
