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?’
By addressing his wife in this way, he made it clear to Vronsky that he wished to be left alone, and, turning to him, he touched his hat; but Vronsky addressed Anna Arkadyevna:
‘I hope to have the honour of calling on you,’ he said.
Alexei Alexandrovich looked at Vronsky with his weary eyes.
‘I’d be delighted,’ he said coldly, ‘we receive on Mondays.’ Then, having dismissed Vronsky altogether, he said to his wife: ‘And how good it is that I had precisely half an hour to meet you and that I have been able to show you my tenderness,’ continuing in the same bantering tone.
‘You emphasize your tenderness far too much for me to value it greatly,’ she said in the same bantering tone, involuntarily listening to the sound of Vronsky’s footsteps behind them. ‘But what do I care?’ she thought and began asking her husband how Seryozha had spent the time without her.
‘Oh, wonderfully! Mariette says he was very nice and ... I must upset you ... didn’t miss you, unlike your husband. But merci once again, my dear, for the gift of one day. Our dear samovar will be delighted.’ (He called the celebrated Countess Lydia Ivanovna ‘samovar’, because she was always getting excited and heated up about things.) ‘She’s been asking about you. And you know, if I may be so bold as to advise you, you might just go to see her today. She takes everything to heart so. Now, besides all her other troubles, she’s concerned with reconciling the Oblonskys.’
Countess Lydia Ivanovna was her husband’s friend and the centre of one of the circles of Petersburg society with which Anna was most closely connected through her husband.
‘I did write to her.’
‘But she needs everything in detail. Go, if you’re not tired, my dear. Well, Kondraty will take you in the carriage, and I’m off to the committee. I won’t be alone at dinner any more,’ Alexei Alexandrovich went on, no longer in a bantering tone. ‘You wouldn’t believe how I’ve got used to ...’
And, pressing her hand for a long time, with a special smile, he helped her into the carriage.
XXXII
The first person to meet Anna at home was her son. He came running down the stairs to her, despite the cries of the governess, and with desperate rapture shouted: ‘Mama, mama!’ Rushing to her, he hung on her neck.
‘I told you it was mama!’ he cried to the governess. ‘I knew it!’
