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To Vronsky, at any rate, it seemed that she understood all he felt at
that moment, looking at her.
Directly Vronsky went towards her, she drew in a deep breath, and,
turning back her prominent eye till the white looked bloodshot, she
started at the approaching figures from the opposite side, shaking her
muzzle, and shifting lightly from one leg to the other.
“There, you see how fidgety she is,” said the Englishman.
“There, darling! There!” said Vronsky, going up to the mare and
speaking soothingly to her.
But the nearer he came, the more excited she grew. Only when he
stood by her head, she was suddenly quieter, while the muscles quiv-
ered under her soft, delicate coat. Vronsky patted her strong neck,
straightened over her sharp withers a stray lock of her mane that had
fallen on the other side, and moved his face near her dilated nostrils,
transparent as a bat’s wing. She drew a loud breath and snorted out
through her tense nostrils, started, pricked up her sharp ear, and put
out her strong, black lip towards Vronsky, as though she would nip hold
of his sleeve. But remembering the muzzle, she shook it and again
began restlessly stamping one after the other her shapely legs.
“Quiet, darling, quiet!” he said, patting her again over her hind-
quarters; and with a glad sense that his mare was in the best possible
condition, he went out of the horse-box.
The mare’s excitement had infected Vronsky. He felt that his heart
was throbbing, and that he, too, like the mare, longed to move, to bite;
it was both dreadful and delicious.
“Well, I rely on you, then,” he said to the Englishman; “half-past
six on the ground.”
“All right,” said the Englishman. “Oh, where are you going, my
lord?” he asked suddenly, using the title “my lord,” which he had scarcely
ever used before.
Vronsky in amazement raised his head, and stared, as he knew
how to stare, not into the Englishman’s eyes, but at his forehead, as-
tounded at the impertinence of his question. But realizing that in
asking this the Englishman had been looking at him not as an em-
ployer, but as a jockey, he answered:
“I’ve got to go to Bryansky’s; I shall be home within an hour.”
“How often I’m asked that question today!” he said to himself, and
he blushed, a thing which rarely happened to him. The Englishman
looked gravely at him; and, as though he, too, knew where Vronsky was
going, he added:
“The great thing’s to keep quiet before a race,” said he; “don’t get
out of temper or upset about anything.”
“All right,” answered Vronsky, smiling; and jumping into his car-
riage, he told the man to drive to Peterhof.
Before he had driven many paces away, the dark clouds that had
been threatening rain all day broke, and there was a heavy downpour
of rain.
“What a pity!” thought Vronsky, putting up the roof of the carriage.
“It was muddy before, now it will be a perfect swamp.” As he sat in
solitude in the closed carriage, he took out his mother’s letter and his
brother’s note, and read them through.
Yes, it was the same thing over and over again. Everyone, his
mother, his brother, everyone thought fit to interfere in the affairs of his
heart. This interference aroused in him a feeling of angry hatred—a
feeling he had rarely known before. “What business is it of theirs?
Why does everybody feel called upon to concern himself about me?
And why do they worry me so? Just because they see that this is
something they can’t understand. If it were a common, vulgar, worldly