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governess, his nurse,—all did not merely dislike Vronsky, but looked on
him with horror and aversion, though they never said anything about
him, while his mother looked on him as her greatest friend.
“What does it mean? Who is he? How ought I to love him? If I
don’t know, it’s my fault; either I’m stupid or a naughty boy,” thought
the child. And this was what caused his dubious, inquiring, sometimes
hostile, expression, and the shyness and uncertainty which Vronsky
found so irksome. This child’s presence always and infallibly called up
in Vronsky that strange feeling of inexplicable loathing which he had
experienced of late. This child’s presence called up both in Vronsky
and in Anna a feeling akin to the feeling of a sailor who sees by the
compass that the direction in which he is swiftly moving is far from the
right one, but that to arrest his motion is not in his power, that every
instant is carrying him further and further away, and that to admit to
himself his deviation from the right direction is the same as admitting
his certain ruin.
This child, with his innocent outlook upon life, was the compass
that showed them the point to which they had departed from what
they knew, but did not want to know.
This time Seryozha was not at home, and she was completely
alone. She was sitting on the terrace waiting for the return of her son,
who had gone out for his walk and been caught in the rain. She had
sent a manservant and a maid out to look for him. Dressed in a white
gown, deeply embroidered, she was sitting in a corner of the terrace
behind some flowers, and did not hear him. Bending her curly black
head, she pressed her forehead against a cool watering pot that stood
on the parapet, and both her lovely hands, with the rings he knew so
well, clasped the pot. The beauty of her whole figure, her head, her
neck, her hands, struck Vronsky every time as something new and
unexpected. He stood still, gazing at her in ecstasy. But, directly he
would have made a step to come nearer to her, she was aware of his
presence, pushed away the watering pot, and turned her flushed face
towards him.
“What’s the matter? You are ill?” he said to her in French, going up
to her. He would have run to her, but remembering that there might be
spectators, he looked round towards the balcony door, and reddened a
little, as he always reddened, feeling that he had to be afraid and be on
his guard.
“No, I’m quite well,” she said, getting up and pressing his out-
stretched hand tightly. “I did not expect...thee.”
“Mercy! what cold hands!” he said.
“You startled me,” she said. “I’m alone, and expecting Seryozha;
he’s out for a walk; they’ll come in from this side.”
But, in spite of her efforts to be calm, her lips were quivering.
“Forgive me for coming, but I couldn’t pass the day without seeing
you,” he went on, speaking French, as he always did to avoid using the
stiff Russian plural form, so impossibly frigid between them, and the
dangerously intimate singular.
“Forgive you? I’m so glad!”
“But you’re ill or worried,” he went on, not letting go her hands and
bending over her. “What were you thinking of?”
“Always the same thing,” she said, with a smile.
She spoke the truth. If ever at any moment she had been asked
what she was thinking of, she could have answered truly: of the same
thing, of her happiness and her unhappiness. She was thinking, just
when he came upon her of this: why was it, she wondered, that to
others, to Betsy (she knew of her secret connection with Tushkevitch)
it was all easy, while to her it was such torture? Today this thought