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Chapter 28.
When Alexey Alexandrovitch reached the race-course, Anna was
already sitting in the pavilion beside Betsy, in that pavilion where all
the highest society had gathered. She caught sight of her husband in
the distance. Two men, her husband and her lover, were the two
centers of her existence, and unaided by her external senses she was
aware of their nearness. She was aware of her husband approaching a
long way off, and she could not help following him in the surging crowd
in the midst of which he was moving. She watched his progress to-
wards the pavilion, saw him now responding condescendingly to an
ingratiating bow, now exchanging friendly, nonchalant greetings with
his equals, now assiduously trying to catch the eye of some great one of
this world, and taking off his big round hat that squeezed the tips of his
ears. All these ways of his she knew, and all were hateful to her.
“Nothing but ambition, nothing but the desire to get on, that’s all there
is in his soul,” she thought; “as for these lofty ideals, love of culture,
religion, they are only so many tools for getting on.”
From his glances towards the ladies’ pavilion (he was staring straight
at her, but did not distinguish his wife in the sea of muslin, ribbons,
feathers, parasols and flowers) she saw that he was looking for her, but
she purposely avoided noticing him.
“Alexey Alexandrovitch!” Princess Betsy called to him; “I’m sure
you don’t see your wife: here she is.”
He smiled his chilly smile.
“There’s so much splendor here that one’s eyes are dazzled,” he
said, and he went into the pavilion. He smiled to his wife as a man
should smile on meeting his wife after only just parting from her, and
greeted the princess and other acquaintances, giving to each what was
due—that is to say, jesting with the ladies and dealing out friendly
greetings among the men. Below, near the pavilion, was standing an
adjutant-general of whom Alexey Alexandrovitch had a high opinion,
noted for his intelligence and culture. Alexey Alexandrovitch entered
into conversation with him.
There was an interval between the races, and so nothing hindered
conversation. The adjutant-general expressed his disapproval of races.
Alexey Alexandrovitch replied defending them. Anna heard his high,
measured tones, not losing one word, and every word struck her as
false, and stabbed her ears with pain.
When the three-mile steeplechase was beginning, she bent for-
ward and gazed with fixed eyes at Vronsky as he went up to his horse
and mounted, and at the same time she heard that loathsome, never-
ceasing voice of her husband. She was in an agony of terror for Vronsky,
but a still greater agony was the never-ceasing, as it seemed to her,
stream of her husband’s shrill voice with its familiar intonations.
“I’m a wicked woman, a lost woman,” she thought; “but I don’t like
lying, I can’t endure falsehood, while as for HIM (her husband) it’s the
breath of his life—falsehood. He knows all about it, he sees it all; what
does he care if he can talk so calmly? If he were to kill me, if he were to
kill Vronsky, I might respect him. No, all he wants is falsehood and
propriety,” Anna said to herself, not considering exactly what it was
she wanted of her husband, and how she would have liked to see him