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turned towards the stream. Alexey Alexandrovitch took no interest in
the race, and so he did not watch the racers, but fell listlessly to scan-
ning the spectators with his weary eyes. His eyes rested upon Anna.
Her face was white and set. She was obviously seeing nothing and
no one but one man. Her hand had convulsively clutched her fan, and
she held her breath. He looked at her and hastily turned away, scruti-
nizing other faces.
“But here’s this lady too, and others very much moved as well; it’s
very natural,” Alexey Alexandrovitch told himself. He tried not to look
at her, but unconsciously his eyes were drawn to her. He examined that
face again, trying not to read what was so plainly written on it, and
against his own will, with horror read on it what he did not want to
know.
The first fall—Kuzovlev’s, at the stream—agitated everyone, but
Alexey Alexandrovitch saw distinctly on Anna’s pale, triumphant face
that the man she was watching had not fallen. When, after Mahotin
and Vronsky had cleared the worst barrier, the next officer had been
thrown straight on his head at it and fatally injured, and a shudder of
horror passed over the whole public, Alexey Alexandrovitch saw that
Anna did not even notice it, and had some difficulty in realizing what
they were talking of about her. But more and more often, and with
greater persistence, he watched her. Anna, wholly engrossed as she
was with the race, became aware of her husband’s cold eyes fixed upon
her from one side.
She glanced round for an instant, looked inquiringly at him, and
with a slight frown turned away again.
“Ah, I don’t care!” she seemed to say to him, and she did not once
glance at him again.
The race was an unlucky one, and of the seventeen officers who
rode in it more than half were thrown and hurt. Towards the end of the
race everyone was in a state of agitation, which was intensified by the
fact that the Tsar was displeased.