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Chapter 29.
Everyone was loudly expressing disapprobation, everyone was re-
peating a phrase some one had uttered—”The lions and gladiators will
be the next thing,” and everyone was feeling horrified; so that when
Vronsky fell to the ground, and Anna moaned aloud, there was nothing
very out of the way in it. But afterwards a change came over Anna’s
face which really was beyond decorum. She utterly lost her head. She
began fluttering like a caged bird, at one moment would have got up
and moved away, at the next turned to Betsy.
“Let us go, let us go!” she said.
But Betsy did not hear her. She was bending down, talking to a
general who had come up to her.
Alexey Alexandrovitch went up to Anna and courteously offered
her his arm.
“Let us go, if you like,” he said in French, but Anna was listening to
the general and did not notice her husband.
“He’s broken his leg too, so they say,” the general was saying. “This
is beyond everything.”
Without answering her husband, Anna lifted her opera glass and
gazed towards the place where Vronsky had fallen; but it was so far off,
and there was such a crowd of people about it, that she could make out
nothing. She laid down the opera glass, and would have moved away,
but at that moment an officer galloped up and made some announce-
ment to the Tsar. Anna craned forward, listening.
“Stiva! Stiva!” she cried to her brother.
But her brother did not hear her. Again she would have moved
away.
“Once more I offer you my arm if you want to be going,” said
Alexey Alexandrovitch, reaching towards her hand.
She drew back from him with aversion, and without looking in his
face answered:
“No, no, let me be, I’ll stay.”
She saw now that from the place of Vronsky’s accident an officer
was running across the course towards the pavilion. Betsy waved her
handkerchief to him. The officer brought the news that the rider was
not killed, but the horse had broken its back.
On hearing this Anna sat down hurriedly, and hid her face in her
fan. Alexey Alexandrovitch saw that she was weeping, and could not
control her tears, nor even the sobs that were shaking her bosom. Alexey
Alexandrovitch stood so as to screen her, giving her time to recover
herself.
“For the third time I offer you my arm,” he said to her after a little
time, turning to her. Anna gazed at him and did not know what to say.
Princess Betsy came to her rescue.
“No, Alexey Alexandrovitch; I brought Anna and I promised to
take her home,” put in Betsy.
“Excuse me, princess,” he said, smiling courteously but looking her
very firmly in the face, “but I see that Anna’s not very well, and I wish
her to come home with me.”
Anna looked about her in a frightened way, got up submissively,
and laid her hand on her husband’s arm.