338 339
“I’ll send to him and find out, and let you know,” Betsy whispered
to her.
As they left the pavilion, Alexey Alexandrovitch, as always, talked
to those he met, and Anna had, as always, to talk and answer; but she
was utterly beside herself, and moved hanging on her husband’s arm
as though in a dream.
“Is he killed or not? Is it true? Will he come or not? Shall I see him
today?” she was thinking.
She took her seat in her husband’s carriage in silence, and in silence
drove out of the crowd of carriages. I spite of all he had seen, Alexey
Alexandrovitch still did not allow himself to consider his wife’s real
condition. He merely saw the outward symptoms. He saw that she
was behaving unbecomingly, and considered it his duty to tell her so.
But it was very difficult for him not to say more, to tell her nothing but
that. He opened his mouth to tell her she had behaved unbecomingly,
but he could not help saying something utterly different.
“What an inclination we all have, though, for these cruel spec-
tacles,” he said. “I observe...”
“Eh? I don’t understand,” said Anna contemptuously.
He was offended, and at once began to say what he had meant to
say.
“I am obliged to tell you,” he began.
“So now we are to have it out,” she thought, and she felt frightened.
“I am obliged to tell you that your behavior has been unbecoming
today,” he said to her in French.
“In what way has my behavior been unbecoming?” she said aloud,
turning her head swiftly and looking him straight in the face, not with
the bright expression that seemed covering something, but with a look
of determination, under which she concealed with difficulty the dis-
may she was feeling.
“Mind,” he said, pointing to the open window opposite the coach-
man.
He got up and pulled up the window.
“What did you consider unbecoming?” she repeated.
“The despair you were unable to conceal at the accident to one of
the riders.”
He waited for her to answer, but she was silent, looking straight
before her.
“I have already begged you so to conduct yourself in society that
even malicious tongues can find nothing to say against you. There was
a time when I spoke of your inward attitude, but I am not speaking of
that now. Now I speak only of your external attitude. You have be-
haved improperly, and I would wish it not to occur again.”
She did not hear half of what he was saying; she felt panic-stricken
before him, and was thinking whether it was true that Vronsky was not
killed. Was it of him they were speaking when they said the rider was
unhurt, but the horse had broken its back? She merely smiled with a
pretense of irony when he finished, and made no reply, because she
had not heard what he said. Alexey Alexandrovitch had begun to
speak boldly, but as he realized plainly what he was speaking of, the
dismay she was feeling infected him too. He saw the smile, and a
strange misapprehension came over him.
“She is smiling at my suspicions. Yes, she will tell me directly what
she told me before; that there is no foundation for my suspicions, that
it’s absurd.”
At that moment, when the revelation of everything was hanging
over him, there was nothing he expected so much as that she would
answer mockingly as before that his suspicions were absurd and ut-