480 481
remembering that gesture—terrible even in memory—when she had
clutched her hair in both hands—she said good-bye and went away.
Chapter 19.
In spite of Vronsky’s apparently frivolous life in society, he was a
man who hated irregularity. In early youth in the Corps of Pages, he
had experienced the humiliation of a refusal, when he had tried, being
in difficulties, to borrow money, and since then he had never once put
himself in the same position again.
In order to keep his affairs in some sort of order, he used about five
times a year (more or less frequently, according to circumstances) to
shut himself up alone and put all his affairs into definite shape. This
he used to call his day of reckoning or faire la lessive.
On waking up the day after the races, Vronsky put on a white linen
coat, and without shaving or taking his bath, he distributed about the
table moneys, bills, and letters, and set to work. Petritsky, who knew he
was ill-tempered on such occasions, on waking up and seeing his com-
rade at the writing-table, quietly dressed and went out without getting
in his way.
Every man who knows to the minutest details all the complexity of
the conditions surrounding him, cannot help imagining that the com-
plexity of these conditions, and the difficulty of making them clear, is
something exceptional and personal, peculiar to himself, and never
supposes that others are surrounded by just as complicated an array of
personal affairs as he is. So indeed it seemed to Vronsky. And not with