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Chapter 28.
On arriving in Petersburg, Vronsky and Anna stayed at one of the
best hotels; Vronsky apart in a lower story, Anna above with her child,
its nurse, and her maid, in a large suite of four rooms.
On the day of his arrival Vronsky went to his brother’s. There he
found his mother, who had come from Moscow on business. His mother
and sister-in-law greeted him as usual: they asked him about his stay
abroad, and talked of their common acquaintances, but did not let drop
a single word in allusion to his connection with Anna. His brother
came the next morning to see Vronsky, and of his own accord asked him
about her, and Alexey Vronsky told him directly that he looked upon
his connection with Madame Karenina as marriage; that he hoped to
arrange a divorce, and then to marry her, and until then he considered
her as much a wife as any other wife, and he begged him to tell their
mother and his wife so.
“If the world disapproves, I don’t care,” said Vronsky; “but if my
relations want to be on terms of relationship with me, they will have to
be on the same terms with my wife.”
The elder brother, who had always a respect for his younger
brother’s judgment, could not well tell whether he was right or not till
the world had decided the question; for his part he had nothing against
it, and with Alexey he went up to see Anna.
Before his brother, as before everyone, Vronsky addressed Anna
with a certain formality, treating her as he might a very intimate friend,
but it was understood that his brother knew their real relations, and
they talked about Anna’s going to Vronsky’s estate.
In spite of all his social experience Vronsky was, in consequence of
the new position in which he was placed, laboring under a strange
misapprehension. One would have thought he must have understood
that society was closed for him and Anna; but now some vague ideas
had sprung up in his brain that this was only the case in old-fashioned
days, and that now with the rapidity of modern progress (he had un-
consciously become by now a partisan of every sort of progress) the
views of society had changed, and that the question whether they
would be received in society was not a foregone conclusion. “Of course,”
he thought, “she would not be received at court, but intimate friends
can and must look at it in the proper light.” One may sit for several
hours at a stretch with one’s legs crossed in the same position, if one
knows that there’s nothing to prevent one’s changing one’s position;
but if a man knows that he must remain sitting so with crossed legs,
then cramps come on, the legs begin to twitch and to strain towards the
spot to which one would like to draw them. This was what Vronsky was
experiencing in regard to the world. Though at the bottom of his heart
he knew that the world was shut on them, he put it to the test whether
the world had not changed by now and would not receive them. But
he very quickly perceived that though the world was open for him
personally, it was closed for Anna. Just as in the game of cat and
mouse, the hands raised for him were dropped to bar the way for
Anna.
One of the first ladies of Petersburg society whom Vronsky saw
was his cousin Betsy.