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“Yes, it was like going back home when I put on a black coat,”
answered Vronsky, smiling and slowly taking out his opera glass.
“Well, I’ll own I envy you there. When I come back from abroad
and put on this,” he touched his epaulets, “I regret my freedom.”
Serpuhovskoy had long given up all hope of Vronsky’s career, but
he liked him as before, and was now particularly cordial to him.
“What a pity you were not in time for the first act!”
Vronsky, listening with one ear, moved his opera glass from the
stalls and scanned the boxes. Near a lady in a turban and a bald old
man, who seemed to wave angrily in the moving opera glass, Vronsky
suddenly caught sight of Anna’s head, proud, strikingly beautiful, and
smiling in the frame of lace. She was in the fifth box, twenty paces from
him. She was sitting in front, and slightly turning, was saying some-
thing to Yashvin. The setting of her head on her handsome, broad
shoulders, and the restrained excitement and brilliance of her eyes and
her whole face reminded him of her just as he had seen her at the ball
in Moscow. But he felt utterly different towards her beauty now. In
his feeling for her now there was no element of mystery, and so her
beauty, though it attracted him even more intensely than before, gave
him now a sense of injury. She was not looking in his direction, but
Vronsky felt that she had seen him already.
When Vronsky turned the opera glass again in that direction, he
noticed that Princess Varvara was particularly red, and kept laughing
unnaturally and looking round at the next box. Anna, folding her fan
and tapping it on the red velvet, was gazing away and did not see, and
obviously did not wish to see, what was taking place in the next box.
Yashvin’s face wore the expression which was common when he was
losing at cards. Scowling, he sucked the left end of his mustache fur-
ther and further into his mouth, and cast sidelong glances at the next
box.
In that box on the left were the Kartasovs. Vronsky knew them,
and knew that Anna was acquainted with them. Madame Kartasova,
a thin little woman, was standing up in her box, and, her back turned
upon Anna, she was putting on a mantle that her husband was hold-
ing for her. Her face was pale and angry, and she was talking excitedly.
Kartasov, a fat, bald man, was continually looking round at Anna, while
he attempted to soothe his wife. When the wife had gone out, the
husband lingered a long while, and tried to catch Anna’s eye, obviously
anxious to bow to her. But Anna, with unmistakable intention, avoided
noticing him, and talked to Yashvin, whose cropped head was bent
down to her. Kartasov went out without making his salutation, and the
box was left empty.
Vronsky could not understand exactly what had passed between
the Kartasovs and Anna, but he saw that something humiliating for
Anna had happened. He knew this both from what he had seen, and
most of all from the face of Anna, who, he could see, was taxing every
nerve to carry through the part she had taken up. And in maintaining
this attitude of external composure she was completely successful.
Anyone who did not know her and her circle, who had not heard all the
utterances of the women expressive of commiseration, indignation,
and amazement, that she should show herself in society, and show
herself so conspicuously with her lace and her beauty, would have
admired the serenity and loveliness of this woman without a suspicion
that she was undergoing the sensations of a man in the stocks.
Knowing that something had happened, but not knowing pre-
cisely what, Vronsky felt a thrill of agonizing anxiety, and hoping to find
out something, he went towards his brother’s box. Purposely choosing
the way round furthest from Anna’s box, he jostled as he came out