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character, that it is courting young girls with no intention of marriage,
and that such courting is one of the evil actions common among bril-
liant young men such as he was. It seemed to him that he was the first
who had discovered this pleasure, and he was enjoying his discovery.
If he could have heard what her parents were saying that evening,
if he could have put himself at the point ov view of the family and have
heard that Kitty would be unhappy if he did not marry her, he would
have been greatly astonished, and would not have believed it. He
could not believe that what gave such great and delicate pleasure to
him, and above all to her, could be wrong. Still less could he have
believed that he ought to marry.
Marriage had never presented itself to him as a possibility. He not
only disliked family life, but a family, and especially a husband was, in
accordance with the views general in the bachelor world in which he
lived, conceived as something alien, repellant, and, above all, ridicu-
lous.
But though Vronsky had not the least suspicion what the parents
were saying, he felt on coming away from the Shtcherbatskys’ that the
secret spiritual bond which existed between him and Kitty had grown
so much stronger that evening that some step must be taken. But what
step could and ought to be taken he could not imagine.
“What is so exquisite,” he thought, as he returned from the
Shtcherbatskys’, carrying away with him, as he always did, a delicious
feeling of purity and freshness, arising partly from the fact that he had
not been smoking for a whole evening, and with it a new feeling of
tenderness at her love for him—”what is so exquisite is that not a word
has been said by me or by her, but we understand each other so well in
this unseen language of looks and tones, that this evening more clearly
than ever she told me she loves me. And how secretly, simply, and
most of all, how trustfully! I feel myself better, purer. I feel that I have
a heart, and that there is a great deal of good in me. Those sweet, loving
eyes! When she said: Indeed I do...’
“Well, what then? Oh, nothing. It’s good for me, and good for her.”
And he began wondering where to finish the evening.
He passed in review of the places he might go to. “Club? a game of
bezique, champagne with Ignatov? No, I’m not going. Chateau des
Fleurs; there I shall find Oblonsky, songs, the cancan. No, I’m sick of it.
That’s why I like the Shtcherbatskys’, that I’m growing better. I’ll go
home.” He went straight to his room at Dussot’s Hotel, ordered supper,
and then undressed, and as soon as his head touched the pillow, fell
into a sound sleep.