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teers, from which it would appear that they were capital fellows.
At a big station at a town the volunteers were again greeted with
shouts and singing, again men and women with collecting boxes ap-
peared, and provincial ladies brought bouquets to the volunteers and
followed them into the refreshment room; but all this was on a much
smaller and feebler scale than in Moscow.
Chapter 4.
While the train was stopping at the provincial town, Sergey
Ivanovitch did not go to the refreshment room, but walked up and
down the platform.
The first time he passed Vronsky’s compartment he noticed that
the curtain was drawn over the window; but as he passed it the second
time he saw the old countess at the window. She beckoned to Koznishev.
“I’m going, you see, taking him as far as Kursk,” she said.
“Yes, so I heard,” said Sergey Ivanovitch, standing at her window
and peeping in. “What a noble act on his part!” he added, noticing that
Vronsky was not in the compartment.
“Yes, after his misfortune, what was there for him to do?”
“What a terrible thing it was!” said Sergey Ivanovitch.
“Ah, what I have been through! But do get in.... Ah, what I have
been through!” she repeated, when Sergey Ivanovitch had got in and
sat down beside her. “You can’t conceive it! For six weeks he did not
speak to anyone, and would not touch food except when I implored
him. And not for one minute could we leave him alone. We took away
everything he could have used against himself. We lived on the ground
floor, but there was no reckoning on anything. You know, of course, that
he had shot himself once already on her account,” she said, and the old
lady’s eyelashes twitched at the recollection. “Yes, hers was the fitting