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without answering, and, in spite of the shadow in which he was stand-
ing, she saw, or fancied she saw, both the expression of his face and his
eyes. It was again that expression of reverential ecstasy which had so
worked upon her the day before. More than once she had told herself
during the past few days, and again only a few moments before, that
Vronsky was for her only one of the hundreds of young men, forever
exactly the same, that are met everywhere, that she would never allow
herself to bestow a thought upon him. But now at the first instant of
meeting him, she was seized by a feeling of joyful pride. She had no
need to ask why he had come. she knew as certainly as if he had told
her that he was here to be where she was.
“I didn’t know you were going. What are you coming for?” she said,
letting fall the hand with which she had grasped the door post. And
irrepressible delight and eagerness shone in her face.
“What am I coming for?” he repeated, looking straight into her
eyes. “You know that I have come to be where you are,” he said; “I can’t
help it.”
At that moment the wind, as it were, surmounting all obstacles,
sent the snow flying from the carriage roofs, and clanked some sheet of
iron it had torn off, while the hoarse whistle of the engine roared in
front, plaintively and gloomily. All the awfulness of the storm seemed
to her more splendid now. He had said what her soul longed to hear,
though she feared it with her reason. She made no answer, and in her
face he saw conflict.
“Forgive me, if you dislike what I said,” he said humbly.
He had spoken courteously, deferentially, yet so firmly, so stub-
bornly, that for a long while she could make no answer.
“It’s wrong, what you say, and I beg you, if you’re a good man, to
forget what you’ve said, as I forget it,” she said at last.
“Not one word, not one gesture of yours shall I, could I, ever for-
get...”
“Enough, enough!” she cried trying assiduously to give a stern ex-
pression to her face, into which he was gazing greedily. And clutching
at the cold door post, she clambered up the steps and got rapidly into
the corridor of the carriage. But in the little corridor she paused, going
over in her imagination what had happened. Though she could not
recall her own words or his, she realized instinctively that the momen-
tary conversation had brought them fearfully closer; and she was panic-
stricken and blissful at it. After standing still a few seconds, she went
into the carriage and sat down in her place. The overstrained condition
which had tormented her before did not only come back, but was
intensified, and reached such a pitch that she was afraid every minute
that something would snap within her from the excessive tension. She
did not sleep all night. But in that nervous tension, and in the visions
that filled her imagination, there was nothing disagreeable or gloomy:
on the contrary there was something blissful, glowing, and exhilarating.
Towards morning Anna sank into a doze, sitting in her place, and when
she waked it was daylight and the train was near Petersburg. At once
thoughts of home, of husband and of son, and the details of that day
and the following came upon her.
At Petersburg, as soon as the train stopped and she got out, the
first person that attracted her attention was her husband. “Oh, mercy!
why do his ears look like that?” she thought, looking at his frigid and
imposing figure, and especially the ears that struck her at the moment
as propping up the brim of his round hat. Catching sight of her, he
came to meet her, his lips falling into their habitual sarcastic smile, and
his big, tired eyes looking straight at her. An unpleasant sensation
gripped at her heart when she met his obstinate and weary glance, as