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it before?” Anna asked herself. “Or has she been very much irritated
today? It’s really ludicrous; her object is doing good; she a Christian,
yet she’s always angry; and she always has enemies, and always en-
emies in the name of Christianity and doing good.”
After Countess Lidia Ivanovna another friend came, the wife of a
chief secretary, who told her all the news of the town. At three o’clock
she too went away, promising to come to dinner. Alexey Alexandrovitch
was at the ministry. Anna, left alone, spent the time till dinner in
assisting at her son’s dinner (he dined apart from his parents) and in
putting her things in order, and in reading and answering the notes
and letters which had accumulated on her table.
The feeling of causeless shame, which she had felt on the journey,
and her excitement, too, had completely vanished. In the habitual
conditions of her life she felt again resolute and irreproachable.
She recalled with wonder her state of mind on the previous day.
“What was it? Nothing. Vronsky said something silly, which it was
easy to put a stop to, and I answered as I ought to have done. To speak
of it to my husband would be unnecessary and out of the question. To
speak of it would be to attach importance to what has no importance.”
She remembered how she had told her husband of what was almost a
declaration made her at Petersburg by a young man, one of her
husband’s subordinates, and how Alexey Alexandrovitch had answered
that every woman living in the world was exposed to such incidents,
but that he had the fullest confidence in her tact, and could never
lower her and himself by jealousy. “So then there’s no reason to speak
of it? And indeed, thank God, there’s nothing to speak of,” she told
herself.
Chapter 33.
Alexey Alexandrovitch came back from the meeting of the minis-
ters at four o’clock, but as often happened, he had not time no come in
to her. He went into his study to see the people waiting for him with
petitions, and to sign some papers brought him by his chief secretary.
At dinner time (there were always a few people dining with the
Karenins) there arrived an old lady, a cousin of Alexey Alexandrovitch,
the chief secretary of the department and his wife, and a young man
who had been recommended to Alexey Alexandrovitch for the service.
Anna went into the drawing room to receive these guests. Precisely at
five o’clock, before the bronze Peter the First clock had struck the fifth
stroke, Alexey Alexandrovitch came in, wearing a white tie and evening
coat with two stars, as he had to go out directly after dinner. Every
minute of Alexey Alexandrovitch’s life was portioned out and occu-
pied. And to make time to get through all that lay before him every
day, he adhered to the strictest punctuality. “Unhasting and unresting,”
was his motto. He came into the dining hall, greeted everyone, and
hurriedly sat down, smiling to his wife.
“Yes, my solitude is over. You wouldn’t believe how uncomfortable”
(he laid stress on the word uncomfortable) “it is to dine alone.”
At dinner he talked a little to his wife about Moscow matters, and,
with a sarcastic smile, asked her after Stepan Arkadyevitch; but the