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tions with the court and fashionable society. But from the time that
after Karenin’s trouble she took him under her special protection, from
the time that she set to work in Karenin’s household looking after his
welfare, she felt that all her other attachments were not the real thing,
and that she was now genuinely in love, and with no one but Karenin.
The feeling she now experienced for him seemed to her stronger than
any of her former feelings. Analyzing her feeling, and comparing it
with former passions, she distinctly perceived that she would not have
been in love with Komissarov if he had not saved the life of the Tsar,
that she would not have been in love with Ristitch-Kudzhitsky if there
had been no Slavonic question, but that she loved Karenin for himself,
for his lofty, uncomprehended soul, for the sweet—to her—high notes
of his voice, for his drawling intonation, his weary eyes, his character,
and his soft white hands with their swollen veins. She was not simply
overjoyed at meeting him, but she sought in his face signs of the im-
pression she was making on him. She tried to please him, not by her
words only, but in her whole person. For his sake it was that she now
lavished more care on her dress than before. She caught herself in
reveries on what might have been, if she had not been married and he
had been free. She blushed with emotion when he came into the room,
she could not repress a smile of rapture when he said anything amiable
to her.
For several days now Countess Lidia Ivanovna had been in a state
of intense excitement. She had learned that Anna and Vronsky were
in Petersburg. Alexey Alexandrovitch must be saved from seeing her,
he must be saved even from the torturing knowledge that that awful
woman was in the same town with him, and that he might meet her
any minute.
Lidia Ivanovna made inquiries through her friends as to what
those infamous people, as she called Anna and Vronsky, intended
doing, and she endeavored so to guide every movement of her friend
during those days that he could not come across them. The young
adjutant, an acquaintance of Vronsky, through whom she obtained her
information, and who hoped through Countess Lidia Ivanovna to ob-
tain a concession, told her that they had finished their business and
were going away next day. Lidia Ivanovna had already begun to calm
down, when the next morning a note was brought her, the handwriting
of which she recognized with horror. It was the handwriting of Anna
Karenina. The envelope was of paper as thick as bark; on the oblong
yellow paper there was a huge monogram, and the letter smelt of
agreeable scent.
“Who brought it?”
“A commissionaire from the hotel.”
It was some time before Countess Lidia Ivanovna could sit down
to read the letter. Her excitement brought on an attack of asthma, to
which she was subject. When she had recovered her composure, she
read the following letter in French:
“Madame la Comtesse,
“The Christian feelings with which your heart is filled give me the,
I feel, unpardonable boldness to write to you. I am miserable at being
separated from my son. I entreat permission to see him once before my
departure. Forgive me for recalling myself to your memory. I apply to
you and not to Alexey Alexandrovitch, simply because I do not wish to
cause that generous man to suffer in remembering me. Knowing your
friendship for him, I know you will understand me. Could you send
Seryozha to me, or should I come to the house at some fixed hour, or
will you let me know when and where I could see him away from
home? I do not anticipate a refusal, knowing the magnanimity of him