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to him. One of the most unpleasant features of his position in Peters-
burg was that Alexey Alexandrovitch and his name seemed to meet
him everywhere. He could not begin to talk of anything without the
conversation turning on Alexey Alexandrovitch; he could not go any-
where without risk of meeting him. So at least it seemed to Vronsky,
just as it seems to a man with a sore finger that he is continually, as
though on purpose, grazing his sore finger on everything.
Their stay in Petersburg was the more painful to Vronsky that he
perceived all the time a sort of new mood that he could not understand
in Anna. At one time she would seem in love with him, and then she
would become cold, irritable, and impenetrable. She was worrying over
something, and keeping something back from him, and did not seem to
notice the humiliations which poisoned his existence, and for her, with
her delicate intuition, must have been still more unbearable.
Chapter 29.
One of Anna’s objects in coming back to Russia had been to see
her son. From the day she left Italy the thought of it had never ceased
to agitate her. And as she got nearer to Petersburg, the delight and
importance of this meeting grew ever greater in her imagination. She
did not even put to herself the question how to arrange it. It seemed to
her natural and simple to see her son when she should be in the same
town with him. But on her arrival in Petersburg she was suddenly
made distinctly aware of her present position in society, and she grasped
the fact that to arrange this meeting was no easy matter.
She had now been two days in Petersburg. The thought of her son
never left her for a single instant, but she had not yet seen him. To go
straight to the house, where she might meet Alexey Alexandrovitch,
that she felt she had no right to do. She might be refused admittance
and insulted. To write and so enter into relations with her husband—
that it made her miserable to think of doing; she could only be at peace
when she did not think of her husband. To get a glimpse of her son out
walking, finding out where and when he went out, was not enough for
her; she had so looked forward to this meeting, she had so much she
must say to him, she so longed to embrace him, to kiss him. Seryozha’s
old nurse might be a help to her and show her what to do. But the
nurse was not now living in Alexey Alexandrovitch’s house. In this