第58章

She's such a dear, so charming. How can she help it if they're all in love with her, and follow her about like shadows?'

`Oh, I had no idea of censuring her,' Anna's friend said in self-defense.

`If we have no shadows following us, it does not prove that we've any right to blame her.'

And, having duly disposed of Anna's friend, the Princess Miaghkaia got up, and, together with the ambassador's wife, joined the group at the table, where the general conversation had to do with the king of Prussia.

`What were you gossiping so maliciously about?' asked Betsy.

`About the Karenins. The Princess gave us a character sketch of Alexei Alexandrovich,' said the ambassador's wife with a smile, as she sat down at the table.

`Pity we didn't hear it!' said Princess Betsy, glancing toward the door. `Ah, here you are at last!' she said, turning with a smile to Vronsky who was entering.

Vronsky was not merely acquainted with all the persons whom he was meeting here; he saw them all every day; and so he came in with the quiet manner with which one enters a room full of people whom one had left only a short while ago.

`Where do I come from?' he repeated the question of the ambassador's wife. `Well, there's no help for it - I must confess. From the opera bouffe.

I do believe I've seen it a hundred times, and always with fresh enjoyment.

It's exquisite! I know it's disgraceful, but I go to sleep at the opera, yet I sit out the opera bouffe to the last minute, and enjoy it. This evening...'

He mentioned a French actress, and was about to tell something about her; but the ambassador's wife, with playful trepidation, cut him short.

`Please, don't tell us about that horror.'

`Very well, I won't - especially as everyone knows those horrors.'

`And we should all go to see them if it were accepted as the correct thing, like the opera,' chimed in Princess Miaghkaia.

[Next Chapter] [Table of Contents]TOLSTOY: Anna Karenina Part 2, Chapter 07[Previous Chapter] [Table of Contents] Chapter 7 Steps were heard at the door, and Princess Betsy, knowing it was Madame Karenina, glanced at Vronsky. He was looking toward the door, and his face wore a strange new expression. Joyfully, intently, and at the same time timidly, he gazed at the approaching figure, and slowly he rose to his feet. Anna walked into the drawing room. Holding herself extremely erect, as always, looking straight before her, and moving with her swift, resolute and light step, that distinguished her walk from that of other society women, she crossed the few paces that separated her from her hostess, shook hands with her, smiled, and with the same smile looked around at Vronsky.

Vronsky bowed low and pushed a chair up for her.

She acknowledged this only by a slight nod, flushed, and frowned.

But immediately, while rapidly greeting her acquaintances, and shaking the hands proffered to her, she addressed Princess Betsy:

`I have been at Countess Lidia's, and meant to have come here earlier, but I stayed on. Sir John was there. A most interesting man.'

`Oh, that's this missionary?'

`Yes; he told us about life in India, most interestingly.'

The conversation, interrupted by her coming in, flickered up again like the light of a lamp being blown out.

`Sir John! Yes, Sir John. I've seen him. He speaks well. Vlassieva is altogether in love with him.'

`And is it true that the younger Vlassieva is to marry Topov?'

`Yes - they say it's quite settled.'

`I wonder at the parents! They say it's a marriage of passion.'

`Of passion? What antediluvian notions you have! Whoever talks of passion nowadays?' said the ambassador's wife.

`What would you do? This silly old fashion is still far from dead,'

said Vronsky.

`So much the worse for those who keep up the fashion. The only happy marriages I know are marriages of prudence.'

`Yes, - but then, how often the happiness of these prudent marriages is scattered like dust, precisely because that passion to which recognition has been denied appears on the scene,' said Vronsky.

`But by marriages of prudence we mean those in which both parties have sown their wild oats already. That's like scarlatina - one has to go through with it and get it over with.'

`In that case we must learn how to vaccinate for love, like small-pox.'

`I was in love in my young days - with a church clerk,' said the Princess Miaghkaia. `I don't know that it did me any good.'

`No; I think - all jokes aside - that to know love, one must first make a fault, and then mend it,' said Princess Betsy.

`Even after marriage?' said the ambassador's wife playfully.

`It's never too late to mend,' the diplomatist repeated the English proverb.

`Just so,' Betsy agreed; `one must make a mistake and rectify it. What do you think about it?' She turned to Anna, who, with a barely perceptible resolute smile on her lips, was listening to the conversation.

`I think' said Anna, playing with the glove she had taken off, `I think... if there are as many minds as there are heads, then surely there must be as many kinds of love as there are hearts.'

Vronsky was gazing at Anna, and with a heart sinking was waiting for what she would say. He sighed as after a danger escaped when she had uttered these words.

Anna suddenly turned to him.

`Oh, I have had a letter from Moscow. They write me that Kitty Shcherbatskaia's very ill.'

`Really?' said Vronsky, knitting his brows.

Anna looked sternly at him.

`That doesn't interest you?'

`On the contrary, it does - very much. What is it, exactly, that they write you, if may know?' he asked.

Anna got up and went to Betsy.

`Give me a cup of tea,' she said, pausing behind her chair.

While Betsy was pouring out the tea, Vronsky walked up to Anna.

`What is it they write you?' he repeated.

`I often think men have no understanding of what is dishonorable, though they're forever talking of it,' said Anna, without answering him.

`I've wanted to tell you something for a long while,' she added, and, moving a few steps away, she sat down at a corner table which held albums.