Anna Karenina

And having crossed each other and kissed each other, yet sensing that each remained of the same opinion, the spouses parted.

The princess was firmly convinced at first that that evening had decided Kitty’s fate and there could be no doubt of Vronsky’s intentions; but her husband’s words troubled her. And, returning to her room, in terror before the unknown future, just like Kitty, she repeated several times in her heart: ‘Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy!’

XVI

Vronsky had never known family life. His mother in her youth had been a brilliant society woman who, during her marriage and especially after it, had had many love affairs, known to all the world. He barely remembered his father and had been brought up in the Corps of Pages.²⁸

Leaving school as a very young and brilliant officer, he immediately fell in with the ways of rich Petersburg military men. Although he occasionally went into Petersburg society, all his amorous interests lay outside it.

In Moscow, after the luxurious and coarse life of Petersburg, he had experienced for the first time the charm of intimacy with a sweet, innocent society girl who had fallen in love with him. It did not even occur to him that there could be anything bad in his relations with Kitty. At balls he danced mostly with her; he visited their house. He said to her the things that are usually said in society, all sorts of nonsense, but nonsense which he unwittingly endowed with a special meaning for her. Though he said nothing to her that he could not have said before everybody, he felt that she was growing increasingly dependent on him, and the more he felt it, the more pleasant it was for him, and his feeling for her grew more tender. He did not know that his behaviour towards Kitty had a specific name, that it was the luring of a young lady without the intention of marriage, and that this luring was one of the bad actions common among brilliant young men such as himself. It seemed to him that he was the first to discover this pleasure, and he enjoyed his discovery.

If he could have heard what her parents said that evening, if he could have taken the family’s point of view and learned that Kitty would be unhappy if he did not marry her, he would have been very surprised and would not have believed it. He could not have believed that something which gave such great and good pleasure to him, and above all to her, could be bad. Still less could he have believed that he was obliged to marry her.

Marriage had never presented itself as a possibility to him. He not only did not like family life, but pictured the family, and especially a husband, according to the general view of the bachelor world in which he lived, as something alien, hostile and, above all, ridiculous. But though Vronsky had no suspicion of what the parents said, he felt as he left the Shcherbatskys’ that evening that the secret spiritual bond existing between him and Kitty had established itself so firmly that something had to be done. But what could and should be done, he was unable to imagine.

‘The charm of it is,’ he thought, going home from the Shcherbatskys’ and bringing with him, as always, a pleasant feeling of purity and freshness, partly because he had not smoked all evening, and together with it a new feeling of tenderness at her love for him, ‘the charm of it is that nothing was said either by me or by her, yet we understood each other so well in that invisible conversation of eyes and intonations, that tonight she told me more clearly than ever that she loves me. And so sweetly, simply and, above all, trustfully! I feel better and purer myself. I feel that I have a heart and that there is much good in me. Those sweet, loving eyes! When she said: “and very much” ...

‘Well, what then? Well, then nothing. It’s good for me, and it’s good for her.’ And he began thinking about where to finish the evening.

He checked in his imagination the places he might go to. ‘The club? A game of bezique,²⁹ champagne with Ignatov? No, not there. The Château des Fleurs?³⁰ I’ll find Oblonsky there, French songs, the cancan. No, I’m sick of it. That’s precisely what I love the Shcherbatskys’ for, that I become better there myself. I’ll go home.’ He went straight to his rooms at the Dussot, ordered supper served, after which he got undressed and, the moment his head touched the pillow, fell into a sound and peaceful sleep, as always.

XVII

The next day at eleven o‘clock in the morning Vronsky drove to the Petersburg railway station to meet his mother, and the first person he ran into on the steps of the main stairway was Oblonsky, who was expecting his sister on the same train.

‘Ah! Your highness!’ cried Oblonsky. ‘Here for someone?’

‘My mother,’ Vronsky replied, shaking his hand and smiling, as did everyone who met Oblonsky, and they went up the stairway together. ‘She arrives today from Petersburg.’

‘And I waited for you till two o’clock. Where did you go from the Shcherbatskys’?’