Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART TWO CHAPTER 28
Chapter 28
WHEN Alexey Alexandrovitch reached the race-course, Anna was already sitting
in the pavilion beside Betsy, in that pavilion where all the highest society had
gathered. She caught sight of her husband in the distance. Two men, her husband
and her lover, were the two centers of her existence, and unaided by her external
senses she was aware of their nearness. She was aware of her husband approaching
a long way off, and she could not help following him in the surging crowd in the
midst of which he was moving. She watched his progress towards the pavilion,
saw him now responding condescendingly to an ingratiating bow, now exchanging
friendly, nonchalant greetings with his equals, now assiduously trying to catch the
eye of some great one of this world, and taking off his big round hat that squeezed
the tips of his ears. All these ways of his she knew, and all were hateful to her.
“Nothing but ambition, nothing but the desire to get on, that’s all there is in his
soul,” she thought; “as for these lofty ideals, love of culture, religion, they are only
so many tools for getting on.”
From his glances towards the ladies’ pavilion (he was staring straight at her, but
did not distinguish his wife in the sea of muslin, ribbons, feathers, parasols and
flowers) she saw that he was looking for her, but she purposely avoided noticing
him.
“Alexey Alexandrovitch!” Princess Betsy called to him; “I’m sure you don’t see
your wife: here she is.”
He smiled his chilly smile.
“There’s so much splendor here that one’s eyes are dazzled,” he said, and he
went into the pavilion. He smiled to his wife as a man should smile on meeting
his wife after only just parting from her, and greeted the princess and other acquaintances,
giving to each what was due–that is to say, jesting with the ladies and dealing
out friendly greetings among the men. Below, near the pavilion, was standing an
adjutant-general of whom Alexey Alexandrovitch had a high opinion, noted for his
intelligence and culture. Alexey Alexandrovitch entered into conversation with him.
There was an interval between the races, and so nothing hindered conversation.
The adjutant-general expressed his disapproval of races. Alexey Alexandrovitch
replied defending them. Anna heard his high, measured tones, not losing one word,
and every word struck her as false, and stabbed her ears with pain.
When the three-mile steeplechase was beginning, she bent forward and gazed
with fixed eyes at Vronsky as he went up to his horse and mounted, and at the
same time she heard that loathsome, never-ceasing voice of her husband. She was in
an agony of terror for Vronsky, but a still greater agony was the never-ceasing, as it
seemed to her, stream of her husband’s shrill voice with its familiar intonations.
“I’m a wicked woman, a lost woman,” she thought; “but I don’t like lying, I can’t
endure falsehood, while as for him (her husband) it’s the breath of his life–falsehood.
He knows all about it, he sees it all; what does he care if he can talk so calmly? If
he were to kill me, if he were to kill Vronsky, I might respect him. No, all he wants
is falsehood and propriety,” Anna said to herself, not considering exactly what it
was she wanted of her husband, and how she would have liked to see him behave.
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