Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART TWO CHAPTER 28
“I’m for Vronsky. A pair of gloves?”
“Done!”
“But it is a pretty sight, isn’t it?”
Alexey Alexandrovitch paused while there was talking about him, but he began
again directly.
“I admit that manly sports do not...” he was continuing.
But at that moment the racers started, and all conversation ceased. Alexey Alexandrovitch
too was silent, and everyone stood up and turned towards the stream.
Alexey Alexandrovitch took no interest in the race, and so he did not watch the
racers, but fell listlessly to scanning the spectators with his weary eyes. His eyes
rested upon Anna.
Her face was white and set. She was obviously seeing nothing and no one but
one man. Her hand had convulsively clutched her fan, and she held her breath. He
looked at her and hastily turned away, scrutinizing other faces.
“But here’s this lady too, and others very much moved as well; it’s very natural,”
Alexey Alexandrovitch told himself. He tried not to look at her, but unconsciously
his eyes were drawn to her. He examined that face again, trying not to read what
was so plainly written on it, and against his own will, with horror read on it what he
did not want to know.
The first fall–Kuzovlev’s, at the stream–agitated everyone, but Alexey Alexandrovitch
saw distinctly on Anna’s pale, triumphant face that the man she was watching
had not fallen. When, after Mahotin and Vronsky had cleared the worst barrier,
the next officer had been thrown straight on his head at it and fatally injured, and
a shudder of horror passed over the whole public, Alexey Alexandrovitch saw that
Anna did not even notice it, and had some difficulty in realizing what they were
talking of about her. But more and more often, and with greater persistence, he
watched her. Anna, wholly engrossed as she was with the race, became aware of her
husband’s cold eyes fixed upon her from one side.
She glanced round for an instant, looked inquiringly at him, and with a slight
frown turned away again.
“Ah, I don’t care!” she seemed to say to him, and she did not once glance at him
again.
The race was an unlucky one, and of the seventeen officers who rode in it more
than half were thrown and hurt. Towards the end of the race everyone was in a state
of agitation, which was intensified by the fact that the Tsar was displeased.
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