Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART FIVE CHAPTER 7
out his hand to his old comrade. The same expression of delight replaced the look of
uneasiness on Golenishtchev’s face.
“How glad I am to meet you!” said Vronsky, showing his strong white teeth in a
friendly smile.
“I heard the name Vronsky, but I didn’t know which one. I’m very, very glad!”
“Let’s go in. Come, tell me what you’re doing.”
“I’ve been living here for two years. I’m working.”
“Ah!” said Vronsky, with sympathy; “let’s go in.” And with the habit common
with Russians, instead of saying in Russian what he wanted to keep from the servants,
he began to speak in French.
“Do you know Madame Karenina? We are traveling together. I am going to see
her now,” he said in French, carefully scrutinizing Golenishtchev’s face.
“Ah! I did not know” (though he did know), Golenishtchev answered carelessly.
“Have you been here long?” he added.
“Four days,” Vronsky answered, once more scrutinizing his friend’s face intently.
“Yes, he’s a decent fellow, and will look at the thing properly,” Vronsky said to
himself, catching the significance of Golenishtchev’s face and the change of subject.
“I can introduce him to Anna, he looks at it properly.”
During those three months that Vronsky had spent abroad with Anna, he had
always on meeting new people asked himself how the new person would look at his
relations with Anna, and for the most part, in men, he had met with the “proper”
way of looking at it. But if he had been asked, and those who looked at it “properly”
had been asked, exactly how they did look at it, both he and they would have been
greatly puzzled to answer.
In reality, those who in Vronsky’s opinion had the “proper” view had no sort of
view at all, but behaved in general as well-bred persons do behave in regard to all
the complex and insoluble problems with which life is encompassed on all sides;
they behaved with propriety, avoiding allusions and unpleasant questions. They
assumed an air of fully comprehending the import and force of the situation, of accepting
and even approving of it, but of considering it superfluous and uncalled for
to put all this into words.
Vronsky at once divined that Golenishtchev was of this class, and therefore was
doubly pleased to see him. And in fact, Golenishtchev’s manner to Madame Karenina,
when he was taken to call on her, was all that Vronsky could have desired. Obviously
without the slightest effort he steered clear of all subjects which might lead
to embarrassment.
He had never met Anna before, and was struck by her beauty, and still more by the
frankness with which she accepted her position. She blushed when Vronsky brought
in Golenishtchev, and he was extremely charmed by this childish blush overspreading
her candid and handsome face. But what he liked particularly was the way
in which at once, as though on purpose that there might be no misunderstanding
with an outsider, she called Vronsky simply Alexey, and said they were moving into
a house they had just taken, what was here called a palazzo. Golenishtchev liked
425