Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART SEVEN CHAPTER 1
that here he was not himself; that was the only way she could define his condition to
herself. Sometimes she inwardly reproached him for his inability to live in the town;
sometimes she recognized that it was really hard for him to order his life here so that
he could be satisfied with it.
What had he to do, indeed? He did not care for cards; he did not go to a club.
Spending the time with jovial gentlemen of Oblonsky’s type–she knew now what
that meant...it meant drinking and going somewhere after drinking. She could not
think without horror of where men went on such occasions. Was he to go into society?
But she knew he could only find satisfaction in that if he took pleasure in the
society of young women, and that she could not wish for. Should he stay at home
with her, her mother and her sisters? But much as she liked and enjoyed their conversations
forever on the same subjects–”Aline-Nadine,” as the old prince called the
sisters’ talks–she knew it must bore him. What was there left for him to do? To go on
writing at his book he had indeed attempted, and at first he used to go to the library
and make extracts and look up references for his book. But, as he told her, the more
he did nothing, the less time he had to do anything. And besides, he complained
that he had talked too much about his book here, and that consequently all his ideas
about it were muddled and had lost their interest for him.
One advantage in this town life was that quarrels hardly ever happened between
them here in town. Whether it was that their conditions were different, or that they
had both become more careful and sensible in that respect, they had no quarrels
in Moscow from jealousy, which they had so dreaded when they moved from the
country.
One event, an event of great importance to both from that point of view, did indeed
happen–that was Kitty’s meeting with Vronsky.
The old Princess Marya Borissovna, Kitty’s godmother, who had always been very
fond of her, had insisted on seeing her. Kitty, though she did not go into society at
all on account of her condition, went with her father to see the venerable old lady,
and there met Vronsky.
The only thing Kitty could reproach herself for at this meeting was that at the instant
when she recognized in his civilian dress the features once so familiar to her,
her breath failed her, the blood rushed to her heart, and a vivid blush–she felt it–
overspread her face. But this lasted only a few seconds. Before her father, who purposely
began talking in a loud voice to Vronsky, had finished, she was perfectly ready
to look at Vronsky, to speak to him, if necessary, exactly as she spoke to Princess
Marya Borissovna, and more than that, to do so in such a way that everything to
the faintest intonation and smile would have been approved by her husband, whose
unseen presence she seemed to feel about her at that instant.
She said a few words to him, even smiled serenely at his joke about the elections,
which he called “our parliament.” (She had to smile to show she saw the joke.)
But she turned away immediately to Princess Marya Borissovna, and did not once
glance at him till he got up to go; then she looked at him, but evidently only because
it would be uncivil not to look at a man when he is saying good-bye.
She was grateful to her father for saying nothing to her about their meeting Vronsky,
but she saw by his special warmth to her after the visit during their usual walk
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