hed while his sense
of her beauty was intensified.

He went back scowling to his rooms, and sitting down beside
Yashvin, who, with his long legs stretched out on a chair, was
drinking brandy and seltzer water, he ordered a glass of the same
for himself.

"You were talking of Lankovsky's Powerful. That's a fine horse,
and I would advise you to buy him," said Yashvin, glancing at
his comrade's gloomy face. "His hind-quarters aren't quite
first-rate, but the legs and head--one couldn't wish for anything
better."

"I think I will take him," answered Vronsky.

Their conversation about horses interested him, but he did not
for an instant forget Anna, and could not help listening to the
sound of steps in the corridor and looking at the clock on the
chimney piece.

"Anna Arkadyevna gave orders to announce that she has gone to the
theater."

Yashvin, tipping another glass of brandy into the bubbling water,
drank it and got up, buttoning his coat.

"Well, let's go," he said, faintly smiling under his mustache,
and showing by this smile that he knew the cause of Vronsky's
gloominess, and did not attach any significance to it.

"I'm not going," Vronsky answered gloomily.

"Well, I must, I promised to. Good-bye, then. If you do, come
to the stalls; you can take Kruzin's stall," added Yashvin as he
went out.

"No, I'm busy."

"A wife is a care, but it's worse when she's not a wife," thought
Yashvin, as he walked out of the hotel.

Vronsky, left alone, got up from his chair and began pacing up
and down the room.

"And what's today? The fourth night.... Yegor and his wife are
there, and my mother, most likely. Of course all Petersburg's
there. Now she's gone in, taken off her cloak and come into the
light. Tushkevitch, Yashvin, Princess Varvara," he pictured them
to himself.... "What about me? Either that I'm frightened or
have given up to Tushkevitch the right to protect her? From
every point of view--stupid, stupid!... And why is she putting
me in such a position?" he said with a gesture of despair.

With that gesture he knocked against the table, on which there
was standing the seltzer water and the decanter of brandy, and
almost upset it. He tried to catch it, let it slip, and angrily
kicked the table over and rang.

"If you care to be in my service," he said to the valet who came
in, "you had better remember your duties. This shouldn't be
here. You ought to have cleared away."

The valet,