ng, filled his heart.
He went down, and made straight for Anna's box. At her box stood
Stremov, talking to her.

"There are no more tenors. _Le moule en est brise!_"

Vronsky bowed to her and stopped to greet Stremov.

"You came in late, I think, and have missed the best song," Anna
said to Vronsky, glancing ironically, he thought, at him.

"I am a poor judge of music," he said, looking sternly at her.

"Like Prince Yashvin," she said smiling, "who considers that
Patti sings too loud."

"Thank you," she said, her little hand in its long glove taking
the playbill Vronsky picked up, and suddenly at that instant her
lovely face quivered. She got up and went into the interior of
the box.

Noticing in the next act that her box was empty, Vronsky, rousing
indignant "hushes" in the silent audience, went out in the middle
of a solo and drove home.

Anna was already at home. When Vronsky went up to her, she was
in the same dress as she had worn at the theater. She was
sitting in the first armchair against the wall, looking straight
before her. She looked at him, and at once resumed her former
position.

"Anna," he said.

"You, you are to blame for everything!" she cried, with tears of
despair and hatred in her voice, getting up.

"I begged, I implored you not to go, I knew it would be
unpleasant...."

"Unpleasant!" she cried--"hideous! As long as I live I shall
never forget it. She said it was a disgrace to sit beside me."

"A silly woman's chatter," he said: "but why risk it, why
provoke?..."

"I hate your calm. You ought not to have brought me to this. If
you had loved me..."

"Anna! How does the question of my love come in?"

"Oh, if you loved me, as I love, if you were tortured as I
am!..." she said, looking at him with an expression of terror.

He was sorry for her, and angry notwithstanding. He assured her
of his love because he saw that this was the only means of
soothing her, and he did not reproach her in words, but in his
heart he reproached her.

And the asseverations of his love, which seemed to him so vulgar
that he was ashamed to utter them, she drank in eagerly, and
gradually became calmer. The next day, completely reconciled,
they left for the country.

PART 6

Chapter 1

Darya Alexandrovna spent the summer with her children at
Pokrovskoe, at her sister Kitty Levin's. The house on her own
estate was quite in ruins, and Levin and his wife had persuaded