imply, and most of all,
how trustfully! I feel myself better, purer. I feel that I have
a heart, and that there is a great deal of good in me. Those
sweet, loving eyes! When she said: Indeed I do...'

"Well, what then? Oh, nothing. It's good for me, and good for
her." And he began wondering where to finish the evening.

He passed in review of the places he might go to. "Club? a game
of bezique, champagne with Ignatov? No, I'm not going. _Chateau
des Fleurs_; there I shall find Oblonsky, songs, the cancan. No,
I'm sick of it. That's why I like the Shtcherbatskys', that I'm
growing better. I'll go home." He went straight to his room at
Dussot's Hotel, ordered supper, and then undressed, and as soon
as his head touched the pillow, fell into a sound sleep.

Chapter 17

Next day at eleven o'clock in the morning Vronsky drove to the
station of the Petersburg railway to meet his mother, and the
first person he came across on the great flight of steps was
Oblonsky, who was expecting his sister by the same train.

"Ah! your excellency!" cried Oblonsky, "whom are you meeting?"

"My mother," Vronsky responded, smiling, as everyone did who met
Oblonsky. He shook hands with him, and together they ascended
the steps. "She is to be here from Petersburg today."

"I was looking out for you till two o'clock last night. Where
did you go after the Shtcherbatskys'?"

"Home," answered Vronsky. "I must own I felt so well content
yesterday after the Shtcherbatskys' that I didn't care to go
anywhere."

"I know a gallant steed by tokens sure,
And by his eyes I know a youth in love,"

declaimed Stepan Arkadyevitch, just as he had done before to
Levin.

Vronsky smiled with a look that seemed to say that he did not
deny it, but he promptly changed the subject.

"And whom are you meeting?" he asked.

"I? I've come to meet a pretty woman," said Oblonsky.

"You don't say so!"

"_Honi soit qui mal y pense!_ My sister Anna."

"Ah! that's Madame Karenina," said Vronsky.

"You know her, no doubt?"

"I think I do. Or perhaps not...I really am not sure," Vronsky
answered heedlessly, with a vague recollection of something stiff
and tedious evoked by the name Karenina.

"But Alexey Alexandrovitch, my celebrated brother-in-law, you
surely must know. All the world knows him."

"I know him by reputation and by sight. I know that he's clever,
learned, religious somewhat.... But you know that's not...