her side. With a
face hideous with passion, his lower jaw trembling, and his
cheeks white, Vronsky kicked her with his heel in the stomach and
again fell to tugging at the rein. She did not stir, but
thrusting her nose into the ground, she simply gazed at her
master with her speaking eyes.

"A--a--a!" groaned Vronsky, clutching at his head. "Ah! what
have I done!" he cried. "The race lost! And my fault! shameful,
unpardonable! And the poor darling, ruined mare! Ah! what have
I done!"

A crowd of men, a doctor and his assistant, the officers of his
regiment, ran up to him. To his misery he felt that he was whole
and unhurt. The mare had broken her back, and it was decided to
shoot her. Vronsky could not answer questions, could not speak
to anyone. He turned, and without picking up his cap that had
fallen off, walked away from the race course, not knowing where
he was going. He felt utterly wretched. For the first time in
his life he knew the bitterest sort of misfortune, misfortune
beyond remedy, and caused by his own fault.

Yashvin overtook him with his cap, and led him home, and half an
hour later Vronsky had regained his self-possession. But the
memory of that race remained for long in his heart, the cruelest
and bitterest memory of his life.

Chapter 26

The external relations of Alexey Alexandrovitch and his wife had
remained unchanged. The sole difference lay in the fact that he
was more busily occupied than ever. As in former years, at the
beginning of the spring he had gone to a foreign watering-place
for the sake of his health, deranged by the winter's work that
every year grew heavier. And just as always he returned in July
and at once fell to work as usual with increased energy. As
usual, too, his wife had moved for the summer to a villa out of
town, while he remained in Petersburg. From the date of their
conversation after the party at Princess Tverskaya's he had never
spoken again to Anna of his suspicions and his jealousies, and
that habitual tone of his bantering mimicry was the most
convenient tone possible for his present attitude to his wife.
He was a little colder to his wife. He simply seemed to be
slightly displeased with her for that first midnight
conversation, which she had repelled. In his attitude to her
there was a shade of vexation, but nothing more. "You would not
be open with me," he seemed to say, mentally addressing her; "so
much the worse for you.