Anna Karenina (Penguin) - Leo Tolstoy [67]
Vronsky did not see anything or anybody. He felt himself a king, not because he thought he had made an impression on Anna - he did not believe that yet - but because the impression she had made on him gave him happiness and pride.
What would come of it all, he did not know and did not even consider. He felt that all his hitherto dissipated and dispersed forces were gathered and directed with terrible energy towards one blissful goal. And he was happy in that. He knew only that he had told her the truth, that he was going where she was, that the whole happiness of life, the sole meaning of life, he now found in seeing and hearing her. And when he got off the train at Bologoye for a drink of seltzer water, and saw Anna, his first words involuntarily told her just what he thought. And he was glad he had said it to her, that she now knew it and was thinking about it. He did not sleep all night. Returning to his carriage, he kept running through all the attitudes in which he had seen her, all her words, and in his imagination floated pictures of the possible future, making his heart stand still.
When he got off the train in Petersburg he felt animated and fresh after his sleepless night, as after a cold bath. He stopped by his carriage, waiting for her to get out. ‘One more time,’ he said to himself, smiling involuntarily, ‘I’ll see her walk, her face; she’ll say something, turn her head, look, perhaps smile.’ But even before seeing her, he saw her husband, whom the stationmaster was courteously conducting through the crowd. ‘Ah, yes, the husband!’ Only now did Vronsky understand clearly for the first time that the husband was a person connected with her. He knew she had a husband, but had not believed in his existence and fully believed in it only when he saw him, with his head, his shoulders, his legs in black trousers; and especially when he saw this husband calmly take her arm with a proprietary air.
Seeing Alexei Alexandrovich with his fresh Petersburg face41, his sternly self-confident figure, his round hat and slightly curved back, he believed in him and experienced an unpleasant feeling, like that of a man suffering from thirst who comes to a spring and finds in it a dog, a sheep or a pig who has both drunk and muddied the water. The gait of Alexei Alexandrovich, swinging his whole pelvis and his blunt feet, was especially offensive to Vronsky. Only for himself did he acknowledge the unquestionable right to love her. But she was still the same, and her appearance still affected him in the same way, physically reviving, arousing his soul, and filling it with happiness. He told his German footman, who came running from second class, to take his things and go, and he himself went up to her. He saw the first meeting of husband and wife and, with the keen-sightedness of a man in love, noticed signs of the slight constraint with which she talked to her husband. ‘No, she does not and cannot love him,’ he decided to himself.
As he came up to Anna Arkadyevna from behind, he noticed with joy that she, sensing his approach, looked around and, recognizing him, turned back to her husband.
‘Did you have a good night?’ he said, bowing to her and her husband together, and giving Alexei Alexandrovich a chance to take this bow to his own account and recognize him or not, as he wished.
‘Very good, thank you,’ she replied.
Her face seemed tired, and there was none of that play of animation in it which begged to come out now in her smile, now in her eyes; yet for a moment, as she glanced at him, something flashed in her eyes and, although this fire went out at once, he was happy in that moment. She looked at her husband to see whether he knew Vronsky. Alexei Alexandrovich was looking