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 come of them?" continued the Princess Betsy, who followed with keen pleasure the progress of this passion. "You are in the toils, my dear!"

"That is all that I ask for," he replied, with his calm, good-natured smile, "to be in the toils. If I complain, it is not because I am too little in the toils if the truth must be told. I am beginning to lose hope."

"What hope could you have?" asked Betsy, taking the part of her friend. "Let us have a clear understanding." But the fire in her eyes told with sufficient clearness that she understood as well as he did what his hope meant.

"None," replied Vronsky, laughing, and showing his regular white teeth. "Excuse me," he added, taking the opera-glasses from his cousin's hand, in order to direct it across her bare shoulder at one of the opposite boxes. "I fear I am becoming ridiculous."

He knew very well that in Betsy's eyes, and in those of her world, he ran no risk of being ridiculous; he knew very well that in the eyes of such people the rôle of an unsuccessful lover of a young girl or an unmarried woman might be ridiculous; but not so the rôle of a man who pursues a married woman and at any price makes it his aim to lead her into committing adultery. This rôle is something beautiful and majestic and can never be ridiculous, and therefore Vronsky, as he handed back the opera-glasses, looked at his cousin with a smile of pride and joy lurking under his mustache.

"And why did n't you come to dinner?" she asked again, unable to refrain from admiration of him.

"I must tell you; I was busy .... and what about? I will give you one guess out of a hundred—out of a thousand .... you would never hit it. I have been reconciling a husband with his wife's persecutor. Yes, fact!"

"What! and you reconciled them?"

"Pretty nearly."

"You must tell me all about it," said Betsy, rising. "Come during the next entr'acte."

"Impossible; I am going to the French Theater."

"From Nilsson?" said Betsy, with horror, though