Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/255

 which since morning had been threatening rain, grew thicker, and a heavy shower fell.

"Too bad!" thought Vronsky, raising the hood of his carriage. "It has been muddy; now it will be a swamp."

Now that he was sitting alone in his covered calash, he took out his mother's letter and his brother's note, and read them over.

Yes, it was always the old story; both his mother and his brother found it necessary to meddle with his love-affairs. This interference aroused his anger,—a feeling which he rarely experienced.

"How does this concern them? Why does every one feel called on to meddle with me, and why do they bother me? Because they see that there is something about this that they can't understand. If it were an ordinary vulgar society intrigue, they would leave me in peace; but they imagine that it is something else, that it is not mere trifling, that this woman is dearer to me than life; that is incredible and vexatious to them. Whatever be our fate, we ourselves have made it, and we shall not regret it," he said to himself, including Anna in the word "we." "But no, they want to teach us how to live. They have no idea of what happiness is. They don't know that, were it not for this love, there would be for us neither joy nor grief in this world; life itself would not exist."

In reality, what exasperated him most against every one was the fact that his conscience told him that they—all of them—were right. He felt that his love for Anna was not a superficial impulse, destined, like so many social attachments, to disappear, and leave no trace beyond sweet or painful memories. He felt keenly all the torture of her situation and his, and how difficult it was in the prominent position which they held in the eyes of society to hide their love, to lie, to deceive, to dissemble, and constantly to think about others, when the passion uniting them was so violent that they both forgot about everything else except their love.

He vividly pictured to himself all the constantly re-