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 curring circumstances when it was essential to employ falsehood and deceit, which were so contrary to his nature. He recalled with especial vividness the feeling of shame which he had often surprised in Anna, when she also was driven to tell a lie.

Since this affair with her, he sometimes experienced a strange sensation. This was a feeling of disgust and repulsion for some one, he could not tell for whom he felt it—for Alekseï Aleksandrovitch or himself, or for all society. As far as possible he banished this strange feeling.

"Yes, heretofore she has been unhappy, but proud and calm; now she cannot be proud and content any longer, though she may not betray the fact. Yes, this must end," he would conclude in his own mind.

And for the first time the thought of cutting short this life of dissimulation appeared to him clear and tangible; the sooner, the better.

"She and I must leave everything, and together we must go and hide ourselves somewhere with our love," he said to himself.

CHAPTER XXII

shower was of short duration; and when Vronsky reached Peterhof, his shaft-horse at full trot, and the other two galloping along in the mud, the sun was already out again, and the wet roofs of the villas and the old lindens in the gardens on both sides of the principal avenue were dazzlingly shining. The water was running from the roofs, and the raindrops were dripping from the tree-tops. He no longer thought of the harm that the shower might do the race-course, but he was full of joy as he remembered that, thanks to the rain, she would be alone; for he knew that Alekseï Aleksandrovitch, who had just got back from a visit to the baths, would not have driven out from Petersburg.

Hoping to find her alone, Vronsky stopped his horses, as he always did, at some little distance from the house,