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 CHAPTER IV

meeting Vronsky on the porch, Alekseï Aleksandrovitch went, as he had planned, to the Italian opera. He sat through two acts, and saw every one whom he needed to see. Returning home, he looked carefully at the hat-rack, and, having assured himself that there was no uniform overcoat in the vestibule, went straight to his chamber.

Contrary to his usual habit, instead of going to bed, he walked up and down his room till three o'clock in the morning. Anger kept him awake, for he could not forgive his wife for not being willing to observe the proprieties, and for not fulfilling the one condition that he had imposed on her,—that she should not receive her lover in his house. She had not complied with his requirement, and he felt bound to punish her, carry out his threat, demand a divorce, and take away his son from her. He knew all the difficulties that would attend this action, but he had said that he should do it, and now he was bound to carry out his threat. The Countess Lidia had often said that this was the easiest way out of his position; and recently the practice of divorce had reached such a pitch of perfection that Alekseï Aleksandrovitch saw in it a means of escaping, its formal difficulties.

Moreover, misfortunes never come single; and the trouble arising from the organization of the foreign population, and the irrigation of the fields in the government of Zaraï, had caused Alekseï Aleksandrovitch so much unpleasantness in his office that for some time he had been in a perpetual state of irritation.

He passed the night without sleeping, and his anger increasing all the while in a sort of colossal system of progression, by morning was directed even to the most trivial object. He dressed hastily, and went to Anna as soon as he knew she was up. He was afraid of losing the energy which he needed for his explanation with