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 society friends so as not to be subjected to vexations and affronts which were so painful to him.

One of the most unpleasant features of his position in Petersburg was the fact that Alekseï Aleksandrovitch and his name seemed to be everywhere. It was impossible for a conversation to begin on any subject without turning on Alekseï Aleksandrovitch; it was impossible to go anywhere without meeting him. So, at least, it seemed to Vronsky; just as it seems to a man with a sore finger, that he is always hitting it against everything.

Their stay in Petersburg seemed to Vronsky still more trying because all the time he saw that Anna was in a strange, incomprehensible moral frame of mind such as he had never seen before. At one time she was more than usually affectionate; then again she would seem cold, irritable, and enigmatical. Something was tormenting her, and she was concealing something from him; and she seemed not to notice the indignities which poisoned his life, and which, in her delicacy of perception, should have been even more painful for her.

CHAPTER XXIX

chief desire on her return to Russia was to see her son. From the day she left Italy the thought of seeing him again kept her in a constant state of excitement; and in proportion as she drew near Petersburg the prospective delight and importance of this meeting kept growing greater and greater. She did not trouble herself with the question how she should manage it. It would be a simple and natural thing, she thought, to see her son once more, when she would be in the same town with him; but since her arrival she suddenly realized her present relation toward society, and found that the interview was not easy to obtain.

She had been two days now in Petersburg, and never for an instant had the thought of her son left her, but she had not seen him.