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 cess Sorokina was out of hearing; "elle fait sensation. On oublie la Patti pour elle."

"Maman, I have begged you not to speak to me about her," he replied gloomily.

"I only say what everybody is saying."

Vronsky did not reply; and, after exchanging a few words with the young princess, he went out. He met his brother at the door.

"Ah, Alekseï!" said his brother, "how abominable! She is a fool, nothing more I was just wishing to go to see Madame Karenin. Let us go together."

Vronsky did not heed him; he ran hastily down the steps, feeling that he ought to do something, but knew not what.

He was stirred with anger, because Anna had placed them both in such a false position, and at the same time he felt deep pity for her suffering.

He went down into the parquet, and thence directly to Anna's loge. Stremof was leaning on the box, talking with her.

"There are no more tenors," he said; "le moule en est brisé—the mould is broken—from which they came."

Vronsky bowed to her and stopped, exchanging greetings with Stremof.

"You came late, it seems to me, and you lost the best aria," said Anna to Vronsky, looking at him scornfully, as it seemed to him.

"I am not a very good judge," he replied, looking at her severely.

"Like Prince Yashvin," she said, smiling, "who thinks Patti sings too loud."

"Thank you," she said, taking the program that Vronsky passed to her, in her little hand, incased in a long glove; and at the same moment her beautiful face quivered; she rose and went to the back of the box.

The last act had hardly begun, when Vronsky, seeing Anna's box empty, left the parquet, though he was hissed for disturbing the quiet of the theater while a cavatina was going on, and went back to the hotel.

Anna was already in her room; when Vronsky went to