Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/889

 The child was ill, and she had wished to come herself. A sick daughter, and this hostile tone!

Vronsky was impressed by the antithesis between the jolly, careless company, and the moody, exacting love to which he was obliged to return. But he was obliged to go, and he left by the first train that would take him home that night.

CHAPTER XXXII

Vronsky' s departure for the election, Anna, coming to the conclusion that the scenes which had always taken place every time he left her for a journey might serve to cool his love rather than attach him more firmly to her, resolved to control herself to the best of her ability, so as to endure calmly the separation from him. But the cold, stern look which he had given her when he came to tell her about his journey had wounded her, and he was hardly out of her sight before her resolution was shaken.

In her solitude, as she began to think over his cold look, which seemed to hint at a desire for liberty, she came back, as she always did, to one thing—to the consciousness of her humiliation.

"He has the right to go when and where he pleases. Not only to go, but to abandon me. He has all the rights, and I have none! But as he knows this, he ought not to have done this. And yet what has he done? .... He looked at me with a hard, stern look. Of course, that is vague, intangible. Still, he did not formerly look at me so, and it signifies much," she thought; "that look proves that he is growing cold toward me."

And, although she was persuaded that he had begun to grow cold toward her, still there was nothing she could do, there was no change she could bring about in her relations toward him. Just as before, she could retain his affections only by her love, by her fascination. And, just as before, the only way she could keep herself from thinking what would happen if he should abandon