Page 1149 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

The elder brother, who had always a respect for his
younger brother’s judgment, could not well tell whether
he was right or not till the world had decided the
question; for his part he had nothing against it, and with

Alexey he went up to see Anna.
Before his brother, as before everyone, Vronsky
addressed Anna with a certain formality, treating her as he
might a very intimate friend, but it was understood that his
brother knew their real relations, and they talked about
Anna’s going to Vronsky’s estate.
In spite of all his social experience Vronsky was, in
consequence of the new position in which he was placed,
laboring under a strange misapprehension. One would
have thought he must have understood that society was
closed for him and Anna; but now some vague ideas had
sprung up in his brain that this was only the case in old-
fashioned days, and that now with the rapidity of modern
progress (he had unconsciously become by now a partisan
of every sort of progress) the views of society had changed,
and that the question whether they would be received in
society was not a foregone conclusion. ‘Of course,’ he
thought, ‘she would not be received at court, but intimate
friends can and must look at it in the proper light.’ One
may sit for several hours at a stretch with one’s legs crossed

1148 of 1759