Page 1387 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

When she went into the bedroom, Vronsky looked
intently at her. He was looking for traces of the
conversation which he knew that, staying so long in
Dolly’s room, she must have had with her. But in her

expression of restrained excitement, and of a sort of
reserve, he could find nothing but the beauty that always
bewitched him afresh though he was used to it, the
consciousness of it, and the desire that it should affect him.
He did not want to ask her what they had been talking of,
but he hoped that she would tell him something of her
own accord. But she only said:
‘I am so glad you like Dolly. You do, don’t you?’
‘Oh, I’ve known her a long while, you know. She’s
very good-hearted, I suppose, mais excessivement terre-a-
terre. Still, I’m very glad to see her.’
He took Anna’s hand and looked inquiringly into her
eyes.
Misinterpreting the look, she smiled to him. Next
morning, in spite of the protests of her hosts, Darya
Alexandrovna prepared for her homeward journey.
Levin’s coachman, in his by no means new coat and
shabby hat, with his ill-matched horses and his coach with
the patched mud-guards, drove with gloomy
determination into the covered gravel approach.

1386 of 1759