Page 451 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

friends must have sent him: my health’s so precious, it
seems.’
‘No; what did he say?’
she questioned him about his health and what he had

been doing, and tried to persuade him to take a rest and
come out to her.
All this she said brightly, rapidly, and with a peculiar
brilliance in her eyes. But Alexey Alexandrovitch did not
now attach any special significance to this tone of hers. He
heard only her words and gave them only the direct sense
they bore. And he answered simply, though jestingly.
There was nothing remarkable in all this conversation, but
never after could Anna recall this brief scene without an
agonizing pang of shame.
Seryozha came in preceded by his governess. If Alexey
Alexandrovitch had allowed himself to observe he would
have noticed the timid and bewildered eyes with which
Seryozha glanced first at his father and then at his mother.
But he would not see anything, and he did not see it.
‘Ah, the young man! He’s grown. Really, he’s getting
quite a man. How are you, young man?’
And he gave his hand to the scared child. Seryozha had
been shy of his father before, and now, ever since Alexey
Alexandrovitch had taken to calling him young man, and

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