Page 674 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

Chapter 21

‘We’ve come to fetch you. Your lessive lasted a good
time today,’ said Petritsky. ‘Well, is it over?’
‘It is over,’ answered Vronsky, smiling with his eyes
only, and twirling the tips of his mustaches as
circumspectly as though after the perfect order into which
his affairs had been brought any over-bold or rapid
movement might disturb it.
‘You’re always just as if you’d come out of a bath after
it,’ said Petritsky. ‘I’ve come from Gritsky’s’ (that was
what they called the colonel); ‘they’re expecting you.’
Vronsky, without answering, looked at his comrade,
thinking of something else.
‘Yes; is that music at his place?’ he said, listening to the
familiar sounds of polkas and waltzes floating across to
him. ‘What’s the fete?’
‘Serpuhovskoy’s come.’
‘Aha!’ said Vronsky, ‘why, I didn’t know.’
The smile in his eyes gleamed more brightly than ever.
Having once made up his mind that he was happy in
his love, that he sacrificed his ambition to it—having
anyway taken up this position, Vronsky was incapable of

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