Page 781 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

Alexandrovitch. The gas jet threw its full light on the
bloodless, sunken face under the black hat and on the
white cravat, brilliant against the beaver of the coat.
Karenin’s fixed, dull eyes were fastened upon Vronsky’s

face. Vronsky bowed, and Alexey Alexandrovitch,
chewing his lips, lifted his hand to his hat and went on.
Vronsky saw him without looking round get into the
carriage, pick up the rug and the opera-glass at the
window and disappear. Vronsky went into the hall. His
brows were scowling, and his eyes gleamed with a proud
and angry light in them.
‘What a position!’ he thought. ‘If he would fight,
would stand up for his honor, I could act, could express
my feelings; but this weakness or baseness.... He puts me
in the position of playing false, which I never meant and
never mean to do.’
Vronsky’s ideas had changed since the day of his
conversation with Anna in the Vrede garden.
Unconsciously yielding to the weakness of Anna—who
had surrendered herself up to him utterly, and simply
looked to him to decide her fate, ready to submit to
anything—he had long ceased to think that their tie might
end as he had thought then. His ambitious plans had
retreated into the background again, and feeling that he

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