Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/151

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ANNA KARENINA
135

thought of her home, her husband, her son, and all the labors of the day and the coming days, filled her mind.

The train had hardly reached the station at Petersburg, when Anna stepped out on the platform; and the first person that she saw was her husband waiting for her.

"Oh, good heavens! Why do his ears stand out so!" she thought, as she looked at his reserved and portly figure and especially at his stiff cartilaginous ears, which, as they propped up the rim of his round hat, struck her for the first time. When he saw her, he came to meet her at the carriage, compressing his lips into his habitual smile of irony, looking straight at her with his great, weary eyes. A disagreeable thought made her heart sink when she saw his stubborn, weary look; she felt that she had expected to find him different. Especially was she astounded by the feeling of self-dissatisfaction which she experienced on meeting him. This feeling was associated with her home, akin to the state of hypocrisy which she recognized in her relations with her husband. This feeling was not novel; she had felt it before without heeding it, but now she realized it clearly and painfully.

"There! you see, I'm a tender husband, tender as the first year of our marriage; I was burning with desire to see you," said he, in his slow, deliberate voice, and with the light tone of raillery that he generally used in speaking to her, a tone of ridicule of any one who should really say such things.

"Is Serozha well?" she asked.

"And is this all the reward," he said, "for my ardor? He is well, very well." ....


CHAPTER XXXI

Vronsky also had not even attempted to sleep all that night. He sat in his arm-chair, now gazing straight forward, now looking at those who came in and went out, and if before he had impressed strangers and irritated