Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/265

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ANNA KARENINA
249

rags, and he is ashamed, but he is not unhappy. I unhappy? No; here comes my joy." ....

She had heard the voice of her little boy coming near, and giving a hurried glance around her, swiftly arose. Her face glowed with the fire which Vronsky knew so well, and with a hasty motion putting out her lovely hands, covered with rings, she took Vronsky's face between them, looked at him a long moment, reached her face up to his, with her smiling lips parted, kissed his mouth and both eyes, and pushed him away. She started to go, but he kept her back a moment.

"When?" he whispered, looking at her with ecstasy.

"To-day at one o'clock," she replied in a low voice, and with a deep sigh she ran, in her light, graceful gait, to meet her son.

Serozha had been caught by the rain in the park, and had taken refuge with his nurse in a pavilion.

"Well, good-by—da svidanya!" said she to Vronsky. "I must get ready for the races. Betsy has promised to come and get me."

Vronsky looked at his watch, and hurried away.


CHAPTER XXIV

When Vronsky looked at his watch on the Karenins' terrace, he was so stirred and preoccupied, that, though he saw the figures on the face, he did not know what time it was. He hurried along the driveway, and, picking his way carefully through the mud, he reached his carriage. He had been so absorbed by his conversation with Anna that he did not notice the hour, or ask if he still had time to go to Briansky's. As it often happens, he had only the external faculty of memory, and it recalled to him only that he had decided to do something. He found his coachman dozing on his box under the already slanting shade of the linden; he noticed the swarms of midgets buzzing around his sweaty horses; then, waking the coachman, he jumped into his carriage, and ordered him to drive to Briansky's; only after he