PART FOURTH
CHAPTER I
KARENIN and his wife continued to live in the same house, and to meet every day, and yet they remained entire strangers to each other. Alekseï Aleksandrovitch made a point every day to be seen with his wife so that the servants might not have the right to gossip, but he avoided dining at home. Vronsky was never seen there; Anna met him outside, and her husband knew it.
All three suffered from a situation which would have been intolerable for a single day had not each believed it to be transitory. Alekseï Aleksandrovitch expected to see this passion, like everything else in the world, come to an end and thus his name would not be dishonored. Anna, the cause of all the trouble, and the one on whom the consequences weighed the most cruelly, accepted her position simply and solely because she expected—nay, was firmly convinced—that the matter would soon be explained and settled. She had not the least idea how it would come about, but she was certain that it would now come about very speedily.
Vronsky in spite of himself, submitting to her views, was also awaiting something to happen independent of himself, which should resolve all their difficulty.
Toward the middle of the winter Vronsky had to spend a very tiresome week. He was delegated to show a foreign prince about Petersburg. Vronsky himself was a representative Russian. Not only was he irreproachable in his bearing but he was accustomed to the society of such exalted personages; therefore he was given the charge of the prince. But this responsibility was very distasteful to him. The prince did not want to
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