tific journals, so that often he went directly to her with questions relating to agronomics and to architecture, even with those on the breeding of horses, and the best methods of hunting. He was amazed at her knowledge and her memory; and when he felt any doubt about the beginning of an enterprise and wanted moral support, he would consult her, and she would find in books whatever he asked about and then show it to him.
The arrangement of the hospital also occupied her. She not only assisted in it, but, moreover, invented many original ideas and carried them out. But, after all, her chief preoccupation was herself .... herself and how she might retain Vronsky's affections, how she might supply for him all that he needed.
Vronsky appreciated this, and saw that the only aim of her life was to please him and to obey his wishes in every particular; but at the same time he was oppressed by the chains of tenderness which she tried to forge around him. As time went on, he found himself more and more embarrassed by these chains, and more desirous of, if not exactly escaping from them, at least of keeping them from interfering with his independence. If it had not been for his ever increasing desire for freedom, if it had not been for the fact that every time he had to go to the city, to the races, there was a scene with Anna, Vronsky would have been perfectly contented with his existence.
The rôle of rich landed proprietor, which he had chosen for himself as constituting the true work of the Russian aristocracy, and which he had been engaged in now for half a year, gave him ever increasing pleasure. His work, which absorbed him more and more, was prospering admirably. Notwithstanding his enormous expenses for the building of the hospital, for machinery, and cattle imported from Switzerland, and many other things, he felt sure that he was not wasting, but increasing, his property. As far as it concerned the matter of income, the sale of wood, of wheat, of wool, the leasing of land, Vronsky was as firm as a rock, and succeeded in holding to his price. In matters concerning his whole
