ANNA KARENINA (Collector's Edition). Leo Tolstoy

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      Chapter 4

      THE highest Petersburg Society is really all one: all who belong to it know and even visit one another. But this large circle has its subdivisions. Anna Arkadyevna Karenina had friends and close connections in three different sets. One of these was her husband’s official set, consisting of his colleagues and subordinates, who in most varied and capricious ways were connected and separated by social conditions. Anna found it hard now to recall the feeling of almost religious respect she had at first felt for these people. Now she knew them all as well as the inhabitants of a provincial town know one another; she knew the habits and weaknesses of each of them, and where the shoe pinched this or that foot; she knew their relations to one another and to the governing centre; she knew who sided with whom, and how and by what means each supported himself, and who agreed or disagreed with whom and about what; but (in spite of admonitions and advice from the Countess Lydia Ivanovna) this bureaucratic circle of male interests could not interest Anna, and she avoided it.

      Another circle with which Anna was intimate was that through which Karenin had made his career. The centre of that circle was the Countess Lydia Ivanovna. It consisted of elderly, plain, philanthropic and pious women and clever, well-educated, ambitious men. One of the clever men who belonged to it called it, ‘the conscience of Petersburg Society.’

      Karenin set great value on this circle, and Anna, who knew how to get on with every one, had during the first part of her life in Petersburg made friends in it too. But now, on her return from Moscow, that circle became unbearable to her. It seemed to her that she, and all of them, were only pretending, and she felt so bored and uncomfortable in that Society that she visited Lydia Ivanovna as rarely as possible.

      The third circle with which Anna was connected was Society in the accepted meaning of the word: the Society of balls, dinner-parties, brilliant toilettes, the Society which clung to the Court with one hand lest it should sink to the demi-monde, for this the members of that Society thought they despised, though its tastes were not only similar but identical with their own. Anna was connected with this set through the Princess Betsy Tverskaya, the wife of her cousin, who had an income of Rs. 120,000 a year, and who, from the time Anna first appeared in Society, had particularly liked her, made much of her, and drawn her into her own set, making fun of that to which the Countess Lydia Ivanovna belonged.

      ‘When I am old and ugly I will become like that,’ Betsy used to say, ‘but for you, a young and beautiful woman, it is too early to settle down in that almshouse.’

      At first Anna had avoided the Princess Tverskaya’s set as much as she could, because it demanded more expense than she could afford; and also because she really approved more of the other set; but after her visit to Moscow all this was reversed. She avoided her moral friends and went into grand Society. There she saw Vronsky, and experienced a tremulous joy when meeting him. She met him most frequently at Betsy’s, who was a Vronsky herself and his cousin. Vronsky went everywhere where he had a chance of meeting Anna, and spoke to her of his love whenever he could. She gave him no encouragement, but every time they met there sprang up that feeling of animation which had seized her in the train on the morning when she first saw him. She was aware that when they met joy lit up her eyes and drew her lips into a smile, but she could not hide the expression of that joy.

      At first Anna sincerely believed that she was displeased with him for allowing himself to persecute her; but soon after her return from Moscow, having gone to a party where she expected to meet him but to which he did not come, she clearly realized, by the sadness that overcame her, that she had been deceiving herself and that his persecution supplied the whole interest of her life.

      · · · · · · ·

      A famous prima donna was giving her second performance and all high Society was at the Opera House. Vronsky, from the front row of the stalls, seeing his cousin, went to her box without waiting for the interval.

      ‘Why did you not come to dinner?’ she said, adding with a smile and so that only he could hear her: ‘I am amazed at the clairvoyance of lovers! She was not there! But come in after the opera.’

      Vronsky looked at her inquiringly. She nodded, and he thanked her by a smile and sat down beside her.

      ‘And how well I remember your ridicule!’ continued the Princess Betsy, who took particular pleasure in following the progress of this passion. ‘What has become of it all? You are caught, my dear fellow!’

      ‘I wish for nothing better than to be caught,’ replied Vronsky with his calm good-natured smile. ‘To tell the truth, if I complain at all, it is only of not being caught enough! I am beginning to lose hope.’

      ‘What hope can you have?’ said Betsy, offended on her friend’s behalf: ‘entendons nous!’ [‘let us understand one another!’] But in her eyes little sparks twinkled which said that she understood very well, and just as he did, what hope he might have.

      ‘None whatever,’ said Vronsky, laughing and showing his close-set teeth. ‘Excuse me!’ he added, taking from her hand the opera-glasses, and he set to work to scan across her bare shoulder the row of boxes opposite. ‘I am afraid I am becoming ridiculous.’

      He knew very well that he ran no risk of appearing ridiculous either in Betsy’s eyes or in the eyes of Society people generally. He knew very well that in their eyes, the rôle of the disappointed lover of a maiden or of any single woman might be ridiculous; but the rôle of a man who was pursuing a married woman, and who made it the purpose of his life at all cost to draw her into adultery, was one which had in it something beautiful and dignified and could never be ridiculous; so it was with a proud glad smile lurking under his moustache that he put down the opera-glasses and looked at his cousin.

      ‘And why did you not come to dinner?’ she said admiringly.