"All right," answered Vronsky, smiling; and jumping into his

carriage, he told the man to drive to Peterhof.

Before he had driven many paces away, the dark clouds that had

been threatening rain all day broke, and there was a heavy

downpour of rain.

"What a pity!" thought Vronsky, putting up the roof of the

carriage. "It was muddy before, now it will be a perfect swamp."

As he sat in solitude in the closed carriage, he took out his

mother's letter and his brother's note, and read them through.

Yes, it was the same thing over and over again. Everyone, his

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mother, his brother, everyone thought fit to interfere in the

affairs of his heart. This interference aroused in him a feeling

of angry hatred--a feeling he had rarely known before. "What

business is it of theirs? Why does everybody feel called upon to

concern himself about me? And why do they worry me so? Just

because they see that this is something they can't understand.

If it were a common, vulgar, worldly intrigue, they would have

left me alone. They feel that this is something different, that

this is not a mere pastime, that this woman is dearer to me than

life. And this is incomprehensible, and that's why it annoys

them. Whatever our destiny is or may be, we have made it

ourselves, and we do not complain of it," he said, in the word

_we_ linking himself with Anna. "No, they must needs teach us

how to live. They haven't an idea of what happiness is; they

don't know that without our love, for us there is neither

happiness nor unhappiness--no life at all," he thought.

He was angry with all of them for their interference just because

he felt in his soul that they, all these people, were right. He

felt that the love that bound him to Anna was not a momentary

impulse, which would pass, as worldly intrigues do pass, leaving

no other traces in the life of either but pleasant or unpleasant

memories. He felt all the torture of his own and her position,

all the difficulty there was for them, conspicuous as they were

in the eye of all the world, in concealing their love, in lying

and deceiving; and in lying, deceiving, feigning, and continually

thinking of others, when the passion that united them was so

intense that they were both oblivious of everything else but

their love.

He vividly recalled all the constantly recurring instances of

inevitable necessity for lying and deceit, which were so against

his natural bent. He recalled particularly vividly the shame he

had more than once detected in her at this necessity for lying

and deceit. And he experienced the strange feeling that had

sometimes come upon him since his secret love for Anna. This was

a feeling of loathing for something--whether for Alexey

Alexandrovitch, or for himself, or for the whole world, he could

not have said. But he always drove away this strange feeling.

Now, too, he shook it off and continued the thread of his

thoughts.




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