Anna and Vronsky had been travelling for three months in Europe.  As for Anna, she had revelled in the exuberance of her freedom from a disagreeable past, the events of which seemed like some frightful nightmare.  She appeased her conscience to some extent by saying to herself:  “I have done my husband an irreparable injury, but I also suffer, and I shall suffer.”  The prediction was soon fulfilled.  Vronsky soon began to feel dissatisfied.  He grew weary of lack of occupation in foreign cities for sixteen hours a day.  Life soon became intolerable in little Italian cities, and Anna, though astonished at this speedy disillusionment, agreed to return to Russia and to spend the summer on his estate.  They travelled home, but neither of them was happy.  Vronsky perceived that Anna was in a strange state of mind, evidently tormented by something which she made no attempt to explain.  By degrees she, on her part, realized that Vronsky was willing to absent himself from her society on various excuses.  Quarrels became frequent, and at length alienation was complete.

* * * * *

A tragedy happened on the railway.  A woman went along the platform of the station and walked off on to the line.  Like a madman a short time afterwards Vronsky rushed into the barracks where Anna’s body had been carried.  Her head was untouched, with its heavy braids of hair and light curls gathered about the temples.  Her eyes were half closed and her lips were slightly opened as if she was about to speak, and to repeat the last words she had uttered to him:  “You will repent.”

The war with Turkey had broken out, and Vronsky, disgusted with his whole life, left for Servia.

* * * * *

ANTHONY TROLLOPE

The Warden

Few English men of letters have had an unhappier childhood than Anthony Trollope.  Born in London on April 24, 1815, his home was made sordid by his father’s misfortunes, and at Harrow and Winchester, where he was for nearly eleven years, his mean appearance subjected him to many dire humiliations.  A final catastrophe in the fortunes of the elder Trollope drove the family to Belgium, where Anthony for a time acted as usher in a school at Brussels.  But at the age of nineteen a Post-office appointment brought him back to London.  The turning point in his career came in 1841, when he accepted the position of a cleric to one of the surveyors in the West of England.  Here he developed an extraordinary energy and ability, and it was during this time, in 1847, that he published his first novel, “The Macdermots of Ballycloran.”  “The Warden,” published in 1855, was the first and in many ways the best of the famous six Barsetshire series that caused Trollope to attract the notice of the reading public.  Henry James says, “‘The Warden’ is simply the history of an old man’s conscience, and Trollope never did anything happier than the picture of this sweet and serious little old gentleman.”  The book is regarded as Trollope’s masterpiece.

I.—­Hiram’s Hospital