He smiled his chilly smile.

“There’s so much splendor here that one’s eyes are dazzled,” he said, and he went into the pavilion.  He smiled to his wife as a man should smile on meeting his wife after only just parting from her, and greeted the princess and other acquaintances, giving to each what was due—­that is to say, jesting with the ladies and dealing out friendly greetings among the men.  Below, near the pavilion, was standing an adjutant-general of whom Alexey Alexandrovitch had a high opinion, noted for his intelligence and culture.  Alexey Alexandrovitch entered into conversation with him.

There was an interval between the races, and so nothing hindered conversation.  The adjutant-general expressed his disapproval of races.  Alexey Alexandrovitch replied defending them.  Anna heard his high, measured tones, not losing one word, and every word struck her as false, and stabbed her ears with pain.

When the three-mile steeplechase was beginning, she bent forward and gazed with fixed eyes at Vronsky as he went up to his horse and mounted, and at the same time she heard that loathsome, never-ceasing voice of her husband.  She was in an agony of terror for Vronsky, but a still greater agony was the never-ceasing, as it seemed to her, stream of her husband’s shrill voice with its familiar intonations.

“I’m a wicked woman, a lost woman,” she thought; “but I don’t like lying, I can’t endure falsehood, while as for him (her husband) it’s the breath of his life—­falsehood.  He knows all about it, he sees it all; what does he care if he can talk so calmly?  If he were to kill me, if he were to kill Vronsky, I might respect him.  No, all he wants is falsehood and propriety,” Anna said to herself, not considering exactly what it was she wanted of her husband, and how she would have liked to see him behave.  She did not understand either that Alexey Alexandrovitch’s peculiar loquacity that day, so exasperating to her, was merely the expression of his inward distress and uneasiness.  As a child that has been hurt skips about, putting all his muscles into movement to drown the pain, in the same way Alexey Alexandrovitch needed mental exercise to drown the thoughts of his wife that in her presence and in Vronsky’s, and with the continual iteration of his name, would force themselves on his attention.  And it was as natural for him to talk well and cleverly, as it is natural for a child to skip about.  He was saying: 

“Danger in the races of officers, of cavalry men, is an essential element in the race.  If England can point to the most brilliant feats of cavalry in military history, it is simply owing to the fact that she has historically developed this force both in beasts and in men.  Sport has, in my opinion, a great value, and as is always the case, we see nothing but what is most superficial.”

“It’s not superficial,” said Princess Tverskaya.  “One of the officers, they say, has broken two ribs.”