He felt, too, something swelling in his throat and twitching in his nose, and for the first time in his life he felt on the point of weeping.  He could not have said exactly what it was touched him so.  He felt sorry for her, and he felt he could not help her, and with that he knew that he was to blame for her wretchedness, and that he had done something wrong.

“Is not a divorce possible?” he said feebly.  She shook her head, not answering.  “Couldn’t you take your son, and still leave him?”

“Yes; but it all depends on him.  Now I must go to him,” she said shortly.  Her presentiment that all would again go on in the old way had not deceived her.

“On Tuesday I shall be in Petersburg, and everything can be settled.”

“Yes,” she said.  “But don’t let us talk any more of it.”

Anna’s carriage, which she had sent away, and ordered to come back to the little gate of the Vrede garden, drove up.  Anna said good-bye to Vronsky, and drove home.

Chapter 23

On Monday there was the usual sitting of the Commission of the 2nd of June.  Alexey Alexandrovitch walked into the hall where the sitting was held, greeted the members and the president, as usual, and sat down in his place, putting his hand on the papers laid ready before him.  Among these papers lay the necessary evidence and a rough outline of the speech he intended to make.  But he did not really need these documents.  He remembered every point, and did not think it necessary to go over in his memory what he would say.  He knew that when the time came, and when he saw his enemy facing him, and studiously endeavoring to assume an expression of indifference, his speech would flow of itself better than he could prepare it now.  He felt that the import of his speech was of such magnitude that every word of it would have weight.  Meantime, as he listened to the usual report, he had the most innocent and inoffensive air.  No one, looking at his white hands, with their swollen veins and long fingers, so softly stroking the edges of the white paper that lay before him, and at the air of weariness with which his head drooped on one side, would have suspected that in a few minutes a torrent of words would flow from his lips that would arouse a fearful storm, set the members shouting and attacking one another, and force the president to call for order.  When the report was over, Alexey Alexandrovitch announced in his subdued, delicate voice that he had several points to bring before the meeting in regard to the Commission for the Reorganization of the Native Tribes.  All attention was turned upon him.  Alexey Alexandrovitch cleared his throat, and not looking at his opponent, but selecting, as he always did while he was delivering his speeches, the first person sitting opposite him, an inoffensive little old man, who never had an opinion of any sort in the Commission, began to expound his