“Brainless beef! can I be like that?” he thought.

Be that as it might, when, on the seventh day, he parted from the prince, who was starting for Moscow, and received his thanks, he was happy to be rid of his uncomfortable position and the unpleasant reflection of himself.  He said good-bye to him at the station on their return from a bear hunt, at which they had had a display of Russian prowess kept up all night.

Chapter 2

When he got home, Vronsky found there a note from Anna.  She wrote, “I am ill and unhappy.  I cannot come out, but I cannot go on longer without seeing you.  Come in this evening.  Alexey Alexandrovitch goes to the council at seven and will be there till ten.”  Thinking for an instant of the strangeness of her bidding him come straight to her, in spite of her husband’s insisting on her not receiving him, he decided to go.

Vronsky had that winter got his promotion, was now a colonel, had left the regimental quarters, and was living alone.  After having some lunch, he lay down on the sofa immediately, and in five minutes memories of the hideous scenes he had witnessed during the last few days were confused together and joined on to a mental image of Anna and of the peasant who had played an important part in the bear hunt, and Vronsky fell asleep.  He waked up in the dark, trembling with horror, and made haste to light a candle.  “What was it?  What?  What was the dreadful thing I dreamed?  Yes, yes; I think a little dirty man with a disheveled beard was stooping down doing something, and all of a sudden he began saying some strange words in French.  Yes, there was nothing else in the dream,” he said to himself.  “But why was it so awful?” He vividly recalled the peasant again and those incomprehensible French words the peasant had uttered, and a chill of horror ran down his spine.

“What nonsense!” thought Vronsky, and glanced at his watch.

It was half-past eight already.  He rang up his servant, dressed in haste, and went out onto the steps, completely forgetting the dream and only worried at being late.  As he drove up to the Karenins’ entrance he looked at his watch and saw it was ten minutes to nine.  A high, narrow carriage with a pair of grays was standing at the entrance.  He recognized Anna’s carriage.  “She is coming to me,” thought Vronsky, “and better she should.  I don’t like going into that house.  But no matter; I can’t hide myself,” he thought, and with that manner peculiar to him from childhood, as of a man who has nothing to be ashamed of, Vronsky got out of his sledge and went to the door.  The door opened, and the hall porter with a rug on his arm called the carriage.  Vronsky, though he did not usually notice details, noticed at this moment the amazed expression with which the porter glanced at him.  In the very doorway Vronsky almost ran up against Alexey Alexandrovitch.