“What is so exquisite,” he thought, as he returned from the Shtcherbatskys’, carrying away with him, as he always did, a delicious feeling of purity and freshness, arising partly from the fact that he had not been smoking for a whole evening, and with it a new feeling of tenderness at her love for him—­“what is so exquisite is that not a word has been said by me or by her, but we understand each other so well in this unseen language of looks and tones, that this evening more clearly than ever she told me she loves me.  And how secretly, simply, and most of all, how trustfully!  I feel myself better, purer.  I feel that I have a heart, and that there is a great deal of good in me.  Those sweet, loving eyes!  When she said:  Indeed I do...’

“Well, what then?  Oh, nothing.  It’s good for me, and good for her.”  And he began wondering where to finish the evening.

He passed in review of the places he might go to.  “Club? a game of bezique, champagne with Ignatov?  No, I’m not going. Chateau des Fleurs; there I shall find Oblonsky, songs, the cancan.  No, I’m sick of it.  That’s why I like the Shtcherbatskys’, that I’m growing better.  I’ll go home.”  He went straight to his room at Dussot’s Hotel, ordered supper, and then undressed, and as soon as his head touched the pillow, fell into a sound sleep.

Chapter 17

Next day at eleven o’clock in the morning Vronsky drove to the station of the Petersburg railway to meet his mother, and the first person he came across on the great flight of steps was Oblonsky, who was expecting his sister by the same train.

“Ah! your excellency!” cried Oblonsky, “whom are you meeting?”

“My mother,” Vronsky responded, smiling, as everyone did who met Oblonsky.  He shook hands with him, and together they ascended the steps.  “She is to be here from Petersburg today.”

“I was looking out for you till two o’clock last night.  Where did you go after the Shtcherbatskys’?”

“Home,” answered Vronsky.  “I must own I felt so well content yesterday after the Shtcherbatskys’ that I didn’t care to go anywhere.”

     “I know a gallant steed by tokens sure,
     And by his eyes I know a youth in love,”

declaimed Stepan Arkadyevitch, just as he had done before to Levin.

Vronsky smiled with a look that seemed to say that he did not deny it, but he promptly changed the subject.

“And whom are you meeting?” he asked.

“I?  I’ve come to meet a pretty woman,” said Oblonsky.

“You don’t say so!”

“Honi soit qui mal y pense! My sister Anna.”

“Ah! that’s Madame Karenina,” said Vronsky.

“You know her, no doubt?”

“I think I do.  Or perhaps not...I really am not sure,” Vronsky answered heedlessly, with a vague recollection of something stiff and tedious evoked by the name Karenina.