from being a pitiable figure, that he was very attractive with his fine breeding, his rather old-fashioned, reserved courtesy with women, his powerful figure, and striking, as she thought, and expressive face.  But she saw him not from without, but from within; she saw that here he was not himself; that was the only way she could define his condition to herself.  Sometimes she inwardly reproached him for his inability to live in the town; sometimes she recognized that it was really hard for him to order his life here so that he could be satisfied with it.

What had he to do, indeed?  He did not care for cards; he did not go to a club.  Spending the time with jovial gentlemen of Oblonsky’s type—­she knew now what that meant...it meant drinking and going somewhere after drinking.  She could not think without horror of where men went on such occasions.  Was he to go into society?  But she knew he could only find satisfaction in that if he took pleasure in the society of young women, and that she could not wish for.  Should he stay at home with her, her mother and her sisters?  But much as she liked and enjoyed their conversations forever on the same subjects—­“Aline-Nadine,” as the old prince called the sisters’ talks—­she knew it must bore him.  What was there left for him to do?  To go on writing at his book he had indeed attempted, and at first he used to go to the library and make extracts and look up references for his book.  But, as he told her, the more he did nothing, the less time he had to do anything.  And besides, he complained that he had talked too much about his book here, and that consequently all his ideas about it were muddled and had lost their interest for him.

One advantage in this town life was that quarrels hardly ever happened between them here in town.  Whether it was that their conditions were different, or that they had both become more careful and sensible in that respect, they had no quarrels in Moscow from jealousy, which they had so dreaded when they moved from the country.

One event, an event of great importance to both from that point of view, did indeed happen—­that was Kitty’s meeting with Vronsky.

The old Princess Marya Borissovna, Kitty’s godmother, who had always been very fond of her, had insisted on seeing her.  Kitty, though she did not go into society at all on account of her condition, went with her father to see the venerable old lady, and there met Vronsky.

The only thing Kitty could reproach herself for at this meeting was that at the instant when she recognized in his civilian dress the features once so familiar to her, her breath failed her, the blood rushed to her heart, and a vivid blush—­she felt it—­ overspread her face.  But this lasted only a few seconds.  Before her father, who purposely began talking in a loud voice to Vronsky, had finished, she was perfectly ready to look at Vronsky, to speak to him, if necessary, exactly as she spoke to Princess Marya Borissovna, and more than that, to do so in such a way that everything to the faintest intonation and smile would have been approved by her husband, whose unseen presence she seemed to feel about her at that instant.