She heard the sound of his steps about the study and the dining room.  At the drawing room he stood still.  But he did not turn in to see her, he merely gave an order that the horse should be given to Voytov if he came while he was away.  Then she heard the carriage brought round, the door opened, and he came out again.  But he went back into the porch again, and someone was running upstairs.  It was the valet running up for his gloves that had been forgotten.  She went to the window and saw him take the gloves without looking, and touching the coachman on the back he said something to him.  Then without looking up at the window he settled himself in his usual attitude in the carriage, with his legs crossed, and drawing on his gloves he vanished round the corner.

Chapter 27

“He has gone!  It is over!” Anna said to herself, standing at the window; and in answer to this statement the impression of the darkness when the candle had flickered out, and of her fearful dream mingling into one, filled her heart with cold terror.

“No, that cannot be!” she cried, and crossing the room she rang the bell.  She was so afraid now of being alone, that without waiting for the servant to come in, she went out to meet him.

“Inquire where the count has gone,” she said.  The servant answered that the count had gone to the stable.

“His honor left word that if you cared to drive out, the carriage would be back immediately.”

“Very good.  Wait a minute.  I’ll write a note at once.  Send Mihail with the note to the stables.  Make haste.”

She sat down and wrote: 

“I was wrong.  Come back home; I must explain.  For God’s sake come!  I’m afraid.”

She sealed it up and gave it to the servant.

She was afraid of being left alone now; she followed the servant out of the room, and went to the nursery.

“Why, this isn’t it, this isn’t he!  Where are his blue eyes, his sweet, shy smile?” was her first thought when she saw her chubby, rosy little girl with her black, curly hair instead of Seryozha, whom in the tangle of her ideas she had expected to see in the nursery.  The little girl sitting at the table was obstinately and violently battering on it with a cork, and staring aimlessly at her mother with her pitch-black eyes.  Answering the English nurse that she was quite well, and that she was going to the country tomorrow, Anna sat down by the little girl and began spinning the cork to show her.  But the child’s loud, ringing laugh, and the motion of her eyebrows, recalled Vronsky so vividly that she got up hurriedly, restraining her sobs, and went away.  “Can it be all over?  No, it cannot be!” she thought.  “He will come back.  But how can he explain that smile, that excitement after he had been talking to her?  But even if he doesn’t explain, I will believe.  If I don’t believe, there’s only one thing left for me, and I can’t.”