Bologova to get some seltzer water, and caught sight of Anna, involuntarily his first word had told her just what he thought.  And he was glad he had told her it, that she knew it now and was thinking of it.  He did not sleep all night.  When he was back in the carriage, he kept unceasingly going over every position in which he had seen her, every word she had uttered, and before his fancy, making his heart faint with emotion, floated pictures of a possible future.

When he got out of the train at Petersburg, he felt after his sleepless night as keen and fresh as after a cold bath.  He paused near his compartment, waiting for her to get out.  “Once more,” he said to himself, smiling unconsciously, “once more I shall see her walk, her face; she will say something, turn her head, glance, smile, maybe.”  But before he caught sight of her, he saw her husband, whom the station-master was deferentially escorting through the crowd.  “Ah, yes!  The husband.”  Only now for the first time did Vronsky realize clearly the fact that there was a person attached to her, a husband.  He knew that she had a husband, but had hardly believed in his existence, and only now fully believed in him, with his head and shoulders, and his legs clad in black trousers; especially when he saw this husband calmly take her arm with a sense of property.

Seeing Alexey Alexandrovitch with his Petersburg face and severely self-confident figure, in his round hat, with his rather prominent spine, he believed in him, and was aware of a disagreeable sensation, such as a man might feel tortured by thirst, who, on reaching a spring, should find a dog, a sheep, or a pig, who has drunk of it and muddied the water.  Alexey Alexandrovitch’s manner of walking, with a swing of the hips and flat feet, particularly annoyed Vronsky.  He could recognize in no one but himself an indubitable right to love her.  But she was still the same, and the sight of her affected him the same way, physically reviving him, stirring him, and filling his soul with rapture.  He told his German valet, who ran up to him from the second class, to take his things and go on, and he himself went up to her.  He saw the first meeting between the husband and wife, and noted with a lover’s insight the signs of slight reserve with which she spoke to her husband.  “No, she does not love him and cannot love him,” he decided to himself.

At the moment when he was approaching Anna Arkadyevna he noticed too with joy that she was conscious of his being near, and looked round, and seeing him, turned again to her husband.

“Have you passed a good night?” he asked, bowing to her and her husband together, and leaving it up to Alexey Alexandrovitch to accept the bow on his own account, and to recognize it or not, as he might see fit.

“Thank you, very good,” she answered.