"How glad I am to meet you!" said Vronsky, showing his strong
white teeth in a friendly smile.
"I heard the name Vronsky, but I didn't know which one. I'm
very, very glad!"
"Let's go in. Come, tell me what you're doing."
"I've been living here for two years. I'm working."
"Ah!" said Vronsky, with sympathy; "let's go in." And with the
habit common with Russians, instead of saying in Russian what he
wanted to keep from the servants, he began to speak in French.
"Do you know Madame Karenina? We are traveling together. I am
going to see her now," he said in French, carefully scrutinizing
Golenishtchev's face.
"Ah! I did not know" (though he did know), Golenishtchev answered
carelessly. "Have you been here long?" he added.
"Four days," Vronsky answered, once more scrutinizing his
friend's face intently.
"Yes, he's a decent fellow, and will look at the thing properly,"
Vronsky said to himself, catching the significance of
Golenishtchev's face and the change of subject. "I can introduce
him to Anna, he looks at it properly."
During those three months that Vronsky had spent abroad with
Anna, he had always on meeting new people asked himself how the
new person would look at his relations with Anna, and for the
most part, in men, he had met with the "proper" way of looking at
it. But if he had been asked, and those who looked at it
"properly" had been asked, exactly how they did look at it, both
he and they would have been greatly puzzled to answer.
In reality, those who in Vronsky's opinion had the "proper" view
had no sort of view at all, but behaved in general as well-bred
persons do behave in regard to all the complex and insoluble
problems with which life is encompassed on all sides; they
behaved with propriety, avoiding allusions and unpleasant
questions. They assumed an air of fully comprehending the import
and force of the situation, of accepting and even approving of
it, but of considering it superfluous and uncalled for to put all
this into words.
Vronsky at once divined that Golenishtchev was of this class, and
therefore was doubly pleased to see him. And in fact,
Golenishtchev's manner to Madame Karenina, when he was taken to
call on her, was all that Vronsky could have desired. Obviously
without the slightest effort he steered clear of all subjects
which might lead to embarrassment.
He had never met Anna before, and was struck by her beauty, and
still more by the frankness with which she accepted her position.
She blushed when Vronsky brought in Golenishtchev, and he was
extremely charmed by this childish blush overspreading her candid
and handsome face. But what he liked particularly was the way in
which at once, as though on purpose that there might be no
misunderstanding with an outsider, she called Vronsky simply
Alexey, and said they were moving into a house they had just
taken, what was here called a palazzo. Golenishtchev liked this
direct and simple attitude to her own position. Looking at
Anna's manner of simple-hearted, spirited gaiety, and knowing
Alexey Alexandrovitch and Vronsky, Golenishtchev fancied that he
understood her perfectly. He fancied that he understood what she
was utterly unable to understand: how it was that, having made
her husband wretched, having abandoned him and her son and lost
her good name, she yet felt full of spirits, gaiety, and
happiness.