It was a most agreeable conversation. They were censuring the Karenins, husband and wife.

`Anna is quite changed since her stay in Moscow. There's something strange about her,' said one of her feminine friends.

`The great change is that she has brought back with her the shadow of Alexei Vronsky,' said the ambassador's wife.

`Well, what of it? There's a fable of Grimm's about a man without a shadow - a man deprived of his shadow. As a punishment for something or other. I never could understand just how this was a punishment. Yet a woman must probably feel uncomfortable without a shadow.'

`Yes, but women followed by a shadow usually come to a bad end,' said Anna's friend.

`Bite your tongue!' said Princess Miaghkaia suddenly. `Karenina is a splendid woman. I don't like her husband - but her I like very much.'

`Why don't you like her husband? He's such a remarkable man,' said the ambassador's wife. `My husband says there are few statesmen like him in Europe.'

`And my husband tells me just the same, but I don't believe it,' said Princess Miaghkaia. `If our husbands didn't talk to us, we should see the facts as they are. Alexei Alexandrovich, to my thinking, is simply a fool. I say it in a whisper.... But doesn't it really make everything clear? Before, when I was told to consider him clever, I kept looking for his ability, and thought myself a fool for not seeing it; but directly I said, he's a fool, though only in a whisper, everything became clear - isn't that so?'

`How spiteful you are today!'

`Not a bit. I'd no other way out of it. One of us two had to be the fool. And, as you know, one could never say that of oneself.'

`No one is satisfied with his fortune, and everyone is satisfied with his wit,' the diplomatist repeated the French saying.

`That's it - that's just it,' Princess Miaghkaia turned to him promptly. `But the point is that I won't abandon Anna to your mercies. She's such a dear, so charming. How can she help it if they're all in love with her, and follow her about like shadows?'

`Oh, I had no idea of censuring her,' Anna's friend said in self-defense.

`If we have no shadows following us, it does not prove that we've any right to blame her.'

And, having duly disposed of Anna's friend, the Princess Miaghkaia got up, and, together with the ambassador's wife, joined the group at the table, where the general conversation had to do with the king of Prussia.

`What were you gossiping so maliciously about?' asked Betsy.

`About the Karenins. The Princess gave us a character sketch of Alexei Alexandrovich,' said the ambassador's wife with a smile, as she sat down at the table.

`Pity we didn't hear it!' said Princess Betsy, glancing toward the door. `Ah, here you are at last!' she said, turning with a smile to Vronsky who was entering.

Vronsky was not merely acquainted with all the persons whom he was meeting here; he saw them all every day; and so he came in with the quiet manner with which one enters a room full of people whom one had left only a short while ago.