`The great thing is to keep quiet before a race,' said he; `don't get out of temper, or upset about anything.'

`All right,' answered Vronsky, smiling; and, jumping into his carriage, he told the man to drive to Peterhof.

Before he had driven many paces away, the dark clouds that had been threatening rain all day broke, and there was a heavy downpour of rain.

`What a pity!' thought Vronsky, putting up the roof of the carriage. `It was muddy before, now it will be a perfect swamp.' As he sat in solitude in the closed carriage, he took out his mother's letter and his brother's note, and read them through.

Yes, it was the same thing over and over again. Everyone - his mother, his brother - everyone thought fit to interfere in the affairs of his heart. This interference aroused in him a feeling of angry hatred - a feeling he had rarely known before. `What business is it of theirs? Why does everybody feel called upon to concern himself about me? And why do they worry me so? Just because they see that this is something they can't understand. If it were a common, vulgar, worldly intrigue, they would have left me alone. They feel that this is something different, that this is not a mere pastime, that this woman is dearer to me than life. And this is incomprehensible, and that's why it annoys them. Whatever our destiny is or may be, we have made it ourselves, and we do not complain of it,' he said, in the word we linking himself with Anna. `No, they must needs teach us how to live. They haven't an idea of what happiness is; they don't know that without our love there is for us neither happiness nor unhappiness - no life at all,' he thought.

He was angry with all of them for their interference just because he felt in his soul that they, all these people, were right. He felt that the love that bound him to Anna was not a momentary impulse, which would pass, as worldly intrigues do pass, leaving no other traces in the life of either save pleasant or unpleasant memories. He felt all the torture of his own position and hers, all the difficulty in store for them, conspicuous as they were in the eye of all the world - in concealing their love, in lying and deceiving; and in lying, deceiving, feigning and continually thinking of others, when the passion that united them was so intense that they were both oblivious of everything else save their love.

He vividly recalled all the constantly recurring instances of inevitable necessity for lying and deceit, which were so against his natural bent. He recalled particularly vividly the shame he had more than once detected in her at this necessity for lying and deceit. And he experienced the strange feeling that had sometimes come upon him since his relations with Anna. This was a feeling of loathing for something - whether for Alexei Alexandrovich, or for himself, or for the whole world, he could not have said. But he always drove away this strange feeling. Now, too, he shook it off and continued the thread of his thoughts.

`Yes, she was unhappy before, but proud and at peace; and now she cannot be at peace and feel secure in her dignity, though she does not show it. Yes, we must put an end to it,' he decided.

And for the first time the idea clearly presented itself that it was essential to put an end to this false position, and the sooner the better. `Abandon everything must we - she and I - and hide ourselves somewhere alone with our love,' he said to himself.


  By PanEris using Melati.

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