Leo Tolstoy: Anna Karenina

PART 8 Chapter 2 (continued)

"Yes, perhaps, if it happens so."

"I never liked him. But this atones for a great deal. He's not merely going himself, he's taking a squadron at his own expense."

"Yes, so I heard."

A bell sounded. Everyone crowded to the doors."Here he is!" said the princess, indicating Vronsky, who with his mother on his arm walked by, wearing a long overcoat and wide-brimmed black hat. Oblonsky was walking beside him, talking eagerly of something.

Vronsky was frowning and looking straight before him, as though he did not hear what Stepan Arkadyevitch was saying.

Probably on Oblonsky's pointing them out, he looked round in the direction where the princess and Sergey Ivanovitch were standing, and without speaking lifted his hat. His face, aged and worn by suffering, looked stony.

Going onto the platform, Vronsky left his mother and disappeared into a compartment.

On the platform there rang out "God save the Tsar," then shouts of "hurrah!" and "jivio!" One of the volunteers, a tall, very young man with a hollow chest, was particularly conspicuous, bowing and waving his felt hat and a nosegay over his head. Then two officers emerged, bowing too, and a stout man with a big beard, wearing a greasy forage cap.