other side of the track in the midst of the drifting storm.
"This way, please, No. 28," cried other voices, and several people covered with snow hurried by. Two gentlemen, with lighted cigarettes in their mouths, passed near Anna. She was just about to reenter the carriage, after getting one more breath of fresh air, and had already taken her hand from her muff, to lay hold of the railing, when the flickering light from the reflector was cut off by a man in a military coat, who came close to her. She looked up, and that instant recognized Vronsky's face.
Raising his hand to his vizor he bowed low, and asked if she needed anything, if he might not be of service to her.
She looked at him for a considerable time without replying, and although he was in the shadow, she saw, or thought she saw, the expression of his face and even of his eyes. It was a repetition of that respectful admiration which had so impressed her on the evening of the ball. More than once that day she had said to herself that Vronsky, for her, was only one of the hundred young men whom one meets in society, that she would never permit herself to give him a second thought! but now, on the first instant of seeing him again, a sensation of pride and joy seized her. She had no need to ask why he was there. She knew, as truly as if he had told her, that he was there so as to be where she was.
"I did not know that you were going to Petersburg. Why are you going?" said she, letting her hand fall from the railing. A joy which she could not restrain shone in her face.
"Why am I going?" he repeated, looking straight into her eyes. "You know that I came simply for this, — to be where you are," he said. "I could not do otherwise."
And at this instant the wind, as if it had conquered every obstacle, blew the snow from the roofs of the carriages, and whirled away a piece of sheet-iron
