felt thrown out of the path where till now he had walked proudly and easily. All the rules which had been the guides of his life, and which he had believed irreproachable, proved false and untrue. The deceived husband, whom he had considered a melancholy character, an accidental obstacle, at times absurd, happily for him had suddenly been raised by her to a height inspiring respect; and this husband on this height appeared not ugly, not false, not ridiculous, but good, grand, and generous. Vronsky could not understand it; their rôles had suddenly been interchanged. He felt Karenin's grandeur and straightforwardness, and his own baseness and falsity. He felt that this husband was magnanimous in his grief, while he himself seemed little and miserable in his deception. But this consciousness of inferiority, in comparison to a man whom he had unjustly scorned, constituted only a small part of his grief.
He felt profoundly unhappy from the fact that his passion for Anna, which of late had as it seemed to him grown cool, was more violent than ever now that he knew he was to lose her. During her illness he had seen her as she was, had learned to know her very soul, and it seemed to him that he had never really loved her till now. He must lose her just as he had come to know her and love her truly, — lose her, and be left with the most humiliating recollections. More horrible than anything else was his ridiculous and odious position when Alekseï Aleksandrovitch had uncovered his face while he was hiding it in his hands. Standing motionless on the steps of the Karenin house, he seemed to be entirely unconscious of what he was doing.
"Shall I call an izvoshchik?" asked the Swiss.
"Yes, an izvoshchik."
When he reached home, after three sleepless nights, Vronsky, without undressing, threw himself down on a divan, folded his arms, and laid his head on them. His head was heavy. The strangest reminiscences, thoughts, and impressions succeeded one another in his mind with extraordinary rapidity and clearness. Now it was a
