“Android Karenina,” she asked, “what if he has ceased to love me?” The Class Ill’s eyebank bubbled a warm, empathetic lavendar, and she held out her arms to comfort her mistress. But it was no use; in going over the events of the last few days, Anna saw in everything a confirmation of this terrible idea: the fact that he had not dined at home yesterday, and the fact that he had insisted on their taking separate sets of rooms in Petersburg, and that even now he was not coming to her alone, as though he were trying to avoid meeting her face to face.
“But he ought to tell me so. I must know that it is so. If I knew it, then I would know what I should do!” she said to the robot, who in response reset her monitor to the previous sequence, hoping with the Memories of Sergey to reverse her mistress’s melancholy humor. But Anna was caught in this frightening way of thinking, utterly unable to picture to herself the position she would be in if she were convinced of his not caring for her. She thought he had ceased to love her, she felt close to despair, and consequently she felt exceptionally alert. She left Android Karenina and went to her room alone, and as she dressed, she took more care over her appearance than she had done all those days, as though he might, if he had grown cold to her, fall in love with her again because she had dressed and arranged her hair in the way most becoming to her.
She heard the bell ring before she was ready. When she went into the drawing room it was not he, but Yashvin, who met her eyes. Vronsky was watching the Memory of Sergey, and he made no haste to look round at her.
“We have met already,” she said, putting her little hand into the huge hand of Yashvin, whose bashfulness was so queerly out of keeping with his immense frame and coarse face. “We met last year at The Cull. Shut that off,” she said, indicating sharply to Android Karenina to dim the Memory, and glancing significantly at Vronsky’s flashing eyes. “Were the matches good this year?”
Having talked a little while, and noticing that Vronsky glanced at the clock, Yashvin asked her whether she would be staying much longer in Petersburg, and unbending his huge figure reached after his cap.
“Not long, I think,” she said hesitatingly, glancing at Vronsky.
“So then we shan’t meet again?”
“Come and dine with me,” said Anna resolutely, angry, it seemed, with herself for her embarrassment, but flushing as she always did when she defined her position before a fresh person. “The dinner here is not good, but at least you will see him. There is no one of his old friends in the regiment Alexei cares for as he does for you.”
“Delighted,” said Yashvin with a smile, from which Vronsky could see that he liked Anna very much.
Yashvin said good-bye and went away; Vronsky stayed behind.
“Are you going too?” she said to him.
“I’m late already,” he answered. “Run along! I’ll catch you up in a moment,” he called toYashvin.
She took him by the hand, and without taking her eyes off him, gazed at him while she ransacked her mind for the words to say that would keep him.
“Wait a minute, there’s something I want to say to you,” and taking his broad hand she pressed it on her neck. “Oh, was it right my asking him to dinner?”
“You did quite right,” he said with a serene smile that showed his even teeth, and he kissed her hand.
“Alexei, Petersburg is strange now-it is lonely and strange without the Class Ills,” she said, pressing his hand in both of hers. “Soon ours will be taken from us as well. We will be safer in the provinces, Alexei, safer and happier.”
“I cannot agree with you, dear, given what Yashvin was telling me only just before you came in. These aliens, these so-called Honored Guests, rampage everywhere outside the cities; they say that now, when a person falls ill, his family packs up and flees as rapidly as possible, because soon a large, beaked reptile with dozens of eyeballs will burst forth from inside him and join the hordes. Yashvin says it is quickly becoming very like a full-scale invasion, and speaks as though the provinces will soon be entirely overrun.”
“Alexei, I am miserable, and scared. Where can we go? And when?”
“Soon, soon. You wouldn’t believe how disagreeable our way of living here is to me too,” he said-but then he drew away his hand, and turned his face away.
He is happy that there are these aliens in the woods, she thought bitterly. Happy for a reason to keep us here.
“Well, go, go!” she said in a tone of offense, and she walked quickly away from him.
CHAPTER 17
AT DINNER, YASHVIN SPOKE of the sensational new opera then in residence at Petersburg’s grand Vox Fourteen; Anna, much to Vronsky’s alarm, determined that they should get a box for the evening. After dinner, Yashvin went to smoke, and Vronsky went down with him to his own rooms. After sitting there for some time he ran upstairs. Anna was already dressed in a low-necked gown of light silk and velvet that she had had made on the moon, and had set Android Karenina to a charming pearl-white glow that was particularly becoming.
“Are you really going to the theater?” he said, trying not to look at her.
“Why do you ask with such alarm?” she said, wounded again at his not looking at her. “Why shouldn’t I go?” She appeared not to understand the motive of his words.
“Oh, of course, there’s no reason whatever,” he said, frowning.
“That’s just what I say,” she said, willfully refusing to see the irony of his tone, and quietly turning back her long, perfumed glove.
“Anna, for God’s sake! What is the matter with you?” he said, exasperated.
“I don’t understand what you are asking.”
“You know that it’s out of the question to go.”
“Why so?”
He shrugged his shoulders with an air of perplexity and despair.
“But do you mean to say you don’t know…?” he began.
“But I don’t care to know!” she almost shrieked. “I don’t care to. Do I regret what I have done? No, no, no! If it were all to do again from the beginning, it would be the same. For us, for you and for me, there is only one thing that matters, whether we love each other. Other people we need not consider. Why can’t I go? I love you, and I don’t care for anything,” she said, glancing at him with a peculiar gleam in her eyes that he could not understand. “If you have not changed to me, why don’t you look at me?”
He looked at her. He saw all the beauty of her face, set against Android Karenina’s gentle pearl-white glow. But now her beauty and elegance were just what irritated him.
“My feeling cannot change, you know, but I beg you, I entreat you,” he said again in French, with a note of tender supplication in his voice, but with coldness in his eyes.
She did not hear his words, but she saw the coldness of his eyes, and answered with irritation:
“And I beg you to explain why I should not go.”
“Because… because…” He hesitated, and then grasped for an explanation which was not the true cause of his reluctance, but which nevertheless had the virtue of being quite true: “Because of Android Karenina! Flaunting yourself in public in the company of your Class III will only give your husband and his minions a perfect opportunity to subject her to his ridiculous circuitry adjustment program after all.”
“This is a risk I am willing to take,” she said, filled with spite toward him, toward Alexei Karenin, and toward their whole pitiful situation. Only her Class III did she love and hold blameless, and now she turned tenderly to Android Karenina. “A risk that we are willing to take. Aren’t we, my beloved-companion?”
In answer, Android Karenina flashed her eyebank tenderly at her mistress, and motored off behind her to the Vox Fourteen.
CHAPTER 18