Don Quixote

had discovered this pleasure, and
he was enjoying his discovery.
If he could have heard what her parents were saying that evening, if
he could have put himself at the point of view of the family, and have
heard that Kitty would be unhappy if he did not marry her, he would
have been greatly astonished, and would not have believed it. He could
not believe that what gave such great and delicate pleasure to him,
and above all to her, could be wrong. Still less could he have
believed that he ought to marry.
Marriage had never presented itself to him as a possibility. He
not only disliked family life, but a family, and especially a husband,
in accordance with the views general in the bachelor world in which he
lived, were conceived as something alien, repellent, and, above all,
ridiculous. But though Vronsky had not the least suspicion of what the
parents were saying, he felt on coming away from the Shcherbatskys'
that the secret spiritual bond which existed between him and Kitty had
grown so much stronger that evening that some step must be taken.
But what step could and should be taken he could not imagine.
{PART_ONE|CHAPTER_XVI ^paragraph 5}
"What is so exquisite," he thought, as he returned from the
Shcherbatskys', carrying away with him, as he always did, a
delicious feeling of purity and freshness, arising partly from the
fact that he had not been smoking for a whole evening, and with it a
new feeling of tenderness at her love for him- "what is so exquisite
is that not a word has been said by me or by her, yet we understand
each other so well in this unseen language of looks and tones, that
this evening more clearly than ever she told me she loves me. And
how sweetly, simply, and most of all, how trustfully! I feel myself
better, purer. I feel that I have a heart, and that there is a great
deal of good in me Those sweet, loving eyes! When she said: 'Indeed
I do...'"
"Well, what then? Oh, nothing. It's good for me, and good for
her." And he began wondering where to finish the evening.
He passed in review the places he might go to. "Club? a game of
bezique; champagne with Ignatov? No, I'm not going. Chateau des
Fleurs; there I shall find Oblonsky, songs, the cancan. No, I'm sick
of it. That's why I like the Shcherbatskys', because I'm growing
better. I'll go home." He went straight to his room at Dussot's Hotel,
ordered supper, and then undressed, and as soon as his head touched
the pillow, fell into a sound sleep.

{PART_ONE|CHAPTER_XVII
XVII.
-
Next day, at eleven o'clock in the morning, Vronsky drove to the
station of the Peterburg railway to meet his mother, and the first
person he came across on the great flight of steps was Oblonsky, who
was expecting his sister by the same train.
"Ah! Your Excellency!" cried