Alexey Alexandrovitch, after meeting Vronsky on his own steps,
drove, as he had intended, to the Italian opera. He sat
through two acts there, and saw everyone he had wanted to see.
On returning home, he carefully scrutinized the hat stand, and
noticing that there was not a military overcoat there, he went,
as usual, to his own room. But, contrary to his usual habit, he
did not go to bed, he walked up and down his study till three
o'clock in the morning. The feeling of furious anger with his
wife, who would not observe the proprieties and keep to the one
stipulation he had laid on her, not to receive her lover in her
own home, gave him no peace. She had not complied with his
request, and he was bound to punish her and carry out his
threat--obtain a divorce and take away his son. He knew all the
difficulties connected with this course, but he had said he would
do it, and now he must carry out his threat. Countess Lidia
Ivanovna had hinted that this was the best way out of his
position, and of late the obtaining of divorces had been brought
to such perfection that Alexey Alexandrovitch saw a possibility
of overcoming the formal difficulties. Misfortunes never come
singly, and the affairs of the reorganization of the native
tribes, and of the irrigation of the lands of the Zaraisky
province, had brought such official worries upon Alexey
Alexandrovitch that he had been of late in a continual condition
of extreme irritability.