The handsome nurse, from whom Vronsky was painting a head for his picture, was the one hidden grief in Anna's life.

He painted with her as his model, admired her beauty and mediaevalism, and Anna dared not confess to herself that she was afraid of becoming jealous of this nurse, and was for that reason particularly gracious and condescending both to her and her little son.

Vronsky, too, glanced out of the window and into Anna's eyes, and, turning at once to Golenishtchev, he said: "Do you know this Mihailov?" "I have met him.

But he's a queer fish, and quite without breeding.