Chapter 88 — Anna Karenina

Vronsky looks frivolous in society, but he hates irregularity. A humiliating refused loan in the Corps of Pages taught him to keep accounts, and several times a year he shuts himself away for a day of reckoning, faire la lessive. The morning after the races he skips shaving, spreads money and bills across the table, and works while Petritsky slips out to avoid his temper.

He lists seventeen thousand roubles of debt against eighteen hundred on hand and nothing due before the New Year. He sorts obligations into three classes: immediate honor debts including a horse and Venovsky's card debt he must be ready to fling at a swindler, racehorse tradesmen who need partial payment, and shop and hotel bills he can ignore for now. Society assumes he has a hundred thousand in income; in truth he gave most of his father's estate to his indebted brother, lived on forty-five thousand with his mother's help, and now receives only twenty thousand because she punishes his affair with Anna.

He will not beg his mother after her letter offering success in the army but not in scandal. He cannot reclaim the income he gifted his brother without dishonor, like beating a woman or stealing. So he borrows ten thousand from a money-lender, cuts expenses, sells his race horses to Rolandak, pays what he can, writes a cold reply to his mother, burns Anna's three notes, and meditates on their conversation. The affair is becoming a balance sheet.