He got out first and helped her out. In the presence of the servants he silently pressed her hand, got into the carriage and drove off to Petersburg.
After he left, a footman came from Princess Betsy and brought Anna a note:
‘I sent to Alexei to find out about him, and he wrote me that he is safe and sound, but in despair.’
‘So he will come!’ she thought. ‘How well I did to tell him everything.’ She looked at her watch. There were still three hours to go, and the memory of the details of their last meeting fired her blood.
‘My God, what light! It’s frightening, but I love seeing his face and love this fantastic light ... My husband! Ah, yes ... Well, thank God it’s all over with him.’
XXX
As in all places where people gather, so in the small German watering-place to which the Shcherbatskys came there occurred the usual crystallization, as it were, of society, designating for each of its members a definite and invariable place. As definitely and invariably as a particle of water acquires the specific form of a snowflake in freezing, so each new person arriving at the spa was put at once into the place appropriate for him.
Fürst Shcherbatsky sammt Gemahlin und Tochter,k by the quarters they occupied, by name, and by the acquaintances they found, crystallized at once into their definite and allotted place.
At the spa that year there was a real German Fürstinl owing to whom the crystallization of society took place still more energetically. The princess was absolutely set on introducing her daughter to the Fürstin and performed this ritual the very next day. Kitty made a low and graceful curtsy in her very simple that is, very smart - summer dress, ordered from Paris. The Fürstin said: ‘I hope the roses will soon return to this pretty little face’ - and at once certain paths of life were firmly established for the Shcherbatskys, from which it was no longer possible to stray. The Shcherbatskys became acquainted with the family of an English lady, and with a German countess and her son, wounded in the last war, and with a Swedish scholar, and with M. Canut and his sister. But the main company of the Shcherbatskys involuntarily constituted itself of the Moscow lady Marya Evgenyevna Rtishchev, her daughter, whom Kitty found disagreeable because, like Kitty, she had become ill from love, and a Moscow colonel whom Kitty had seen and known since childhood in a uniform and epaulettes and who was extraordinarily ridiculous here, with his little eyes and open neck in a brightly coloured tie, and tedious because there was no getting rid of him. When all this became firmly established, Kitty began to be bored, the more so as the prince left for Karlsbad and she stayed alone with her mother. She was not interested in those she knew, feeling that nothing new would come from them. Her main heartfelt interest at the spa now consisted in her observations and surmises about those she did not know. By virtue of her character, Kitty always assumed the most beautiful things about people, especially those she did not know. And now, making guesses about who was who, what relations they were in, and what sort of people they were, Kitty imagined to herself the most amazing and beautiful characters and found confirmation in her observations.
Among these people she was especially taken by a Russian girl who had come to the spa with an ailing Russian lady, Mme Stahl, as everyone called her. Mme Stahl belonged to high society, but was so ill that she was unable to walk, and only on rare good days appeared at the springs in a bath-chair. But, less from illness than from pride, as the princess explained, Mme Stahl was not acquainted with any of the Russians. The Russian girl looked after Mme Stahl and, besides that, as Kitty noticed, made friends with all the gravely ill, of whom there were many at the spa, and looked after them in the most natural way. This Russian girl, from Kitty’s observation, was not related to Mme Stahl and at the same time was not a hired helper. Mme Stahl called her Varenka, and the others ‘Mile Varenka’. Not only was Kitty interested in observing the relations of this girl with Mme Stahl and other persons unknown to her, but, as often happens, she felt an inexplicable sympathy for this Mile Varenka and sensed, when their eyes met, that she, too, was liked.
