Anna Karenina полностью

‘Who is it?’ she asked herself. ‘All or one?’ And, not helping the suffering young man she was dancing with to carry on the conversation, the thread of which he had lost and was unable to pick up, and outwardly obeying the merrily loud commands called out by Korsunsky, who sent everybody now into the grand rond, now into the chaine, she watched, and her heart was wrung more and more. ‘No, it’s not the admiration of the crowd she’s drunk with, but the rapture of one man. And that one? can it be him?’ Each time he spoke with Anna, her eyes flashed with a joyful light and a smile of happiness curved her red lips. She seemed to be struggling with herself to keep these signs of joy from showing, yet they appeared on her face of themselves. ‘But what about him?’ Kitty looked at him and was horrified. What portrayed itself so clearly to Kitty in the mirror of Anna’s face, she also saw in him. Where was his quiet, firm manner and carefree, calm expression? No, now each time he addressed Anna, he bowed his head slightly, as if wishing to fall down before her, and in his glance there were only obedience and fear. ‘I do not want to offend you,’ his glance seemed to say each time, ‘I want to save myself but do not know how.’ There was an expression on his face that she had never seen before.

They talked about mutual acquaintances, carrying on the most insignificant conversation, but it seemed to Kitty that every word they spoke decided their fate and hers. And the strange thing was that, though they indeed talked about how ridiculous Ivan Ivanovich was with his French, and how the Yeletsky girl might have found a better match, these words all had a special significance for them, and they felt it just as Kitty did. The whole ball, the whole world, everything was covered with mist in Kitty’s soul. Only the strict school of upbringing she had gone through supported her and made her do what was demanded of her - that is, dance, answer questions, talk, even smile. But before the start of the mazurka, when the chairs were already being put in place and some couples moved from the smaller rooms to the ballroom, Kitty was overcome by a moment of despair and horror. She had refused five partners and now would not dance the mazurka. There was even no hope that she would be asked, precisely because she had had too great a success in society, and it would not have entered anyone’s head that she had not been invited before then. She should have told her mother she was sick and gone home, but she did not have the strength for it. She felt destroyed.

She went to the far corner of a small drawing room and sank into an armchair. Her airy skirt rose like a cloud around her slender body; one bared, thin, delicate girlish hand sank strengthlessly into the folds of her pink tunic; in the other she held her fan and waved it before her flushed face with quick, short movements. But though she had the look of a butterfly that clings momentarily to a blade of grass and is about to flutter up, unfolding its iridescent wings, a terrible despair pained her heart.

‘But perhaps I’m mistaken, perhaps it’s not so?’

And she again recalled all that she had seen.

‘Kitty, what on earth is this?’ said Countess Nordston, approaching her inaudibly across the carpet. ‘I don’t understand this.’

Kitty’s lower lip trembled; she quickly got up.

‘Kitty, you’re not dancing the mazurka?’

‘No, no,’ said Kitty, in a voice trembling with tears.

‘He invited her for the mazurka right in front of me,’ said Countess Nordston, knowing that Kitty would understand whom she meant. ‘She said, “Aren’t you dancing with Princess Shcherbatsky?” ’

‘Oh, it makes no difference to me!’ replied Kitty.

No one except herself understood her situation, no one knew that a few days before she had refused a man whom she perhaps loved, and had refused him because she trusted another.

Countess Nordston found Korsunsky, with whom she was to dance the mazurka, and told him to invite Kitty.

Kitty danced in the first pair, and, fortunately for her, had no need to talk, because Korsunsky kept rushing about his domain giving orders. Vronsky and Anna sat almost opposite to her. She saw them with her far-sighted eyes, she also saw them close to when they met while dancing, and the more she saw them, the more convinced she was that her misfortune was an accomplished fact. She saw that they felt themselves alone in this crowded ballroom. And on Vronsky’s face, always so firm and independent, she saw that expression of lostness and obedience that had so struck her, like the expression of an intelligent dog when it feels guilty.