Anna Karenina (Penguin) - Leo Tolstoy [52]
‘No, thank you.’
‘Where shall I take you?’
‘Mme Karenina is here, I think ... take me to her.’
‘Wherever you choose.’
And Korsunsky waltzed on, measuring his step, straight towards the crowd in the left-hand corner of the ballroom, repeating: ‘Pardon, mesdames, pardon, pardon, mesdames,’ and, manoeuvring through that sea of lace, tulle and ribbons without snagging one little feather, he twirled his partner so sharply that her slender, lace-stockinged legs were revealed, and her train swept up fan-like, covering Krivin’s knees. Korsunsky bowed, straightened his broad shirtfront, and offered her his arm to take her to Anna Arkadyevna. Kitty, all flushed, removed her train from Krivin’s knees and, slightly dizzy, looked around, searching for Anna. Anna was not in lilac, as Kitty had absolutely wanted, but in a low-cut black velvet dress, which revealed her full shoulders and bosom, as if shaped from old ivory, and her rounded arms with their very small, slender hands. The dress was all trimmed with Venetian guipure lace. On her head, in her black hair, her own without admixture, was a small garland of pansies, and there was another on her black ribbon sash among the white lace. Her coiffure was inconspicuous. Conspicuous were only those wilful little ringlets of curly hair that adorned her, always coming out on her nape and temples. Around her firm, shapely neck was a string of pearls.
Kitty had seen Anna every day, was in love with her, and had imagined her inevitably in lilac. But now, seeing her in black, she felt that she had never understood all her loveliness. She saw her now in a completely new and, for her, unexpected way. Now she understood that Anna could not have been in lilac, that her loveliness consisted precisely in always standing out from what she wore, that what she wore was never seen on her. And the black dress with luxurious lace was not seen on her; it was just a frame, and only she was seen - simple, natural, graceful, and at the same time gay and animated.
She stood, as always, holding herself extremely erect, and, when Kitty approached this group, was talking with the host, her head turned slightly towards him.
‘No, I won’t cast a stone,’33 she replied to something, ‘though I don’t understand it,’ she went on, shrugging her shoulders, and with a tender, protective smile turned at once to Kitty. After a fleeting feminine glance over her dress, she made a barely noticeable but, for Kitty, understandable movement of her head, approving of her dress and beauty. ‘You even come into the ballroom dancing,’ she added.
‘This is one of my most faithful helpers,’ said Korsunsky, bowing to Anna Arkadyevna, whom he had not yet seen. ‘The princess helps to make a ball gay and beautiful. Anna Arkadyevna, a turn of the waltz?’ he said, inclining.
‘So you’re acquainted?’ asked the host.
‘With whom are we not acquainted? My wife and I are like white wolves, everybody knows us,’ replied Korsunsky. ‘A turn of the waltz, Anna Arkadyevna?’
‘I don’t dance when I can help it,’ she said.
‘But tonight you can’t,’ replied Korsunsky.
Just then Vronsky approached.
‘Well, if I can’t help dancing tonight, let’s go then,’ she said, ignoring Vronsky’s bow, and she quickly raised her hand to Korsunsky’s shoulder.
‘Why is she displeased with him?’ thought Kitty, noticing that Anna had deliberately not responded to Vronsky’s bow. Vronsky approached Kitty, reminding her about the first quadrille and regretting that until then he had not had the pleasure of seeing her. While she listened to him, Kitty gazed admiringly at Anna waltzing. She expected him to invite her for a waltz, but he did not, and she glanced at him in surprise. He blushed and hastened to invite her to waltz, but he had only just put his arm around her slender waist and taken the first step when the music suddenly stopped. Kitty looked into his face, which was such a short distance from hers, and long afterwards, for several years, that look, so full of love, which she gave him then, and to which he did not respond, cut her heart with tormenting