Anna Karenina (Penguin) - Leo Tolstoy [54]
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.
Anna smiled, and her smile passed over to him. She lapsed into thought, and he too would turn serious. Some supernatural force drew Kitty’s eyes to Anna’s face. She was enchanting in her simple black dress, enchanting were her full arms with the bracelets on them, enchanting her firm neck with its string of pearls, enchanting her curly hair in disarray, enchanting the graceful, light movements of her small feet and hands, enchanting that beautiful face in its animation; but there was something terrible and cruel in her enchantment.
Kitty admired her even more than before, and suffered more and more. She felt crushed, and her face showed it. When Vronsky saw her, meeting her during the mazurka, he did not recognize her at first - she was so changed.
‘A wonderful ball!’ he said to her, so as to say something.
‘Yes,’ she replied.
In the middle of the mazurka, repeating a complicated figure just invented by Korsunsky, Anna came out to the middle of the circle, took two partners and called another lady and Kitty to her. Kitty looked fearfully at her as she walked up. Anna, her eyes narrowed, looked at her and smiled, pressing her hand. But noticing that Kitty’s face responded to her smile only with an expression of despair and surprise, she turned away from her and began talking gaily with the other lady.
‘Yes, there’s something alien, demonic and enchanting in her,’ Kitty said to herself.
Anna did not want to stay for supper, but the host began to insist.
‘Come, Anna Arkadyevna,’ said Korsunsky, tucking her