Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART TWO CHAPTER 1
“Oh! time’s up already,” And he went to the door. The celebrated doctor announced
to the princess (a feeling of what was due from him dictated his doing so)
that he ought to see the patient once more.
“What! another examination!” cried the mother, with horror.
“Oh, no, only a few details, princess.”
“Come this way.”
And the mother, accompanied by the doctor, went into the drawing room to Kitty.
Wasted and flushed, with a peculiar glitter in her eyes, left there by the agony of
shame she had been put through, Kitty stood in the middle of the room. When the
doctor came in she flushed crimson, and her eyes filled with tears. All her illness and
treatment struck her as a thing so stupid, ludicrous even! Doctoring her seemed to
her as absurd as putting together the pieces of a broken vase. Her heart was broken.
Why would they try to cure her with pills and powders? But she could not grieve
her mother, especially as her mother considered herself to blame.
“May I trouble you to sit down, princess?” the celebrated doctor said to her.
He sat down with a smile, facing her, felt her pulse, and again began asking her
tiresome questions. She answered him, and all at once got up, furious.
“Excuse me, doctor, but there is really no object in this. This is the third time
you’ve asked me the same thing.”
The celebrated doctor did not take offense.
“Nervous irritability,” he said to the princess, when Kitty had left the room. “However,
I had finished...”
And the doctor began scientifically explaining to the princess, as an exceptionally
intelligent woman, the condition of the young princess, and concluded by insisting
on the drinking of the waters, which were certainly harmless. At the question:
Should they go abroad? the doctor plunged into deep meditation, as though resolving
a weighty problem. Finally his decision was pronounced: they were to go
abroad, but to put no faith in foreign quacks, and to apply to him in any need.
It seemed as though some piece of good fortune had come to pass after the doctor
had gone. The mother was much more cheerful when she went back to her daughter,
and Kitty pretended to be more cheerful. She had often, almost always, to be
pretending now.
“Really, I’m quite well, mamma. But if you want to go abroad, let’s go!” she
said, and trying to appear interested in the proposed tour, she began talking of the
preparations for the journey.
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