Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART TWO CHAPTER 30
who were seriously ill, and there were many of them at the springs, and looked after
them in the most natural way. This Russian girl was not, as Kitty gathered, related to
Madame Stahl, nor was she a paid attendant. Madame Stahl called her Varenka, and
other people called her “Mademoiselle Varenka.” Apart from the interest Kitty took
in this girl’s relations with Madame Stahl and with other unknown persons, Kitty,
as often happened, felt an inexplicable attraction to Mademoiselle Varenka, and was
aware when their eyes met that she too liked her.
Of Mademoiselle Varenka one would not say that she had passed her first youth,
but she was, as it were, a creature without youth; she might have been taken for
nineteen or for thirty. If her features were criticized separately, she was handsome
rather than plain, in spite of the sickly hue of her face. She would have been a good
figure, too, if it had not been for her extreme thinness and the size of her head, which
was too large for her medium height. But she was not likely to be attractive to men.
She was like a fine flower, already past its bloom and without fragrance, though
the petals were still unwithered. Moreover, she would have been unattractive to
men also from the lack of just what Kitty had too much of–of the suppressed fire of
vitality, and the consciousness of her own attractiveness.
She always seemed absorbed in work about which there could be no doubt, and
so it seemed she could not take interest in anything outside it. It was just this contrast
with her own position that was for Kitty the great attraction of Mademoiselle
Varenka. Kitty felt that in her, in her manner of life, she would find an example of
what she was now so painfully seeking: interest in life, a dignity in life–apart from
the worldly relations of girls with men, which so revolted Kitty, and appeared to
her now as a shameful hawking about of goods in search of a purchaser. The more
attentively Kitty watched her unknown friend, the more convinced she was this girl
was the perfect creature she fancied her, and the more eagerly she wished to make
her acquaintance.
The two girls used to meet several times a day, and every time they met, Kitty’s
eyes said: “Who are you? What are you? Are you really the exquisite creature I
imagine you to be? But for goodness’ sake don’t suppose,” her eyes added, “that I
would force my acquaintance on you, I simply admire you and like you.” “I like you
too, and you’re very, very sweet. And I should like you better still, if I had time,”
answered the eyes of the unknown girl. Kitty saw indeed, that she was always busy.
Either she was taking the children of a Russian family home from the springs, or
fetching a shawl for a sick lady, and wrapping her up in it, or trying to interest an
irritable invalid, or selecting and buying cakes for tea for someone.
Soon after the arrival of the Shtcherbatskys there appeared in the morning crowd
at the springs two persons who attracted universal and unfavorable attention. These
were a tall man with a stooping figure, and huge hands, in an old coat too short
for him, with black, simple, and yet terrible eyes, and a pockmarked, kind-looking
woman, very badly and tastelessly dressed. Recognizing these persons as Russians,
Kitty had already in her imagination begun constructing a delightful and touching
romance about them. But the princess, having ascertained from the visitors’ list that
this was Nikolay Levin and Marya Nikolaevna, explained to Kitty what a bad man
this Levin was, and all her fancies about these two people vanished. Not so much
from what her mother told her, as from the fact that it was Konstantin’s brother, this
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