Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART TWO CHAPTER 32
“How good you are! how good you are!” cried Kitty, and stopping her, she kissed
her. “If I could only be even a little like you!”
“Why should you be like anyone? You’re nice as you are,” said Varenka, smiling
her gentle, weary smile.
“No, I’m not nice at all. Come, tell me.... Stop a minute, let’s sit down,” said Kitty,
making her sit down again beside her. “Tell me, isn’t it humiliating to think that a
man has disdained your love, that he hasn’t cared for it?...”
“But he didn’t disdain it; I believe he cared for me, but he was a dutiful son...”
“Yes, but if it hadn’t been on account of his mother, if it had been his own doing?...”
said Kitty, feeling she was giving away her secret, and that her face, burning with
the flush of shame, had betrayed her already.
“In that case he would have done wrong, and I should not have regretted him,”
answered Varenka, evidently realizing that they were now talking not of her, but of
Kitty.
“But the humiliation,” said Kitty, “the humiliation one can never forget, can never
forget,” she said, remembering her look at the last ball during the pause in the music.
“Where is the humiliation? Why, you did nothing wrong?”
“Worse than wrong–shameful.”
Varenka shook her head and laid her hand on Kitty’s hand.
“Why, what is there shameful?” she said. “You didn’t tell a man, who didn’t care
for you, that you loved him, did you?”
“Of course not; I never said a word, but he knew it. No, no, there are looks, there
are ways; I can’t forget it, if I live a hundred years.”
“Why so? I don’t understand. The whole point is whether you love him now or
not,” said Varenka, who called everything by its name.
“I hate him; I can’t forgive myself.”
“Why, what for?”
“The shame, the humiliation!”
“Oh! if everyone were as sensitive as you are!” said Varenka. “There isn’t a girl
who hasn’t been through the same. And it’s all so unimportant.”
“Why, what is important?” said Kitty, looking into her face with inquisitive wonder.
“Oh, there’s so much that’s important,” said Varenka, smiling.
“Why, what?”
“Oh, so much that’s more important,” answered Varenka, not knowing what to
say. But at that instant they heard the princess’s voice from the window. “Kitty, it’s
cold! Either get a shawl, or come indoors.”
“It really is time to go in!” said Varenka, getting up. “I have to go on to Madame
Berthe’s; she asked me to.”
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