Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART TWO CHAPTER 35
Kitty, with a haughty air, without making peace with her friend, took the necklace
in a little box from the table and went to her mother.
“What’s the matter? Why are you so red?” her mother and father said to her with
one voice.
“Nothing,” she answered. “I’ll be back directly,” and she ran back.
“She’s still here,” she thought. “What am I to say to her? Oh, dear! what have I
done, what have I said? Why was I rude to her? What am I to do? What am I to say
to her?” thought Kitty, and she stopped in the doorway.
Varenka in her hat and with the parasol in her hands was sitting at the table examining
the spring which Kitty had broken. She lifted her head.
“Varenka, forgive me, do forgive me,” whispered Kitty, going up to her. “I don’t
remember what I said. I...”
“I really didn’t mean to hurt you,” said Varenka, smiling.
Peace was made. But with her father’s coming all the world in which she had been
living was transformed for Kitty. She did not give up everything she had learned,
but she became aware that she had deceived herself in supposing she could be what
she wanted to be. Her eyes were, it seemed, opened; she felt all the difficulty of
maintaining herself without hypocrisy and self-conceit on the pinnacle to which she
had wished to mount. Moreover, she became aware of all the dreariness of the world
of sorrow, of sick and dying people, in which she had been living. The efforts she had
made to like it seemed to her intolerable, and she felt a longing to get back quickly
into the fresh air, to Russia, to Ergushovo, where, as she knew from letters, her sister
Dolly had already gone with her children.
But her affection for Varenka did not wane. As she said good-bye, Kitty begged
her to come to them in Russia.
“I’ll come when you get married,” said Varenka.
“I shall never marry.”
“Well, then, I shall never come.”
“Well, then, I shall be married simply for that. Mind now, remember your
promise,” said Kitty.
The doctor’s prediction was fulfilled. Kitty returned home to Russia cured. She
was not so gay and thoughtless as before, but she was serene. Her Moscow troubles
had become a memory to her.
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