Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART THREE CHAPTER 17
time to talk a little over tea; we’ll have a cozy chat, eh?” she said in English to Anna,
with a smile, pressing the hand with which she held a parasol.
“Yes, especially as I can’t stay very long with you. I’m forced to go on to old
Madame Vrede. I’ve been promising to go for a century,” said Anna, to whom lying,
alien as it was to her nature, had become not merely simple and natural in society,
but a positive source of satisfaction. Why she said this, which she had not thought
of a second before, she could not have explained. She had said it simply from the
reflection that as Vronsky would not be here, she had better secure her own freedom,
and try to see him somehow. But why she had spoken of old Madame Vrede, whom
she had to go and see, as she had to see many other people, she could not have
explained; and yet, as it afterwards turned out, had she contrived the most cunning
devices to meet Vronsky, she could have thought of nothing better.
“No. I’m not going to let you go for anything,” answered Betsy, looking intently
into Anna’s face. “Really, if I were not fond of you, I should feel offended. One would
think you were afraid my society would compromise you. Tea in the little dining
room, please,” she said, half closing her eyes, as she always did when addressing
the footman.
Taking the note from him, she read it.
“Alexey’s playing us false,” she said in French; “he writes that he can’t come,” she
added in a tone as simple and natural as though it could never enter her head that
Vronsky could mean anything more to Anna than a game of croquet. Anna knew
that Betsy knew everything, but, hearing how she spoke of Vronsky before her, she
almost felt persuaded for a minute that she knew nothing.
“Ah!” said Anna indifferently, as though not greatly interested in the matter, and
she went on smiling: “How can you or your friends compromise anyone?”
This playing with words, this hiding of a secret, had a great fascination for Anna,
as, indeed, it has for all women. And it was not the necessity of concealment, not
the aim with which the concealment was contrived, but the process of concealment
itself which attracted her.
“I can’t be more Catholic than the Pope,” she said. “Stremov and Liza Merkalova,
why, they’re the cream of the cream of society. Besides, they’re received everywhere,
and I“–she laid special stress on the I–”have never been strict and intolerant. It’s
simply that I haven’t the time.”
“No; you don’t care, perhaps, to meet Stremov? Let him and Alexey Alexandrovitch
tilt at each other in the committee– that’s no affair of ours. But in the world,
he’s the most amiable man I know, and a devoted croquet player. You shall see. And,
in spite of his absurd position as Liza’s lovesick swain at his age, you ought to see
how he carries off the absurd position. He’s very nice. Sappho Shtoltz you don’t
know? Oh, that’s a new type, quite new.”
Betsy said all this, and, at the same time, from her good-humored, shrewd glance,
Anna felt that she partly guessed her plight, and was hatching something for her
benefit. They were in the little boudoir.
“I must write to Alexey though,” and Betsy sat down to the table, scribbled a few
lines, and put the note in an envelope.
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