Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART THREE CHAPTER 18
But to Anna’s taste Liza was far more attractive. Betsy had said to Anna that she
had adopted the pose of an innocent child, but when Anna saw her, she felt that this
was not the truth. She really was both innocent and corrupt, but a sweet and passive
woman. It is true that her tone was the same as Sappho’s; that like Sappho, she had
two men, one young and one old, tacked onto her, and devouring her with their
eyes. But there was something in her higher than what surrounded her. There was
in her the glow of the real diamond among glass imitations. This glow shone out
in her exquisite, truly enigmatic eyes. The weary, and at the same time passionate,
glance of those eyes, encircled by dark rings, impressed one by its perfect sincerity.
Everyone looking into those eyes fancied he knew her wholly, and knowing her,
could not but love her. At the sight of Anna, her whole face lighted up at once with
a smile of delight.
“Ah, how glad I am to see you!” she said, going up to her. “Yesterday at the
races all I wanted was to get to you, but you’d gone away. I did so want to see you,
yesterday especially. Wasn’t it awful?” she said, looking at Anna with eyes that
seemed to lay bare all her soul.
“Yes; I had no idea it would be so thrilling,” said Anna, blushing.
The company got up at this moment to go into the garden.
“I’m not going,” said Liza, smiling and settling herself close to Anna. “You won’t
go either, will you? Who wants to play croquet?”
“Oh, I like it,” said Anna.
“There, how do you manage never to be bored by things? It’s delightful to look at
you. You’re alive, but I’m bored.”
“How can you be bored? Why, you live in the liveliest set in Petersburg,” said
Anna.
“Possibly the people who are not of our set are even more bored; but we–I
certainly–are not happy, but awfully, awfully bored.”
Sappho smoking a cigarette went off into the garden with the two young men.
Betsy and Stremov remained at the tea-table.
“What, bored!” said Betsy. “Sappho says they did enjoy themselves tremendously
at your house last night.”
“Ah, how dreary it all was!” said Liza Merkalova. “We all drove back to my place
after the races. And always the same people, always the same. Always the same
thing. We lounged about on sofas all the evening. What is there to enjoy in that? No;
do tell me how you manage never to be bored?” she said, addressing Anna again.
“One has but to look at you and one sees, here’s a woman who may be happy or
unhappy, but isn’t bored. Tell me how you do it?”
“I do nothing,” answered Anna, blushing at these searching questions.
“That’s the best way,” Stremov put in. Stremov was a man of fifty, partly gray, but
still vigorous-looking, very ugly, but with a characteristic and intelligent face. Liza
Merkalova was his wife’s niece, and he spent all his leisure hours with her. On meeting
Anna Karenina, as he was Alexey Alexandrovitch’s enemy in the government,
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