Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART ONE CHAPTER 20
Chapter 20
THE whole of that day Anna spent at home, that’s to say at the Oblonskys’, and
received no one, though some of her acquaintances had already heard of her
arrival, and came to call; the same day. Anna spent the whole morning with Dolly
and the children. She merely sent a brief note to her brother to tell him that he must
not fail to dine at home. “Come, God is merciful,” she wrote.
Oblonsky did dine at home: the conversation was general, and his wife, speaking
to him, addressed him as “Stiva,” as she had not done before. In the relations of
the husband and wife the same estrangement still remained, but there was no talk
now of separation, and Stepan Arkadyevitch saw the possibility of explanation and
reconciliation.
Immediately after dinner Kitty came in. She knew Anna Arkadyevna, but only
very slightly, and she came now to her sister’s with some trepidation, at the prospect
of meeting this fashionable Petersburg lady, whom everyone spoke so highly of.
But she made a favorable impression on Anna Arkadyevna–she saw that at once.
Anna was unmistakably admiring her loveliness and her youth: before Kitty knew
where she was she found herself not merely under Anna’s sway, but in love with
her, as young girls do fall in love with older and married women. Anna was not
like a fashionable lady, nor the mother of a boy of eight years old. In the elasticity of
her movements, the freshness and the unflagging eagerness which persisted in her
face, and broke out in her smile and her glance, she would rather have passed for a
girl of twenty, had it not been for a serious and at times mournful look in her eyes,
which struck and attracted Kitty. Kitty felt that Anna was perfectly simple and was
concealing nothing, but that she had another higher world of interests inaccessible
to her, complex and poetic.
After dinner, when Dolly went away to her own room, Anna rose quickly and
went up to her brother, who was just lighting a cigar.
“Stiva,” she said to him, winking gaily, crossing him and glancing towards the
door, “go, and God help you.”
He threw down the cigar, understanding her, and departed through the doorway.
When Stepan Arkadyevitch had disappeared, she went back to the sofa where she
had been sitting, surrounded by the children. Either because the children saw that
their mother was fond of this aunt, or that they felt a special charm in her themselves,
the two elder ones, and the younger following their lead, as children so often do, had
clung about their new aunt since before dinner, and would not leave her side. And
it had become a sort of game among them to sit a close as possible to their aunt, to
touch her, hold her little hand, kiss it, play with her ring, or even touch the flounce
of her skirt.
“Come, come, as we were sitting before,” said Anna Arkadyevna, sitting down in
her place.
And again Grisha poked his little face under her arm, and nestled with his head
on her gown, beaming with pride and happiness.
“And when is your next ball?” she asked Kitty.
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