Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART ONE CHAPTER 20
“Next week, and a splendid ball. One of those balls where one always enjoys
oneself.”
“Why, are there balls where one always enjoys oneself?” Anna said, with tender
irony.
“It’s strange, but there are. At the Bobrishtchevs’ one always enjoys oneself, and
at the Nikitins’ too, while at the Mezhkovs’ it’s always dull. Haven’t you noticed it?”
“No, my dear, for me there are no balls now where one enjoys oneself,” said Anna,
and Kitty detected in her eyes that mysterious world which was not open to her. “For
me there are some less dull and tiresome.”
“How can you be dull at a ball?”
“Why should not I be dull at a ball?” inquired Anna.
Kitty perceived that Anna knew what answer would follow.
“Because you always look nicer than anyone.”
Anna had the faculty of blushing. She blushed a little, and said:
“In the first place it’s never so; and secondly, if it were, what difference would it
make to me?”
“Are you coming to this ball?” asked Kitty.
“I imagine it won’t be possible to avoid going. Here, take it,” she said to Tanya,
who was pulling the loosely-fitting ring off her white, slender-tipped finger.
“I shall be so glad if you go. I should so like to see you at a ball.”
“Anyway, if I do go, I shall comfort myself with the thought that it’s a pleasure to
you...Grisha, don’t pull my hair. It’s untidy enough without that,” she said, putting
up a straying lock, which Grisha had been playing with.
“I imagine you at the ball in lilac.”
“And why in lilac precisely?” asked Anna, smiling. “Now, children, run along,
run along. Do you hear? Miss Hoole is calling you to tea,” she said, tearing the
children from her, and sending them off to the dining room.
“I know why you press me to come to the ball. You expect a great deal of this ball,
and you want everyone to be there to take part in it.”
“How do you know? Yes.”
“Oh! what a happy time you are at,” pursued Anna. “I remember, and I know
that blue haze like the mist on the mountains in Switzerland. That mist which covers
everything in that blissful time when childhood is just ending, and out of that
vast circle, happy and gay, there is a path growing narrower and narrower, and it is
delightful and alarming to enter the ballroom, bright and splendid as it is.... Who
has not been through it?”
Kitty smiled without speaking. “But how did she go through it? How I should
like to know all her love story!” thought Kitty, recalling the unromantic appearance
of Alexey Alexandrovitch, her husband.
“I know something. Stiva told me, and I congratulate you. I liked him so much,”
Anna continued. “I met Vronsky at the railway station.”
70