Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART ONE CHAPTER 21
first pretext, she got up, and with her light, resolute step went for her album. The
stairs up to her room came out on the landing of the great warm main staircase.
Just as she was leaving the drawing room, a ring was heard in the hall.
“Who can that be?” said Dolly.
“It’s early for me to be fetched, and for anyone else it’s late,” observed Kitty.
“Sure to be someone with papers for me,” put in Stepan Arkadyevitch. When
Anna was passing the top of the staircase, a servant was running up to announce the
visitor, while the visitor himself was standing under a lamp. Anna glancing down
at once recognized Vronsky, and a strange feeling of pleasure and at the same time
of dread of something stirred in her heart. He was standing still, not taking off his
coat, pulling something out of his pocket. At the instant when she was just facing
the stairs, he raised his eyes, caught sight of her, and into the expression of his face
there passed a shade of embarrassment and dismay. With a slight inclination of her
head she passed, hearing behind her Stepan Arkadyevitch’s loud voice calling him
to come up, and the quiet, soft, and composed voice of Vronsky refusing.
When Anna returned with the album, he was already gone, and Stepan Arkadyevitch
was telling them that he had called to inquire about the dinner they were giving
next day to a celebrity who had just arrived. “And nothing would induce him to
come up. What a queer fellow he is!” added Stepan Arkadyevitch.
Kitty blushed. She thought that she was the only person who knew why he had
come, and why he would not come up. “He has been at home,” she thought, “and
didn’t find me, and thought I should be here, but he did not come up because he
thought it late, and Anna’s here.”
All of them looked at each other, saying nothing, and began to look at Anna’s
album.
There was nothing either exceptional or strange in a man’s calling at half-past nine
on a friend to inquire details of a proposed dinner party and not coming in, but it
seemed strange to all of them. Above all, it seemed strange and not right to Anna.
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