Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART ONE CHAPTER 23
Ivanovitch was with his French, and how the Eletsky girl might have made a better
match, yet these words had all the while consequence for them, and they were feeling
just as Kitty did. The whole ball, the whole world, everything seemed lost in fog
in Kitty’s soul. Nothing but the stern discipline of her bringing-up supported her
and forced her to do what was expected of her, that is, to dance, to answer questions,
to talk, even to smile. But before the mazurka, when they were beginning to rearrange
the chairs and a few couples moved out of the smaller rooms into the big room,
a moment of despair and horror came for Kitty. She had refused five partners, and
now she was not dancing the mazurka. She had not even a hope of being asked for it,
because she was so successful in society that the idea would never occur to anyone
that she had remained disengaged till now. She would have to tell her mother she
felt ill and go home, but she had not the strength to do this. She felt crushed. She
went to the furthest end of the little drawing room and sank into a low chair. Her
light, transparent skirts rose like a cloud about her slender waist; one bare, thin, soft,
girlish arm, hanging listlessly, was lost in the folds of her pink tunic; in the other she
held her fan, and with rapid, short strokes fanned her burning face. But while she
looked like a butterfly, clinging to a blade of grass, and just about to open its rainbow
wings for fresh flight, her heart ached with a horrible despair.
“But perhaps I am wrong, perhaps it was not so?” And again she recalled all she
had seen.
“Kitty, what is it?” said Countess Nordston, stepping noiselessly over the carpet
towards her. “I don’t understand it.”
Kitty’s lower lip began to quiver; she got up quickly.
“Kitty, you’re not dancing the mazurka?”
“No, no,” said Kitty in a voice shaking with tears.
“He asked her for the mazurka before me,” said Countess Nordston, knowing
Kitty would understand who were “he” and “her.” “She said: ‘Why, aren’t you
going to dance it with Princess Shtcherbatskaya?”’
“Oh, I don’t care!” answered Kitty.
No one but she herself understood her position; no one knew that she had just
refused the man whom perhaps she loved, and refused him because she had put her
faith in another.
Countess Nordston found Korsunsky, with whom she was to dance the mazurka,
and told him to ask Kitty.
Kitty danced in the first couple, and luckily for her she had not to talk, because
Korsunsky was all the time running about directing the figure. Vronsky and Anna
sat almost opposite her. She saw them with her long-sighted eyes, and saw them,
too, close by, when they met in the figures, and the more she saw of them the more
convinced was she that her unhappiness was complete. She saw that they felt themselves
alone in that crowded room. And on Vronsky’s face, always so firm and
independent, she saw that look that had struck her, of bewilderment and humble
submissiveness, like the expression of an intelligent dog when it has done wrong.
Anna smiled, and her smile was reflected by him. She grew thoughtful, and he
became serious. Some supernatural force drew Kitty’s eyes to Anna’s face. She
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