ANNA KARENINA (Collector's Edition) - Leo Tolstoy

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no,’ said Kitty in a voice tremulous with tears.

      ‘He asked her for the mazurka in my presence,’ said the Countess, knowing that Kitty would understand whom she meant by ‘him’ and ‘her’. ‘She asked, “Are you not dancing with the Princess Shcherbatsky?” ’

      ‘Oh! it’s all the same to me!’ replied Kitty. No one but herself understood her situation, because no one knew that she had only a few days ago refused a man whom she perhaps loved, and refused him because she trusted another.

      The Countess Nordston, who was engaged to Korsunsky for the mazurka, told him to ask Kitty instead.

      Kitty danced in the first pair, and luckily for her she was not obliged to talk, because Korsunsky ran about all the time giving orders in his domain. Vronsky and Anna sat almost opposite to her. And she saw them with her far-sighted eyes, she saw them close by, too, when they met in the dance, and the more she saw of them the surer she was that the blow had fallen. She saw that they felt as if they were alone in that crowded ballroom. On Vronsky’s face, usually so firm and self-possessed, she noticed that expression of bewilderment and submission which had so surprised her — an expression like that of an intelligent dog when it feels guilty.

      Anna smiled — and the smile passed on to him; she became thoughtful — and he became serious. Some supernatural power attracted Kitty’s eyes to Anna’s face. She looked charming in her simple black dress; her full arms with the bracelets, her firm neck with the string of pearls round it, her curly hair now disarranged, every graceful movement of her small feet and hands, her handsome, animated face, — everything about her was enchanting, but there was something terrible and cruel in her charm.

      Kitty admired her even more than before, and suffered more and more. She felt herself crushed and her face expressed it.

      When Vronsky happened to knock against her as they danced, he did not at once recognize her, so changed was she.

      ‘A delightful ball,’ he remarked, in order to say something.

      ‘Yes,’ she replied.

      In the middle of the mazurka, performing a complicated figure newly-invented by Korsunsky, Anna stepped into the middle of the room and chose two men and two ladies, one of whom was Kitty, to join her. Kitty, as she moved toward Anna, gazed at her with fear. Anna half closed her eyes to look at Kitty, smiled and pressed her hand, but noticing that Kitty only responded to her smile by a look of surprise and despair, she turned away from her and talked cheerfully with the other lady.

      ‘Yes, there is something strange, satanic, and enchanting about her,’ thought Kitty.

      Anna did not wish to stay to supper, but the master of the house tried to persuade her to do so.

      ‘Come, Anna Arkadyevna,’ began Korsunsky, drawing her bare arm under his, ‘I have such a good idea for a cotillion — Un bijou [A jewel].’ And he moved slowly on, trying to draw her with him. Their host smiled approvingly.

      ‘No, I won’t stay,’ answered Anna, smiling, and despite her smile Korsunsky and the host understood from the firm tone of her voice that she would not stay.

      ‘No, as it is I have danced more in Moscow at your one ball than I danced the whole winter in Petersburg,’ said Anna, looking round at Vronsky who stood beside her. ‘I must rest before my journey.’

      ‘So you really are going to-morrow?’ said Vronsky.

      ‘Yes, I think so,’ Anna replied as if surprised at the boldness of his question; but the uncontrollable radiance of her eyes and her smile burnt him as she spoke the words.

      Anna did not stay for supper, but went away.

      Chapter 24

      ‘YES, there is certainly something objectionable and repellent about me,’ thought Levin after leaving the Shcherbatskys, as he walked toward his brother’s lodgings. ‘I do not get on with other people. They say it is pride! No, I am not even proud. If I had any pride, I should not have put myself into such a position.’ And he pictured to himself, Vronsky, happy, kind, clever, calm, and certainly never placing himself in such a terrible position as he, Levin, had been in that evening. ‘Yes, she was bound to choose him. It had to be so, and I have no cause to complain of anyone or anything. It was my own fault. What right had I to imagine that she would wish to unite her life with mine? Who and what am I? A man of no account, wanted by no one and of no use to anyone.’ And he remembered his brother Nicholas, and kept his mind gladly on that memory. ‘Is he not right that everything on earth is evil and horrid? And have we judged brother Nicholas fairly? Of course, from Prokofy’s point of view, who saw him in a ragged coat and tipsy, he is a despicable fellow; but I know him from another side. I know his soul, and know that we resemble one another. And yet I, instead of looking him up, dined out and came here.’ Levin went up to a lamp-post and read his brother’s address which he had in his pocket-book, and then hired a sledge. On the long way to his brother’s he recalled all the events he knew of Nicholas’s life. He recalled how despite the ridicule of his fellow-students his brother had lived like a monk while at the University and for a year after, strictly observing all the religious rites, attending service, fasting, avoiding all pleasures and especially women; and then how he suddenly broke loose, became intimate with the vilest people and gave himself up to unbridled debauchery. He remembered how his brother had brought a boy from the country to educate, and in a fit of anger had so beaten the lad that proceedings were commenced against him for causing bodily harm. He remembered an affair with a sharper to whom his brother had lost money, and whom he had first given a promissory note and then prosecuted on a charge of fraud. (That was when his brother Sergius had paid the money for him.) Then he remembered the night which Nicholas had spent in the police cells for disorderly conduct, and the disgraceful proceedings he had instigated against his brother Sergius Ivanich, whom he accused of not having paid out to him his share of his mother’s fortune: and lastly, the time when his brother took an official appointment in one of the Western Provinces and was there arrested for assaulting an Elder… . It was all very disgusting, but to Levin it did not seem nearly so disgusting as it must have seemed to those who did not know Nicholas, nor his whole story, nor his heart.

      Levin remembered that when Nicholas was passing through his pious stage of fasting, visiting monks, and going to church; when he was seeking in religion for help to curb his passionate nature, not only did no one encourage him, but every one, and Levin among them, made fun of him. He was teased and called ‘Noah’ and ‘monk’, and then when he broke loose no one helped him, but all turned away from him with horror and disgust.

      Levin felt that his brother Nicholas, in his soul, in the innermost depths of his soul, despite the depravity of his life, was no worse than those who despised him. It was not his fault that he was born with his ungovernable temper, and with a cramped mind. He always wished to do right. ‘I will tell him everything, I will get him to tell me everything. I will show him that I love and therefore understand him,’ Levin decided in his mind, as toward eleven o’clock he drove up to the hotel of which he had the address.

      ‘Upstairs, Nos. 12 and 13,’ said the hall porter in reply to Levin’s question.

      ‘Is he in?’

      ‘I expect so.’

      The door of No. 12 was ajar, and from within, visible in the streak of light, issued dense fumes of inferior and weak tobacco. Levin heard a stranger’s voice, but knew at once that his brother was there, for he heard him coughing.

      As he entered the doorway the stranger’s voice was saying: ‘It all depends on how intelligently and rationally the affair is conducted.’

      Constantine Levin glanced into the room, which was beyond a partition, and saw that the speaker was a young man with an enormous head of hair, who wore a workman’s coat, and that a young, pockmarked woman in a woollen dress without

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