“Well, since it’s impossible tonight, let us start,” she said, not noticing
Vronsky’s bow, and she hastily put her hand on Korsunsky’s shoulder.
“What is she vexed with him about?” thought Kitty, discerning that Anna
had intentionally not responded to Vronsky’s bow. Vronsky went up to Kitty
reminding her of the first quadrille, and expressing his regret that he had not
seen her all this time. Kitty gazed in admiration at Anna waltzing, and
listened to him. She expected him to ask her for a waltz, but he did not, and
she glanced wonderingly at him. He flushed slightly, and hurriedly asked
her to waltz, but he had only just put his arm round her waist and taken the
first step when the music suddenly stopped. Kitty looked into his face,
which was so close to her own, and long afterwards—for several years after
—that look, full of love, to which he made no response, cut her to the heart
with an agony of shame.
“Pardon! pardon! Waltz! waltz!” shouted Korsunsky from the other side
of the room, and seizing the first young lady he came across he began
dancing himself.
Chapter 23
Vronsky and Kitty waltzed several times round the room. After the first
waltz Kitty went to her mother, and she had hardly time to say a few words
to Countess Nordston when Vronsky came up again for the first quadrille.
During the quadrille nothing of any significance was said: there was
disjointed talk between them of the Korsunskys, husband and wife, whom
he described very amusingly, as delightful children at forty, and of the
future town theater; and only once the conversation touched her to the
quick, when he asked her about Levin, whether he was here, and added that
he liked him so much. But Kitty did not expect much from the quadrille.
She looked forward with a thrill at her heart to the mazurka. She fancied
that in the mazurka everything must be decided. The fact that he did not
during the quadrille ask her for the mazurka did not trouble her. She felt
sure she would dance the mazurka with him as she had done at former balls,
and refused five young men, saying she was engaged for the mazurka. The
whole ball up to the last quadrille was for Kitty an enchanted vision of
delightful colors, sounds, and motions. She only sat down when she felt too
tired and begged for a rest. But as she was dancing the last quadrille with
one of the tiresome young men whom she could not refuse, she chanced to
be vis-à-vis with Vronsky and Anna. She had not been near Anna again
since the beginning of the evening, and now again she saw her suddenly
quite new and surprising. She saw in her the signs of that excitement of
success she knew so well in herself; she saw that she was intoxicated with
the delighted admiration she was exciting. She knew that feeling and knew
its signs, and saw them in Anna; saw the quivering, flashing light in her
eyes, and the smile of happiness and excitement unconsciously playing on
her lips, and the deliberate grace, precision, and lightness of her
movements.
“Who?” she asked herself. “All or one?” And not assisting the harassed
young man she was dancing with in the conversation, the thread of which
he had lost and could not pick up again, she obeyed with external liveliness
the peremptory shouts of Korsunsky starting them all into the grand rond,
and then into the chaîne, and at the same time she kept watch with a
growing pang at her heart. “No, it’s not the admiration of the crowd has
intoxicated her, but the adoration of one. And that one? can it be he?” Every
time he spoke to Anna the joyous light flashed into her eyes, and the smile
of happiness curved her red lips. She seemed to make an effort to control
herself, to try not to show these signs of delight, but they came out on her
face of themselves. “But what of him?” Kitty looked at him and was filled
with terror. What was pictured so clearly to Kitty in the mirror of Anna’s
face she saw in him. What had become of his always self-possessed resolute
manner, and the carelessly serene expression of his face? Now every time
he turned to her, he bent his head, as though he would have fallen at her
feet, and in his eyes there was nothing but humble submission and dread. “I
would not offend you,” his eyes seemed every time to be saying, “but I
want to save myself, and I don’t know how.” On his face was a look such as
Kitty had never seen before.
They were speaking of common acquaintances, keeping up the most
trivial conversation, but to Kitty it seemed that every word they said was
determining their fate and hers. And strange it was that they were actually
talking of how absurd Ivan 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 was fascinating in her simple black dress, fascinating were
her round arms with their bracelets, fascinating was her firm neck with its
thread of pearls, fascinating the straying curls of her loose hair, fascinating
the graceful, light movements of her little feet and hands, fascinating was
that lovely face in its eagerness, but there was something terrible and cruel
in her fascination.
Kitty admired her more than ever, and more and more acute was her
suffering. Kitty felt overwhelmed, and her face showed it. When Vronsky
saw her, coming across her in the mazurka, he did not at once recognize her,
she was so changed.
“Delightful ball!” he said to her, for the sake of saying something.
“Yes,” she answered.
In the middle of the mazurka, repeating a complicated figure, newly
invented by Korsunsky, Anna came forward into the center of the circle,
chose two gentlemen, and summoned a lady and Kitty. Kitty gazed at her in
dismay as she went up. Anna looked at her with drooping eyelids, and
smiled, pressing her hand. But, noticing that Kitty only responded to her
smile by a look of despair and amazement, she turned away from her, and
began gaily talking to the other lady.
“Yes, there is something uncanny, devilish and fascinating in her,” Kitty
said to herself.
Anna did not mean to stay to supper, but the master of the house began to
press her to do so.
“Nonsense, Anna Arkadyevna,” said Korsunsky, drawing her bare arm
under the sleeve of his dress coat, “I’ve such an idea for a cotillion! Un
bijou!”
