Anna Karenina

Just after dinner Kitty arrived. She knew Anna Arkadyevna, but only slightly, and she now came to her sister’s not without fear of how she would be received by this Petersburg society lady whom everyone praised so much. But Anna Arkadyevna liked her, she saw that at once. Anna obviously admired her beauty and youth, and before Kitty could recover she felt that she was not only under her influence but in love with her, as young girls are capable of being in love with older married ladies. Anna did not look like a society lady or the mother of an eight-year-old son, but in the litheness of her movements, the freshness and settled animation of her face, which broke through now as a smile, now as a glance, would have looked more like a twenty-year-old girl had it not been for the serious, sometimes sad expression of her eyes, which struck Kitty and drew her to Anna. Kitty felt that Anna was perfectly simple and kept nothing hidden, but that there was in her some other, higher world of interests, inaccessible to her, complex and poetic.

After dinner, when Dolly went to her room, Anna quickly got up and went over to her brother, who was lighting a cigar.

‘Stiva,’ she said to him, winking merrily, making a cross over him, and indicating the door with her eyes. ‘Go, and God help you.’

He understood her, abandoned his cigar and disappeared through the door.

When Stepan Arkadyich had gone, she returned to the sofa, where she sat surrounded with children. Whether because the children had seen that their mother loved this aunt, or because they themselves felt a special charm in her, the elder two, and after them the young ones, as often happens with children, had clung to the new aunt even before dinner and would not leave her side. Something like a game was set up among them, which consisted in sitting as close as possible to her, touching her, holding her small hand, kissing her, playing with her ring or at least touching the flounce of her dress.

‘Well, well, the way we sat earlier,’ said Anna Arkadyevna, sitting back down in her place.

And again Grisha put his head under her arm and leaned it against her dress and beamed with pride and happiness.

‘So, now, when is the ball?’ she turned to Kitty.

‘Next week, and a wonderful ball. One of those balls that are always merry.’

‘And are there such balls, where it’s always merry?’ Anna said with tender mockery.

‘Strange, but there are. At the Bobrishchevs’ it’s always merry, and also at the Nikitins’, but at the Mezhkovs’ it’s always boring. Haven’t you noticed?’

‘No, dear heart, for me there are no longer any balls that are merry,’ said Anna, and Kitty saw in her eyes that special world that was not open to her. ‘For me there are those that are less difficult and boring ...’

‘How can you be bored at a ball?’

‘Why can’t I be bored at a ball?’ asked Anna.

Kitty noticed that Anna knew the answer that would follow.

‘Because you’re always the best of all.’

Anna was capable of blushing. She blushed and said:

‘First of all, I never am, and second, if it were so, what do I need it for?’

‘Will you go to this ball?’ asked Kitty.

‘I suppose it will be impossible not to go. Take it,’ she said to Tanya, who was pulling the easily slipped-off ring from her white, tapering finger.

‘I’ll be very glad if you go. I’d like so much to see you at a ball.’

‘At least, if I do go, I’ll be comforted at the thought that it will give you pleasure ... Grisha, don’t fuss with it, please, it’s all dishevelled as it is,’ she said, straightening a stray lock of hair Grisha was playing with.

‘I imagine you in lilac at the ball.’

‘Why must it be lilac?’ Anna asked, smiling. ‘Well, children, off you go, off you go. Do you hear? Miss Hull is calling you for tea,’ she said, tearing the children from her and sending them to the dining room.

‘And I know why you’re inviting me to the ball. You expect a lot from this ball, and you want everyone to be there, you want everyone to take part.’

‘Yes. How do you know?’

‘Oh! how good to be your age,’ Anna went on. ‘I remember and know that blue mist, the same as in the mountains in Switzerland. The mist that envelops everything during the blissful time when childhood is just coming to an end, and the path away from that vast, cheerful and happy circle grows narrower and narrower, and you feel cheerful and eerie entering that suite of rooms, though it seems bright and beautiful ... Who hasn’t gone through that?’

Kitty silently smiled. ‘But how did she go through it? I’d so love to know her whole romance!’ thought Kitty, recalling the unpoetical appearance of Alexei Alexandrovich, her husband.

‘There’s something I know. Stiva told me, and I congratulate you, I like him very much,’ Anna went on. ‘I met Vronsky at the railway station.’

‘Ah, he was there?’ Kitty asked, blushing. ‘But what did Stiva tell you?’