Kitty had been seeing Anna every day and was in love with her, and had always imagined her in lilac, but seeing her in black she felt that she had never before realized her full charm. She now saw her in a new and quite unexpected light. She now realized that Anna could not have worn lilac, and that her charm lay precisely in the fact that her personality always stood out from her dress, that her dress was never conspicuous on her. And her black velvet with rich lace was not at all conspicuous, but served only as a frame; she alone was noticeable — simple, natural, elegant and at the same time merry and animated. She was standing among that group, very erect as usual, and was talking to the master of the house with her head slightly turned toward him, when Kitty approached.
‘No, I am not going to throw the first stone,’ she was saying in reply to some question, adding, with a shrug of her shoulders, ‘although I cannot understand it’; and at once she turned to Kitty with a tender protecting smile. She surveyed Kitty’s dress with a rapid feminine glance, and with a movement of her head, scarcely perceptible but understood by Kitty, she signified her approval of Kitty’s dress and beauty.
‘You even come into the room dancing,’ she said.
‘She is one of my most faithful helpers,’ said Korsunsky, turning to Anna whom he had not yet seen. ‘The Princess helps to make a ball gay and beautiful. Anna Arkadyevna, shall we have a turn?’ he added, stooping toward her.
‘Oh, you know one another?’ asked the host.
‘Whom do we not know? My wife and I are like white wolves, every one knows us,’ answered Korsunsky. ‘Anna Arkadyevna, just one turn?’
‘I don’t dance if it is possible not to,’ she said.
‘But tonight it is not possible,’ he rejoined.
At that moment Vronsky approached.
‘Well, if it is impossible not to dance tonight, let us dance,’ she said taking no notice of Vronsky’s bow and quickly putting her hand on Korsunsky’s shoulder.
‘Why is she displeased with him?’ thought Kitty, noticing that Anna had intentionally taken no notice of Vronsky’s bow. He came up to Kitty, reminding her of the first quadrille and regretting that he had not seen her for such a long time. Kitty, while gazing with admiration at Anna waltzing, listened to him, expecting him to ask her to waltz, but he did not do so and she glanced at him with surprise. He blushed and hurriedly asked her to dance, but scarcely had he put his arm round her slim waist and taken one step when the music stopped. Kitty looked into his face which was so near her own, and long after — for years after — that look so full of love which she then gave him, and which met with no response from him, cut her to the heart with tormenting shame.
‘Pardon, pardon, a waltz — a waltz,’ shouted Korsunsky from the other end of the room, and seizing the first girl within reach he himself began dancing.
Chapter 23
VRONSKY and Kitty waltzed several times round the room and then Kitty went to her mother, but hardly had she exchanged a few words with the Countess Nordston before Vronsky returned to fetch her for the first quadrille. Nothing special was said during the quadrille: they talked in snatches about the Korsunskys, husband and wife, whom Vronsky very amusingly described as dear forty-year-old children, and about a proposed Stage Society, and only once did the conversation touch her to the quick — when he asked her about Levin, whether he was still in Moscow, and added that he had liked him very much. But Kitty had not expected more from the quadrille, she waited with a clutch at her heart for the mazurka. It seemed to her that the mazurka would settle everything. That he did not ask her for the mazurka while they were dancing the quadrille did not disturb her. She was sure that she would dance the mazurka with him as at previous balls, and she refused five other partners for that dance, saying that she was already engaged. The whole ball up to the last quadrille was for Kitty an enchanted dream of gay flowers, sounds, and movements. She only stopped dancing when she felt too tired and had to ask to be allowed a rest. But while dancing the last quadrille with one of the youthful bores whom it would not do to refuse, she happened to be vis-à-vis to Anna. She had not come across Anna since the beginning of the ball, and now she suddenly saw her again in a different and unexpected light. She noticed that Anna was elated with success, a feeling Kitty herself knew so well. She saw that Anna was intoxicated by the rapture she had produced. She knew the feeling and knew its symptoms, and recognized them in Anna — she saw the quivering light flashing in her eyes, the smile of happiness and elation that involuntarily curled her lips, and the graceful precision, the exactitude and lightness, of her movements.
‘Who is the cause?’ she asked herself. ‘All or only one?’ And without trying to help her youthful partner who was painfully struggling to carry on the conversation the thread of which he had lost, as she mechanically obeyed the merry, loud, and authoritative orders of Korsunsky, who commanded every one to form now a grand rond, now a chaine, she watched, and her heart sank more and more.
‘No, it is not the admiration of the crowd that intoxicates her, but the rapture of one, and that one is … can it be he?’
Every time he spoke to Anna the joyful light kindled in her eyes and a smile of pleasure curved her rosy lips. She seemed to make efforts to restrain these signs of joy, but they appeared on her face of their own accord. ‘But what of him?’ Kitty looked at him and was filled with horror. What she saw so distinctly in the mirror of Anna’s face, she saw in him. What had become of his usually quiet and firm manner and the carelessly calm expression of his face? Every time he turned toward Anna he slightly bowed his head as if he wished to fall down before her, and in his eyes there was an expression of submission and fear. ‘I do not wish to offend,’ his every look seemed to say, ‘I only wish to save myself, but I do not know how.’ His face had an expression which she had never seen before.
They talked about their mutual friends, carrying on a most unimportant conversation, but it seemed to Kitty that every word they said was deciding their and her fate. And, strange to say, though they were talking about Ivan Ivanich, who made himself so ridiculous with his French, and how Miss Eletskaya could have made a better match, yet these words were important for them, and they felt this as well as Kitty. A mist came over the ball and the whole world in Kitty’s soul. Only the thorough training she had had enabled and obliged her to do what was expected of her, that is, to dance, to answer the questions put to her, to talk, and even to smile. But before the mazurka began, when the chairs were already being placed for it, and several couples moved from the small to the large ballroom, Kitty was for a moment seized with despair. She had refused five men who had asked for the mazurka and now she had no partner for it. She had not even a hope of being asked again just because she had too much success in Society for anyone to think that she was not already engaged for the dance. She must tell her mother that she was feeling ill, and go home, but she had not the strength to do it. She felt herself quite broken-hearted.
She went to the far end of a little drawing-room and sank into an easy chair. Her light skirt stood out like a cloud round her slight body; one thin bare girlish arm dropped listlessly and sank into the pink folds of her tunic; the other hand held a fan with which she rapidly fanned her flushed face. But although she seemed like a butterfly just settled on a blade of grass and ready at any moment to flutter and spread its rainbow wings, her heart was crushed with terrible despair.
‘But perhaps I am mistaken, perhaps it was nothing of the kind?’ And she again recalled all that she had witnessed.
‘Kitty, what does this mean?’ asked the Countess Nordston, coming up inaudibly over the carpet. ‘I don’t understand it.’
Kitty’s nether lip trembled, and she rose quickly.