ANNA KARENINA (Collector's Edition). Leo Tolstoy

was angry with her. But suddenly she heard the rustle of a dress and a burst of suppressed sobbing. A pair of arms encircled her neck from below and Kitty was kneeling before her.

      ‘Dolly dear, I am so, so unhappy!’ she whispered guiltily. And the sweet tear-stained face hid itself in the folds of Dolly’s dress.

      As if tears were the necessary lubricant without which the machine of mutual confidence could not work properly between the sisters, after having had a cry they started talking of indifferent matters, and in so doing understood one another. Kitty knew that what she had said in her anger about the unfaithfulness of Dolly’s husband and about her humiliation had cut her poor sister to the depths of her heart, but that she was forgiven; while Dolly on her side learnt all that she wanted to know, her suspicions were confirmed and she understood that Kitty’s grief, her hopeless grief was really caused by the fact that Levin had proposed to her and that she had rejected him, and now that Vronsky had deceived her, she was prepared to love Levin and to hate Vronsky. Kitty did not say a word of this; she spoke only of her state of mind.

      ‘I have no troubles whatever,’ she said when she had grown calm, — ‘but can you understand that everything has become horrid, disgusting and coarse to me, and above all I myself? You can’t think what horrid thoughts I have about everything.’

      ‘But what horrid thoughts can you have?’ asked Dolly smiling.

      ‘The very nastiest and coarsest, I can’t tell you. It is not grief, not dullness, but much worse. It is as if all that was good in me had hidden itself, and only what is horrid remains. How am I to tell you?’ — she continued, noticing perplexity in her sister’s eyes: — ‘Papa began to speak to me just now… . It seems to me that he thinks that all I need is to get married. Mama takes me to a ball: and it seems to me she only takes me there to marry me off as quickly as possible and get rid of me. I know it is not true, but I can’t get rid of the idea. I can’t bear to see the so-called eligible men. I always think they are taking my measure. Formerly to go anywhere in a ball-dress was just a pleasure to me. I used to like myself in it; but now I feel ashamed and uncomfortable. Well, what is one to do? The doctor …’ Kitty became confused; she was going to say that since this change had come over her, Oblonsky had become intolerably disagreeable to her, and that she could not see him without having the coarsest and most monstrous fancies.

      ‘Well, you see, everything appears to me in the coarsest and most horrid aspect,’ she continued. ‘That is my illness. Perhaps it will pass …’

      ‘But don’t think …’

      ‘I can’t. I only feel comfortable with children, only in your house.’

      ‘What a pity you can’t come to see us!’

      ‘But I will come. I have had scarlet fever, and I will persuade Mama to let me.’

      And Kitty insisted on having her own way, went to her sister’s, and nursed the children all through the scarlet fever that really attacked them. The two sisters nursed all the six children successfully through the illness, but Kitty’s health did not improve, and in Lent the Shcherbatskys went abroad.

      Chapter 4

      THE highest Petersburg Society is really all one: all who belong to it know and even visit one another. But this large circle has its subdivisions. Anna Arkadyevna Karenina had friends and close connections in three different sets. One of these was her husband’s official set, consisting of his colleagues and subordinates, who in most varied and capricious ways were connected and separated by social conditions. Anna found it hard now to recall the feeling of almost religious respect she had at first felt for these people. Now she knew them all as well as the inhabitants of a provincial town know one another; she knew the habits and weaknesses of each of them, and where the shoe pinched this or that foot; she knew their relations to one another and to the governing centre; she knew who sided with whom, and how and by what means each supported himself, and who agreed or disagreed with whom and about what; but (in spite of admonitions and advice from the Countess Lydia Ivanovna) this bureaucratic circle of male interests could not interest Anna, and she avoided it.

      Another circle with which Anna was intimate was that through which Karenin had made his career. The centre of that circle was the Countess Lydia Ivanovna. It consisted of elderly, plain, philanthropic and pious women and clever, well-educated, ambitious men. One of the clever men who belonged to it called it, ‘the conscience of Petersburg Society.’

      Karenin set great value on this circle, and Anna, who knew how to get on with every one, had during the first part of her life in Petersburg made friends in it too. But now, on her return from Moscow, that circle became unbearable to her. It seemed to her that she, and all of them, were only pretending, and she felt so bored and uncomfortable in that Society that she visited Lydia Ivanovna as rarely as possible.

      The third circle with which Anna was connected was Society in the accepted meaning of the word: the Society of balls, dinner-parties, brilliant toilettes, the Society which clung to the Court with one hand lest it should sink to the demi-monde, for this the members of that Society thought they despised, though its tastes were not only similar but identical with their own. Anna was connected with this set through the Princess Betsy Tverskaya, the wife of her cousin, who had an income of Rs. 120,000 a year, and who, from the time Anna first appeared in Society, had particularly liked her, made much of her, and drawn her into her own set, making fun of that to which the Countess Lydia Ivanovna belonged.

      ‘When I am old and ugly I will become like that,’ Betsy used to say, ‘but for you, a young and beautiful woman, it is too early to settle down in that almshouse.’

      At first Anna had avoided the Princess Tverskaya’s set as much as she could, because it demanded more expense than she could afford; and also because she really approved more of the other set; but after her visit to Moscow all this was reversed. She avoided her moral friends and went into grand Society. There she saw Vronsky, and experienced a tremulous joy when meeting him. She met him most frequently at Betsy’s, who was a Vronsky herself and his cousin. Vronsky went everywhere where he had a chance of meeting Anna, and spoke to her of his love whenever he could. She gave him no encouragement, but every time they met there sprang up that feeling of animation which had seized her in the train on the morning when she first saw him. She was aware that when they met joy lit up her eyes and drew her lips into a smile, but she could not hide the expression of that joy.

      At first Anna sincerely believed that she was displeased with him for allowing himself to persecute her; but soon after her return from Moscow, having gone to a party where she expected to meet him but to which he did not come, she clearly realized, by the sadness that overcame her, that she had been deceiving herself and that his persecution supplied the whole interest of her life.

      · · · · · · ·

      A famous prima donna was giving her second performance and all high Society was at the Opera House. Vronsky, from the front row of the stalls, seeing his cousin, went to her box without waiting for the interval.

      ‘Why did you not come to dinner?’ she said, adding with a smile and so that only he could hear her: ‘I am amazed at the clairvoyance of lovers! She was not there! But come in after the opera.’

      Vronsky looked at her inquiringly. She nodded, and he thanked her by a smile and sat down beside her.

      ‘And how well I remember your ridicule!’ continued the Princess Betsy, who took particular pleasure in following the progress of this passion. ‘What has become of it all? You are caught, my dear fellow!’

      ‘I wish for nothing better than to be caught,’ replied Vronsky with his calm good-natured smile. ‘To tell the truth, if I complain at all, it is only of not being caught enough! I am beginning to lose hope.’

      ‘What hope can you have?’ said Betsy, offended on her friend’s behalf: ‘entendons nous!’