Page 1084 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

that....’ He took her hand and did not kiss it (to kiss her
hand in such closeness to death seemed to him improper);
he merely squeezed it with a penitent air, looking at her
brightening eyes.

‘It would have been miserable for you to be alone,’ she
said, and lifting her hands which hid her cheeks flushing
with pleasure, twisted her coil of hair on the nape of her
neck and pinned it there. ‘No,’ she went on, ‘she did not
know how.... Luckily, I learned a lot at Soden.’
‘Surely there are not people there so ill?’
‘Worse.’
‘What’s so awful to me is that I can’t see him as he was
when he was young. You would not believe how
charming he was as a youth, but I did not understand him
then.’
‘I can quite, quite believe it. How I feel that we might
have been friends!’ she said; and, distressed at what she had
said, she looked round at her husband, and tears came into
her eyes.
‘Yes, MIGHT HAVE BEEN,’ he said mournfully.
‘He’s just one of those people of whom they say they’re
not for this world.’
‘But we have many days before us; we must go to bed,’
said Kitty, glancing at her tiny watch.

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