Page 1372 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

laughter and outcries never paused. Like the other men of
the party, with the ladies’ permission, he took off his coat,
and his solid, comely figure in his white shirt-sleeves, with
his red perspiring face and his impulsive movements, made

a picture that imprinted itself vividly on the memory.
When Darya Alexandrovna lay in bed that night, as
soon as she closed her eyes, she saw Vassenka Veslovsky
flying about the croquet ground.
During the game Darya Alexandrovna was not
enjoying herself. She did not like the light tone of raillery
that was kept up all the time between Vassenka Veslovsky
and Anna, and the unnaturalness altogether of grown-up
people, all alone without children, playing at a child’s
game. But to avoid breaking up the party and to get
through the time somehow, after a rest she joined the
game again, and pretended to be enjoying it. All that day
it seemed to her as though she were acting in a theater
with actors cleverer than she, and that her bad acting was
spoiling the whole performance. She had come with the
intention of staying two days, if all went well. But in the
evening, during the game, she made up her mind that she
would go home next day. The maternal cares and worries,
which she had so hated on the way, now, after a day spent

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