Page 160 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

‘I know why you press me to come to the ball. You
expect a great deal of this ball, and you want everyone to
be there to take part in it.’
‘How do you know? Yes.’

‘Oh! what a happy time you are at,’ pursued Anna. ‘I
remember, and I know that blue haze like the mist on the
mountains in Switzerland. That mist which covers
everything in that blissful time when childhood is just
ending, and out of that vast circle, happy and gay, there is
a path growing narrower and narrower, and it is delightful
and alarming to enter the ballroom, bright and splendid as
it is.... Who has not been through it?’
Kitty smiled without speaking. ‘But how did she go
through it? How I should like to know all her love story!’
thought Kitty, recalling the unromantic appearance of
Alexey Alexandrovitch, her husband.
‘I know something. Stiva told me, and I congratulate
you. I liked him so much,’ Anna continued. ‘I met
Vronsky at the railway station.’
‘Oh, was he there?’ asked Kitty, blushing. ‘What was it
Stiva told you?’
‘Stiva gossiped about it all. And I should be so glad...I
traveled yesterday with Vronsky’s mother,’ she went on;

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