Page 179 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

bringing-up supported her and forced her to do what was
expected of her, that is, to dance, to answer questions, to
talk, even to smile. But before the mazurka, when they
were beginning to rearrange the chairs and a few couples

moved out of the smaller rooms into the big room, a
moment of despair and horror came for Kitty. She had
refused five partners, and now she was not dancing the
mazurka. She had not even a hope of being asked for it,
because she was so successful in society that the idea
would never occur to anyone that she had remained
disengaged till now. She would have to tell her mother
she felt ill and go home, but she had not the strength to do
this. She felt crushed. She went to the furthest end of the
little drawing room and sank into a low chair. Her light,
transparent skirts rose like a cloud about her slender waist;
one bare, thin, soft, girlish arm, hanging listlessly, was lost
in the folds of her pink tunic; in the other she held her
fan, and with rapid, short strokes fanned her burning face.
But while she looked like a butterfly, clinging to a blade of
grass, and just about to open its rainbow wings for fresh
flight, her heart ached with a horrible despair.
‘But perhaps I am wrong, perhaps it was not so?’ And
again she recalled all she had seen.

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