Page 180 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

‘Kitty, what is it?’ said Countess Nordston, stepping
noiselessly over the carpet towards her. ‘I don’t understand
it.’
Kitty’s lower lip began to quiver; she got up quickly.

‘Kitty, you’re not dancing the mazurka?’
‘No, no,’ said Kitty in a voice shaking with tears.
‘He asked her for the mazurka before me,’ said
Countess Nordston, knowing Kitty would understand
who were ‘he’ and ‘her.’ ‘She said: ‘Why, aren’t you
going to dance it with Princess Shtcherbatskaya?’.’
‘Oh, I don’t care!’ answered Kitty.
No one but she herself understood her position; no one
knew that she had just refused the man whom perhaps she
loved, and refused him because she had put her faith in
another.
Countess Nordston found Korsunsky, with whom she
was to dance the mazurka, and told him to ask Kitty.
Kitty danced in the first couple, and luckily for her she
had not to talk, because Korsunsky was all the time
running about directing the figure. Vronsky and Anna sat
almost opposite her. She saw them with her long-sighted
eyes, and saw them, too, close by, when they met in the
figures, and the more she saw of them the more convinced
was she that her unhappiness was complete. She saw that

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