Page 277 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

them—I can’t bear to see them. It seems to me they’re
taking stock of me and summing me up. In old days to go
anywhere in a ball dress was a simple joy to me, I admired
myself; now I feel ashamed and awkward. And then! The

doctor.... Then...’ Kitty hesitated; she wanted to say
further that ever since this change had taken place in her,
Stepan Arkadyevitch had become insufferably repulsive to
her, and that she could not see him without the grossest
and most hideous conceptions rising before her
imagination.
‘Oh, well, everything presents itself to me, in the
coarsest, most loathsome light,’ she went on. ‘That’s my
illness. Perhaps it will pass off.’
‘But you mustn’t think about it.’
‘I can’t help it. I’m never happy except with the
children at your house.’
‘What a pity you can’t be with me!’
‘Oh, yes, I’m coming. I’ve had scarlatina, and I’ll
persuade mamma to let me.’
Kitty insisted on having her way, and went to stay at
her sister’s and nursed the children all through the
scarlatina, for scarlatina it turned out to be. The two sisters
brought all the six children successfully through it, but

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