Page 499 - ANNA KARENINA
P. 499
Anna Karenina
princess gave him of some kind of change she had noticed
in Kitty, troubled the prince and aroused his habitual
feeling of jealousy of everything that drew his daughter
away from him, and a dread that his daughter might have
got out of the reach of his influence into regions
inaccessible to him. But these unpleasant matters were all
drowned in the sea of kindliness and good humor which
was always within him, and more so than ever since his
course of Carlsbad waters.
The day after his arrival the prince, in his long
overcoat, with his Russian wrinkles and baggy cheeks
propped up by a starched collar, set off with his daughter
to the spring in the greatest good humor.
It was a lovely morning: the bright, cheerful houses
with their little gardens, the sight of the red-faced, red-
armed, beer-drinking German waitresses, working away
merrily, did the heart good. But the nearer they got to the
springs the oftener they met sick people; and their
appearance seemed more pitiable than ever among the
everyday conditions of prosperous German life. Kitty was
no longer struck by this contrast. The bright sun, the
brilliant green of the foliage, the strains of the music were
for her the natural setting of all these familiar faces, with
their changes to greater emaciation or to convalescence,
498 of 1759