Page 510 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

paper-knives of all sorts, of which he bought a heap at
every watering-place, and bestowed them upon everyone,
including Lieschen, the servant girl, and the landlord, with
whom he jested in his comically bad German, assuring

him that it was not the water had cured Kitty, but his
splendid cookery, especially his plum soup. The princess
laughed at her husband for his Russian ways, but she was
more lively and good-humored than she had been all the
while she had been at the waters. The colonel smiled, as
he always did, at the prince’s jokes, but as far as regards
Europe, of which he believed himself to be making a
careful study, he took the princess’s side. The simple-
hearted Marya Yevgenyevna simply roared with laughter
at everything absurd the prince said, and his jokes made
Varenka helpless with feeble but infectious laughter,
which was something Kitty had never seen before.
Kitty was glad of all this, but she could not be light-
hearted. she could not solve the problem her father had
unconsciously set her by his goodhumored view of her
friends, and of the life that had so attracted her. To this
doubt there was joined the change in her relations with
the Petrovs, which had been so conspicuously and
unpleasantly marked that morning. Everyone was good
humored, but Kitty could not feel good humored, and this

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