Page 517 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

Kitty. She did not give up everything she had learned, but
she became aware that she had deceived herself in
supposing she could be what she wanted to be. Her eyes
were, it seemed, opened; she felt all the difficulty of

maintaining herself without hypocrisy and self-conceit on
the pinnacle to which she had wished to mount.
Moreover, she became aware of all the dreariness of the
world of sorrow, of sick and dying people, in which she
had been living. The efforts she had made to like it
seemed to her intolerable, and she felt a longing to get
back quickly into the fresh air, to Russia, to Ergushovo,
where, as she knew from letters, her sister Dolly had
already gone with her children.
But her affection for Varenka did not wane. As she said
good-bye, Kitty begged her to come to them in Russia.
‘I’ll come when you get married,’ said Varenka.
‘I shall never marry.’
‘Well, then, I shall never come.’
‘Well, then, I shall be married simply for that. Mind
now, remember your promise,’ said Kitty.
The doctor’s prediction was fulfilled. Kitty returned
home to Russia cured. She was not so gay and thoughtless
as before, but she was serene. Her Moscow troubles had
become a memory to her.

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