Page 656 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

I’ve brought you a visitor. And here he comes.’ The
unexpected young visitor, whom Sappho had invited, and
whom she had forgotten, was, however, a personage of
such consequence that, in spite of his youth, both the

ladies rose on his entrance.
He was a new admirer of Sappho’s. He now dogged
her footsteps, like Vaska.
Soon after Prince Kaluzhsky arrived, and Liza
Merkalova with Stremov. Liza Merkalova was a thin
brunette, with an Oriental, languid type of face, and—as
everyone used to say—exquisite enigmatic eyes. The tone
of her dark dress (Anna immediately observed and
appreciated the fact) was in perfect harmony with her style
of beauty. Liza was as soft and enervated as Sappho was
smart and abrupt.
But to Anna’s taste Liza was far more attractive. Betsy
had said to Anna that she had adopted the pose of an
innocent child, but when Anna saw her, she felt that this
was not the truth. She really was both innocent and
corrupt, but a sweet and passive woman. It is true that her
tone was the same as Sappho’s; that like Sappho, she had
two men, one young and one old, tacked onto her, and
devouring her with their eyes. But there was something in
her higher than what surrounded her. There was in her

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