Page 992 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

Dolly stood beside them; she heard them, but she did
not answer. She was deeply moved. The tears stood in her
eyes, and she could not have spoken without crying. She
was rejoicing over Kitty and Levin; going back in thought

to her own wedding, she glanced at the radiant figure of
Stepan Arkadyevitch, forgot all the present, and
remembered only her own innocent love. She recalled not
herself only, but all her women-friends and acquaintances.
She thought of them on the one day of their triumph,
when they had stood like Kitty under the wedding crown,
with love and hope and dread in their hearts, renouncing
the past, and stepping forward into the mysterious future.
Among the brides that came back to her memory, she
thought too of her darling Anna, of whose proposed
divorce she had just been hearing. And she had stood just
as innocent in orange flowers and bridal veil. And now?
‘It’s terribly strange,’ she said to herself. It was not merely
the sisters, the women-friends and female relations of the
bride who were following every detail of the ceremony.
Women who were quite strangers, mere spectators, were
watching it excitedly, holding their breath, in fear of
losing a single movement or expression of the bride and
bridegroom, and angrily not answering, often not hearing,

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