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Russian girl looked after Madame Stahl, and besides that, she was, as
Kitty observed, on friendly terms with all the invalids who were seri-
ously ill, and there were many of them at the springs, and looked after
them in the most natural way. This Russian girl was not, as Kitty
gathered, related to Madame Stahl, nor was she a paid attendant.
Madame Stahl called her Varenka, and other people called her “Ma-
demoiselle Varenka.” Apart from the interest Kitty took in this girl’s
relations with Madame Stahl and with other unknown persons, Kitty,
as often happened, felt an inexplicable attraction to Mademoiselle
Varenka, and was aware when their eyes met that she too liked her.
Of Mademoiselle Varenka one would not say that she had passed
her first youth, but she was, as it were, a creature without youth; she
might have been taken for nineteen or for thirty. If her features were
criticized separately, she was handsome rather than plain, in spite of
the sickly hue of her face. She would have been a good figure, too, if it
had not been for her extreme thinness and the size of her head, which
was too large for her medium height. But she was not likely to be
attractive to men. She was like a fine flower, already past its bloom and
without fragrance, though the petals were still unwithered. Moreover,
she would have been unattractive to men also from the lack of just
what Kitty had too much of—of the suppressed fire of vitality, and the
consciousness of her own attractiveness.
She always seemed absorbed in work about which there could be
no doubt, and so it seemed she could not take interest in anything
outside it. It was just this contrast with her own position that was for
Kitty the great attraction of Mademoiselle Varenka. Kitty felt that in
her, in her manner of life, she would find an example of what she was
now so painfully seeking: interest in life, a dignity in life—apart from
the worldly relations of girls with men, which so revolted Kitty, and
appeared to her now as a shameful hawking about of goods in search of
a purchaser. The more attentively Kitty watched her unknown friend,
the more convinced she was this girl was the perfect creature she
fancied her, and the more eagerly she wished to make her acquain-
tance.
The two girls used to meet several times a day, and every time they
met, Kitty’s eyes said: “Who are you? What are you? Are you really
the exquisite creature I imagine you to be? But for goodness’ sake don’t
suppose,” her eyes added, “that I would force my acquaintance on you,
I simply admire you and like you.” “I like you too, and you’re very, very
sweet. And I should like you better still, if I had time,” answered the
eyes of the unknown girl. Kitty saw indeed, that she was always busy.
Either she was taking the children of a Russian family home from the
springs, or fetching a shawl for a sick lady, and wrapping her up in it, or
trying to interest an irritable invalid, or selecting and buying cakes for
tea for someone.
Soon after the arrival of the Shtcherbatskys there appeared in the
morning crowd at the springs two persons who attracted universal and
unfavorable attention. These were a tall man with a stooping figure,
and huge hands, in an old coat too short for him, with black, simple, and
yet terrible eyes, and a pockmarked, kind-looking woman, very badly
and tastelessly dressed. Recognizing these persons as Russians, Kitty
had already in her imagination begun constructing a delightful and
touching romance about them. But the princess, having ascertained
from the visitors’ list that this was Nikolay Levin and Marya Nikolaevna,
explained to Kitty what a bad man this Levin was, and all her fancies
about these two people vanished. Not so much from what her mother
told her, as from the fact that it was Konstantin’s brother, this pair
suddenly seemed to Kitty intensely unpleasant. This Levin, with his