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And she remembered that Anna drooped her eyelids just when the
deeper questions of life were touched upon. “Just as though she half-
shut her eyes to her own life, so as not to see everything,” thought
Dolly. “Yes, indeed, for my own sake and for hers I will talk to her,”
Dolly said in reply to his look of gratitude.
They got up and walked to the house.
Chapter 22.
When Anna found Dolly at home before her, she looked intently
in her eyes, as though questioning her about the talk she had had with
Vronsky, but she made no inquiry in words.
“I believe it’s dinner time,” she said. “We’ve not seen each other at
all yet. I am reckoning on the evening. Now I want to go and dress. I
expect you do too; we all got splashed at the buildings.”
Dolly went to her room and she felt amused. To change her dress
was impossible, for she had already put on her best dress. But in order
to signify in some way her preparation for dinner, she asked the maid to
brush her dress, changed her cuffs and tie, and put some lace on her
head.
“This is all I can do,” she said with a smile to Anna, who came in to
her in a third dress, again of extreme simplicity.
“Yes, we are too formal here,” she said, as it were apologizing for
her magnificence. “Alexey is delighted at your visit, as he rarely is at
anything. He has completely lost his heart to you,” she added. “You’re
not tired?”
There was no time for talking about anything before dinner. Going
into the drawing room they found Princess Varvara already there, and
the gentlemen of the party in black frock-coats. The architect wore a
swallow-tail coat. Vronsky presented the doctor and the steward to his