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forgive it. I could not be the same, no; but I could forgive it, and forgive
it as though it had never been, never been at all...”
“Oh, of course,” Dolly interposed quickly, as though saying what
she had more than once thought, “else it would not be forgiveness. If
one forgives, it must be completely, completely. Come, let us go; I’ll take
you to your room,” she said, getting up, and on the way she embraced
Anna. “My dear, how glad I am you came. It has made things better,
ever so much better.”
Chapter 20.
The whole of that day Anna spent at home, that’s to say at the
Oblonskys’, and received no one, though some of her acquaintances
had already heard of her arrival, and came to call; the same day. Anna
spent the whole morning with Dolly and the children. She merely sent
a brief note to her brother to tell him that he must not fail to dine at
home. “Come, God is merciful,” she wrote.
Oblonsky did dine at home: the conversation was general, and his
wife, speaking to him, addressed him as “Stiva,” as she had not done
before. In the relations of the husband and wife the same estrange-
ment still remained, but there was no talk now of separation, and
Stepan Arkadyevitch saw the possibility of explanation and reconcili-
ation.
Immediately after dinner Kitty came in. She knew Anna
Arkadyevna, but only very slightly, and she came now to her sister’s
with some trepidation, at the prospect of meeting this fashionable
Petersburg lady, whom everyone spoke so highly of. But she made a
favorable impression on Anna Arkadyevna—she saw that at once.
Anna was unmistakably admiring her loveliness and her youth: before
Kitty knew where she was she found herself not merely under Anna’s
sway, but in love with her, as young girls do fall in love with older and
married women. Anna was not like a fashionable lady, nor the mother