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she said, tearing the children form her, and sending them off to the
dining room.
“I know why you press me to come to the ball. You expect a great
deal of this ball, and you want everyone to be there to take part in it.”
“How do you know? Yes.”
“Oh! what a happy time you are at,” pursued Anna. “I remember,
and I know that blue haze like the mist on the mountains in Switzer-
land. That mist which covers everything in that blissful time when
childhood is just ending, and out of that vast circle, happy and gay,
there is a path growing narrower and narrower, and it is delightful and
alarming to enter the ballroom, bright and splendid as it is.... Who has
not been through it?”
Kitty smiled without speaking. “But how did she go through it?
How I should like to know all her love story!” thought Kitty, recalling
the unromantic appearance of Alexey Alexandrovitch, her husband.
“I know something. Stiva told me, and I congratulate you. I liked
him so much,” Anna continued. “I met Vronsky at the railway station.”
“Oh, was he there?” asked Kitty, blushing. “What was it Stiva told
you?”
“Stiva gossiped about it all. And I should be so glad...I traveled
yesterday with Vronsky’s mother,” she went on; “and his mother talked
without a pause of him, he’s her favorite. I know mothers are partial,
but...”
“What did his mother tell you?”
“Oh, a great deal! And I know that he’s her favorite; still one can
see how chivalrous he is.... Well, for instance, she told me that he had
wanted to give up all his property to his brother, that he had done
something extraordinary when he was quite a child, saved a woman
out of the water. He’s a hero, in fact,” said Anna, smiling and recollect-
ing the two hundred roubles he had given at the station.
But she did not tell Kitty about the two hundred roubles. For some
reason it was disagreeable to her to think of it. She felt that there was
something that had to do with her in it, and something that ought not
to have been.
“She pressed me very much to go and see her,” Anna went on; “and
I shall be glad to go to see her tomorrow. Stiva is staying a long while in
Dolly’s room, thank God,” Anna added, changing the subject, and
getting up, Kitty fancied, displeased with something.
“No, I’m first! No, I!” screamed the children, who had finished tea,
running up to their Aunt Anna.
“All together,” said Anna, and she ran laughing to meet them, and
embraced and swung round all the throng of swarming children, shriek-
ing with delight.