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main staircase.
Just as she was leaving the drawing room, a ring was heard in the
hall.
“Who can that be?” said Dolly
“It’s early for me to be fetched, and for anyone else it’s late,” ob-
served Kitty.
“Sure to be someone with papers for me,” put in Stepan
Arkadyevitch. When Anna was passing the top of the staircase, a
servant was running up to announce the visitor, while the visitor him-
self was standing under a lamp. Anna glancing down at once recog-
nized Vronsky, and a strange feeling of pleasure and at the same time
of dread of something stirred in her heart. He was standing still, not
taking off his coat, pulling something out of his pocket. At the instant
when she was just facing the stairs, he raised his eyes, caught sight of
her, and into the expression of his face there passed a shade of embar-
rassment and dismay. With a slight inclination of her head she passed,
hearing behind her Stepan Arkadyevitch’s loud voice calling him to
come up, and the quiet, soft, and composed voice of Vronsky refusing.
When Anna returned with the album, he was already gone, and
Stepan Arkadyevitch was telling them that he had called to inquire
about the dinner they were giving next day to a celebrity who had just
arrived. “And nothing would induce him to come up. What a queer
fellow he is!” added Stepan Arkadyevitch.
Kitty blushed. She thought that she was the only person who
knew why he had come, and why he would not come up. “He has been
at home,” she thought, “and didn’t find me, and thought I should be
here, but he did not come up because he thought it late, and Anna’s
here.”
All of them looked at each other, saying nothing, and began to look
at Anna’s album.
There was nothing either exceptional or strange in a man’s calling
at half-past nine on a friend to inquire details of a proposed dinner
party and not coming in, but it seemed strange to all of them. Above
all, it seemed strange and not right to Anna.