122 123
Chapter 22.
The ball was only just beginning as Kitty and her mother walked
up the great staircase, flooded with light, and lined with flowers and
footmen in powder and red coats. From the rooms came a constant,
steady hum, as from a hive, and the rustle of movement; and while on
the landing between trees they gave last touches to their hair and
dresses before the mirror, they heard from the ballroom the careful,
distinct notes of the fiddles of the orchestra beginning the first waltz.
A little old man in civilian dress, arranging his gray curls before another
mirror, and diffusing an odor of scent, stumbled against them on the
stairs, and stood aside, evidently admiring Kitty, whom he did not
know. A beardless youth, one of those society youths whom the old
Prince Shtcherbatsky called “young bucks,” in an exceedingly open
waistcoat, straightening his white tie as he went, bowed to them, and
after running by, came back to ask Kitty for a quadrille. As the first
quadrille had already been given to Vronsky, she had to promise this
youth the second. An officer, buttoning his glove, stood aside in the
doorway, and stroking his mustache, admired rosy Kitty.
Although her dress, her coiffure, and all the preparations for the
ball had cost Kitty great trouble and consideration, at this moment she
walked into the ballroom in her elaborate tulle dress over a pink slip as
easily and simply as though all the rosettes and lace, all the minute
details of her attire, had not cost her or her family a moment’s attention,
as though she had been born in that tulle and lace, with her hair done
up high on her head, and a rose and two leaves on the top of it.
When, just before entering the ballroom, the princess, her mother,
tried to turn right side out of the ribbon of her sash, Kitty had drawn
back a little. She felt that everything must be right of itself, and grace-
ful, and nothing could need setting straight.
It was one of Kitty’s best days. Her dress was not uncomfortable
anywhere; her lace berthe did not droop anywhere; her rosettes were
not crushed nor torn off; her pink slippers with high, hollowed-out
heels did not pinch, but gladdened her feet; and the thick rolls of fair
chignon kept up on her head as if they were her own hair. All the three
buttons buttoned up without tearing on the long glove that covered
her hand without concealing its lines. The black velvet of her locket
nestled with special softness round her neck. That velvet was deli-
cious; at home, looking at her neck in the looking glass, Kitty had felt
that that velvet was speaking. About all the rest there might be a
doubt, but the velvet was delicious. Kitty smiled here too, at the ball,
when she glanced at it in the glass. Her bare shoulders and arms gave
Kitty a sense of chill marble, a feeling she particularly liked. Her eyes
sparkled, and her rosy lips could not keep from smiling from the con-
sciousness of her own attractiveness. She had scarcely entered the
ballroom and reached the throng of ladies, all tulle, ribbons, lace, and
flowers, waiting to be asked to dance—Kitty was never one of that
throng—when she was asked for a waltz, and asked by the best part-
ner, the first star in the hierarchy of the ballroom, a renowned director
of dances, a married man, handsome and well-built, Yegorushka
Korsunsky. He had only just left the Countess Bonina, with whom he
had danced the first half of the waltz, and, scanning his kingdom—that