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said was determining their fate and hers. And strange it was that they
were actually talking of how absurd Ivan Ivanovitch was with his French,
and how the Eletsky girl might have made a better match, yet these
words had all the while consequence for them, and they were feeling
just as Kitty did. The whole ball, the whole world, everything seemed
lost in fog in Kitty’s soul. Nothing but the stern discipline of her bring-
ing-up supported her and forced her to do what was expected of her,
that is, to dance, to answer questions, to talk, even to smile. But before
the mazurka, when they were beginning to rearrange the chairs and a
few couples moved out of the smaller rooms into the big room, a mo-
ment of despair and horror came for Kitty. She had refused five part-
ners, and now she was not dancing the mazurka. She had not even a
hope of being asked for it, because she was so successful in society that
the idea would never occur to anyone that she had remained disen-
gaged till now. She would have to tell her mother she felt ill and go
home, but she had not the strength to do this. She felt crushed. She
went to the furthest end of the little drawing room and sank into a low
chair. Her light, transparent skirts rose like a cloud about her slender
waist; one bare, thin, soft, girlish arm, hanging listlessly, was lost in the
folds of her pink tunic; in the other she held her fan, and with rapid,
short strokes fanned her burning face. But while she looked like a
butterfly, clinging to a blade of grass, and just about to open its rainbow
wings for fresh flight, her heart ached with a horrible despair.
“But perhaps I am wrong, perhaps it was not so?” And again she
recalled all she had seen.
“Kitty, what is it?” said Countess Nordston, stepping noiselessly
over the carpet towards her. “I don’t understand it.”
Kitty’s lower lip began to quiver; she got up quickly.
“Kitty, you’re not dancing the mazurka?”
“No, no,” said Kitty in a voice shaking with tears.
“He asked her for the mazurka before me,” said Countess Nordston,
knowing Kitty would understand who were “he” and “her.” “She said:
‘Why, aren’t you going to dance it with Princess Shtcherbatskaya?””
“Oh, I don’t care!” answered Kitty.
No one but she herself understood her position; no one knew that
she had just refused the man whom perhaps she loved, and refused
him because she had put her faith in another.
Countess Nordston found Korsunsky, with whom she was to dance
the mazurka, and told him to ask Kitty.
Kitty danced in the first couple, and luckily for her she had not to
talk, because Korsunsky was all the time running about directing the
figure. Vronsky and Anna sat almost opposite her. She saw them with
her long-sighted eyes, and saw them, too, close by, when they met in
the figures, and the more she saw of them the more convinced was she
that her unhappiness was complete. She saw that they felt themselves
alone in that crowded room. And on Vronsky’s face, always so firm and
independent, she saw that look that had struck her, of bewilderment
and humble submissiveness, like the expression of an intelligent dog
when it has done wrong.
Anna smiled, and her smile was reflected by him. She grew thought-
ful, and he became serious. Some supernatural force drew Kitty’s eyes
to Anna’s face. She was fascinating in her simple black dress, fascinat-
ing were her round arms with their bracelets, fascinating was her firm
neck with its thread of pearls, fascinating the straying curls of her loose
hair, fascinating the graceful, light movements of her little feet and
hands, fascinating was that lovely face in its eagerness, but there was
something terrible and cruel in her fascination.
Kitty admired her more than ever, and more and more acute was