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dinner, Anna went up to her room to dress, and Dolly followed her.
“How queer you are today!” Dolly said to her.
“I? Do you think so? I’m not queer, but I’m nasty. I am like that
sometimes. I keep feeling as if I could cry. It’s very stupid, but it’ll pass
off,” said Anna quickly, and she bent her flushed face over a tiny bag in
which she was packing a nightcap and some cambric handkerchiefs.
Her eyes were particulary bright, and were continually swimming with
tears. “In the same way I didn’t want to leave Petersburg, and now I
don’t want to go away from here.”
“You came here and did a good deed,” said Dolly, looking intently
at her.
Anna looked at her with eyes wet with tears.
“Don’t say that, Dolly. I’ve done nothing, and could do nothing. I
often wonder why people are all in league to spoil me. What have I
done, and what could I do? In your heart there was found love enough
to forgive...”
“If it had not been for you, God knows what would have hap-
pened! How happy you are, Anna!” said Dolly. “Everything is clear
and good in your heart.”
“Every heart has its own skeletons, as the English say.”
“You have no sort of skeleton, have you? Everything is so clear in
you.”
“I have!” said Anna suddenly, and, unexpectedly after her tears, a
sly, ironical smile curved her lips.
“Come, he’s amusing, anyway, your skeleton, and not depressing,”
said Dolly, smiling.
“No, he’s depressing. Do you know why I’m going today instead of
tomorrow? It’s a confession that weighs on me; I want to make it to
you,” said Anna, letting herself drop definitely into an armchair, and
looking straight into Dolly’s face.
And to her surprise Dolly saw that Anna was blushing up to her
ears, up to the curly black ringlets on her neck.
“Yes,” Anna went on. “Do you know why Kitty didn’t come to
dinner? she’s jealous of me. I have spoiled...I’ve been the cause of that
ball being a torture to her instead of a pleasure. But truly, truly, it’s not
my fault, or only my fault a little bit,” she said, daintily drawling the
words “a little bit.”
“Oh, how like Stiva you said that!” said Dolly, laughing.
Anna was hurt.
“Oh no, oh no! I’m not Stiva,” she said, knitting her brows. “That’s
why I’m telling you, just because I could never let myself doubt myself
for an instant,” said Anna.
But at the very moment she was uttering the words, she felt that
they were not true. She was not merely doubting herself, she felt
emotion at the thought of Vronsky, and was going away sooner than
she had meant, simply to avoid meeting him.
“Yes, Stiva told me you danced the mazurka with him, and that
he...”
“You can’t imagine how absurdly it all came about. I only meant to
be matchmaking, and all at once it turned out quite differently. Possi-
bly against my own will...”
She crimsoned and stopped.
“Oh, they feel it directly?” said Dolly.
“But I should be in despair if there were anything serious in it on
his side,” Anna interrupted her. “And I am certain it will all be forgot-
ten, and Kitty will leave off hating me.”
“All the same, Anna, to tell you the truth, I’m not very anxious for
this marriage for Kitty. And it’s better it should come to nothing, if he,