They were talking about mutual acquaintances, and conducting the most trivial of conversations, but it seemed to Kitty that every word they spoke was deciding their destiny, and hers. And strangely enough, although they really were talking about how funny Ivan Ivanovich was when he spoke French, and how a better match could have been found for that Eletskaya girl, these words had a special meaning for them, and they were aware of that, just as Kitty was. The whole ball, the whole world, everything in Kitty’s soul disappeared into a fog. Only her strict upbringing kept her going and forced her to do what was required of her, namely dance, answer questions, talk, and even smile. But before the beginning of the mazurka, when they were already beginning to arrange the chairs, and some couples had moved from the small rooms into the main ballroom, Kitty succumbed to a moment of despair and horror. She had declined five invitations, and now she was not dancing the mazurka. There was not even any hope that she would be invited, precisely because she had scored too great a success in society, and it would simply never occur to anyone that she had not been invited earlier. She would have to tell her mother she was unwell and go home, but she did not have the strength for that. She felt crushed.
She went to the back of a small drawing room and sank into an armchair. The diaphanous skirt of her dress billowed up around her thin frame like a cloud; one thin, bare, delicate girlish arm, hanging limply, had disappeared into the folds of her pink tunique; with the other she was holding her fan and waving it in front of her hot face with short, rapid movements. But despite looking like a butterfly which has just landed on a blade of grass and is ready any second to take flight and unfold its rainbow wings, a terrible despair gripped her heart.
‘But perhaps I’m mistaken, perhaps it didn’t happen?’
And she again remembered everything she had seen.
‘Kitty, what is all this?’ said Countess Nordston, stealing up to her noiselessly on the carpet. ‘I don’t understand it.’
Kitty’s lower lip trembled; she stood up quickly.
‘Kitty, aren’t you dancing the mazurka?’
‘No, no,’ said Kitty in a voice trembling with tears.
‘He asked her for the mazurka in front of me,’ said Countess Nordston, knowing that Kitty would understand who he and she were. ‘She said: are you not dancing with Princess Shcherbatskaya?’
‘Oh, I don’t care!’ answered Kitty.
No one except Kitty herself understood her situation, and no one knew that the day before she had refused a man whom she perhaps loved, and refused him because she had put her faith in someone else.
Countess Nordston found Korsunsky, with whom she was to dance the mazurka, and ordered him to invite Kitty.
Kitty danced in the first pair, and fortunately she did not have to speak, because Korsunsky was running about the whole time, managing everything. Vronsky and Anna were sitting almost opposite her. She saw them with her far-sighted eyes, and she also saw them up close when they came together in pairs, and the more she saw of them, the more she was convinced of the calamity which had befallen her. She could see they felt they were on their own in the crowded ballroom. And on Vronsky’s face, always so resolute and detached, she was startled to see a distracted and submissive expression, like that of a clever dog when it has misbehaved.
Anna smiled, and her smile transferred to him. She became thoughtful, and he became serious. Some kind of supernatural force drew Kitty’s eyes to Anna’s face. She was lovely in that simple black dress, her rounded arms with bracelets were lovely, her firm neck with its string of pearls was lovely, the straying curls of her dishevelled hair arrangement were lovely, the graceful, light movements of her small feet and hands were lovely, that beautiful face was lovely in all its liveliness; but there was something terrible and cruel in her loveliness.
Kitty was more admiring of her than before, and she was suffering more and more. She felt crushed, and her face expressed this. When Vronsky caught sight of her as they brushed up against each other in the mazurka, he did not recognize her straight away, so greatly had she changed.
‘Wonderful ball!’ he said to her, in order to say something.
‘Yes,’ she replied.
In the middle of the mazurka, as they repeated the complicated steps which Korsunsky had just thought up, Anna went into the middle of the circle, took two partners and beckoned one lady and Kitty to her. As she came up, Kitty looked at her in fright. Anna narrowed her eyes as she looked at her, and smiled as she pressed her hand. But when she noticed that Kitty’s face only responded to her smile with an expression of despair and incredulity, she turned away from her and started talking merrily to the other lady.
‘Yes, there is something alien, demonic, and lovely about her,’ Kitty said to herself.
Anna did not want to stay for supper, but her host tried to persuade her.
‘Come on now, Anna Arkadyevna,’ Korsunsky said, tucking her bare arm under the sleeve of his tail-coat. ‘I have such a good idea for the cotillion! Un bijou!’
And he performed a few movements in an attempt to enthuse her. Their host smiled approvingly.
‘No, I won’t stay,’ answered Anna, smiling; but despite her smile, both Korsunsky and their host realized from the resolute tone in which she answered that she would not stay.
‘No, as it is I’ve danced more at your one ball in Moscow than during the whole winter in Petersburg,’ Anna said, glancing at Vronsky, who was standing nearby. ‘I need to rest before my journey.’
‘And are you definitely leaving tomorrow?’ asked Vronsky.
‘Yes, I think so,’ replied Anna, as if surprised by the boldness of his question; but the irrepressible, lustrous sparkle of her eyes and smile set him ablaze when she said this.
Anna Arkadyevna did not stay for supper and left.
24
‘YES, there is something loathsome and repellent about me,’ thought Levin as he left the Shcherbatskys and set off on foot to see his brother. ‘And I don’t fit in with other people. Pride, they say. No, I don’t have any pride. If I did, I wouldn’t have put myself in such a position.’ And he imagined the happy, kind, clever, and calm Vronsky, who had probably never been in the awful situation he found himself in that evening. ‘Yes, she was bound to choose him. That’s the way it has to be, and I can’t blame anyone or anything. It’s my fault. What right did I have to think that she would want to join her life to mine? Who am I? And what am I? An insignificant person, who is no earthly use to anyone.’ And he remembered his brother Nikolay, and it made him happy to linger on this memory. ‘Isn’t he right about everything in the world being rotten and vile? And we are hardly judging brother Nikolay fairly, nor have we judged him fairly in the past. Obviously he is a contemptible person from the point of view of someone like Prokofy, who saw him in a tattered fur coat, and drunk; but I know another side to him. I know his soul, and I know we are similar. But instead of going off to find him, I went out to dinner and came here.’ Levin went up to a streetlamp, read his brother’s address, which he had in his wallet, and hailed a cab. Levin spent the whole of the long journey over to his brother’s vividly recalling all the events of Nikolay’s life that he knew about. He remembered how, despite the taunts of his comrades, his brother had lived like a monk at university and the year after university, strictly observing all the religious rites, the services, and the fasts, and abstaining from all pleasures, especially women; and then how he had suddenly cracked, consorted with the vilest people and launched into the most licentious debauchery. Then he remembered the story about the boy he had taken from the country in order to educate, and in a fit of rage had beaten so badly that proceedings were started against him for causing grievous bodily harm. Then he remembered the story concerning the card-sharp to whom he had lost money and given a promissory note, and about whom he had himself issued a complaint, claiming he had been cheated. (That was the money Sergey Ivanich had paid out.) Then he remembered the night he had spent in the lock-up for disorderly conduct. He remembered the shameful court case he had brought against his brother Sergey Ivanich, for allegedly not paying him his share from their mother’s estate; and the most recent incident, when he had taken up a post in the Western Territory* and was taken to court there for assaulting his superior … All this was unspeakably vile, but it did not seem nearly as vile to Levin as it was bound to have seemed to those who did not know Nikolay Levin, did not know his whole story, did not know his heart.