Anna Karenina - Part 1 - Page 111/119

The first person to meet Anna at home was her son. He dashed

down the stairs to her, in spite of the governess's call, and

with desperate joy shrieked: "Mother! mother!" Running up to

her, he hung on her neck.

"I told you it was mother!" he shouted to the governess. "I

knew!"

And her son, like her husband, aroused in Anna a feeling akin to

disappointment. She had imagined him better than he was in

reality. She had to let herself drop down to the reality to

enjoy him as he really was. But even as he was, he was charming,

with his fair curls, his blue eyes, and his plump, graceful

little legs in tightly pulled-up stockings. Anna experienced

almost physical pleasure in the sensation of his nearness, and

his caresses, and moral soothing, when she met his simple,

confiding, and loving glance, and heard his naïve questions.

Anna took out the presents Dolly's children had sent him, and

told her son what sort of little girl was Tanya at Moscow, and

how Tanya could read, and even taught the other children.

"Why, am I not so nice as she?" asked Seryozha.

"To me you're nicer than anyone in the world."

"I know that," said Seryozha, smiling.

Anna had not had time to drink her coffee when the Countess Lidia

Ivanovna was announced. The Countess Lidia Ivanovna was a tall,

stout woman, with an unhealthily sallow face and splendid,

pensive black eyes. Anna liked her, but today she seemed to be

seeing her for the first time with all her defects.

"Well, my dear, so you took the olive branch?" inquired Countess

Lidia Ivanovna, as soon as she came into the room.

"Yes, it's all over, but it was all much less serious than we had

supposed," answered Anna. "My _belle-soeur_ is in general too

hasty."

But Countess Lidia Ivanovna, though she was interested in

everything that did not concern her, had a habit of never

listening to what interested her; she interrupted Anna: "Yes, there's plenty of sorrow and evil in the world. I am so

worried today."

"Oh, why?" asked Anna, trying to suppress a smile.

"I'm beginning to be weary of fruitlessly championing the truth,

and sometimes I'm quite unhinged by it. The Society of the

Little Sisters" (this was a religiously-patriotic, philanthropic

institution) "was going splendidly, but with these gentlemen it's

impossible to do anything," added Countess Lidia Ivanovna in a

tone of ironical submission to destiny. "They pounce on the

idea, and distort it, and then work it out so pettily and

unworthily. Two or three people, your husband among them,

understand all the importance of the thing, but the others simply

drag it down. Yesterday Pravdin wrote to me..."