Anna Karenina - Part 1 - Page 74/119

The whole of that day Anna spent at home, that's to say at the

Oblonskys', and received no one, though some of her acquaintances

had already heard of her arrival, and came to call; the same day.

Anna spent the whole morning with Dolly and the children. She

merely sent a brief note to her brother to tell him that he must

not fail to dine at home. "Come, God is merciful," she wrote.

Oblonsky did dine at home: the conversation was general, and his

wife, speaking to him, addressed him as "Stiva," as she had not

done before. In the relations of the husband and wife the same

estrangement still remained, but there was no talk now of

separation, and Stepan Arkadyevitch saw the possibility of

explanation and reconciliation.

Immediately after dinner Kitty came in. She knew Anna

Arkadyevna, but only very slightly, and she came now to her

sister's with some trepidation, at the prospect of meeting this

fashionable Petersburg lady, whom everyone spoke so highly of.

But she made a favorable impression on Anna Arkadyevna--she saw

that at once. Anna was unmistakably admiring her loveliness and

her youth: before Kitty knew where she was she found herself not

merely under Anna's sway, but in love with her, as young girls do

fall in love with older and married women. Anna was not like a

fashionable lady, nor the mother of a boy of eight years old. In

the elasticity of her movements, the freshness and the unflagging

eagerness which persisted in her face, and broke out in her smile

and her glance, she would rather have passed for a girl of

twenty, had it not been for a serious and at times mournful look

in her eyes, which struck and attracted Kitty. Kitty felt that

Anna was perfectly simple and was concealing nothing, but that

she had another higher world of interests inaccessible to her,

complex and poetic.

After dinner, when Dolly went away to her own room, Anna rose

quickly and went up to her brother, who was just lighting a

cigar.

"Stiva," she said to him, winking gaily, crossing him and

glancing towards the door, "go, and God help you."

He threw down the cigar, understanding her, and departed through

the doorway.

When Stepan Arkadyevitch had disappeared, she went back to the

sofa where she had been sitting, surrounded by the children.

Either because the children saw that their mother was fond of

this aunt, or that they felt a special charm in her themselves,

the two elder ones, and the younger following their lead, as

children so often do, had clung about their new aunt since

before dinner, and would not leave her side. And it had become a

sort of game among them to sit a close as possible to their aunt,

to touch her, hold her little hand, kiss it, play with her ring,

or even touch the flounce of her skirt.