Anna Karenina - Part 2

"Is it long since you went to see them?"

"We're meaning to make an expedition to the mountains tomorrow,"

answered Kitty, "Well, you can go," answered the princess, gazing at her

daughter's embarrassed face and trying to guess the cause of her

embarrassment.

That day Varenka came to dinner and told them that Anna Pavlovna

had changed her mind and given up the expedition for the morrow.

And the princess noticed again that Kitty reddened.

"Kitty, haven't you had some misunderstanding with the Petrovs?"

said the princess, when they were left alone. "Why has she given

up sending the children and coming to see us?"

Kitty answered that nothing had happened between them, and that

she could not tell why Anna Pavlovna seemed displeased with her.

Kitty answered perfectly truly. She did not know the reason Anna

Pavlovna had changed to her, but she guessed it. She guessed at

something which she could not tell her mother, which she did not

put into words to herself. It was one of those things which one

knows but which one can never speak of even to oneself, so

terrible and shameful would it be to be mistaken.

Again and again she went over in her memory all her relations

with the family. She remembered the simple delight expressed on

the round, good-humored face of Anna Pavlovna at their meetings;

she remembered their secret confabulations about the invalid,

their plots to draw him away from the work which was forbidden

him, and to get him out-of-doors; the devotion of the youngest

boy, who used to call her "my Kitty," and would not go to bed

without her. How nice it all was! Then she recalled the thin,

terribly thin figure of Petrov, with his long neck, in his brown

coat, his scant, curly hair, his questioning blue eyes that were

so terrible to Kitty at first, and his painful attempts to seem

hearty and lively in her presence. She recalled the efforts she

had made at first to overcome the repugnance she felt for him, as

for all consumptive people, and the pains it had cost her to

think of things to say to him. She recalled the timid, softened

look with which he gazed at her, and the strange feeling of

compassion and awkwardness, and later of a sense of her own

goodness, which she had felt at it. How nice it all was! But

all that was at first. Now, a few days ago, everything was

suddenly spoiled. Anna Pavlovna had met Kitty with affected

cordiality, and had kept continual watch on her and on her

husband.