<h3>Chapter 20</h3>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“Stiva,” she said to him, winking gaily, crossing him and glancing
towards the door, “go, and God help you.”</p>
<p>He threw down the cigar, understanding her, and departed through the doorway.</p>
<p>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 as
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.</p>
<p>“Come, come, as we were sitting before,” said Anna Arkadyevna,
sitting down in her place.</p>
<p>And again Grisha poked his little face under her arm, and nestled with his head
on her gown, beaming with pride and happiness.</p>
<p>“And when is your next ball?” she asked Kitty.</p>
<p>“Next week, and a splendid ball. One of those balls where one always
enjoys oneself.”</p>
<p>“Why, are there balls where one always enjoys oneself?” Anna said,
with tender irony.</p>
<p>“It’s strange, but there are. At the Bobrishtchevs’ one
always enjoys oneself, and at the Nikitins’ too, while at the
Mezhkovs’ it’s always dull. Haven’t you noticed it?”</p>
<p>“No, my dear, for me there are no balls now where one enjoys
oneself,” said Anna, and Kitty detected in her eyes that mysterious world
which was not open to her. “For me there are some less dull and
tiresome.”</p>
<p>“How can <i>you</i> be dull at a ball?”</p>
<p>“Why should not <i>I</i> be dull at a ball?” inquired Anna.</p>
<p>Kitty perceived that Anna knew what answer would follow.</p>
<p>“Because you always look nicer than anyone.”</p>
<p>Anna had the faculty of blushing. She blushed a little, and said:</p>
<p>“In the first place it’s never so; and secondly, if it were, what
difference would it make to me?”</p>
<p>“Are you coming to this ball?” asked Kitty.</p>
<p>“I imagine it won’t be possible to avoid going. Here, take
it,” she said to Tanya, who was pulling the loosely-fitting ring off her
white, slender-tipped finger.</p>
<p>“I shall be so glad if you go. I should so like to see you at a
ball.”</p>
<p>“Anyway, if I do go, I shall comfort myself with the thought that
it’s a pleasure to you ... Grisha, don’t pull my hair. It’s
untidy enough without that,” she said, putting up a straying lock, which
Grisha had been playing with.</p>
<p>“I imagine you at the ball in lilac.”</p>
<p>“And why in lilac precisely?” asked Anna, smiling. “Now,
children, run along, run along. Do you hear? Miss Hoole is calling you to
tea,” she said, tearing the children from her, and sending them off to
the dining-room.</p>
<p>“I know why you press me to come to the ball. You expect a great deal of
this ball, and you want everyone to be there to take part in it.”</p>
<p>“How do you know? Yes.”</p>
<p>“Oh! what a happy time you are at,” pursued Anna. “I
remember, and I know that blue haze like the mist on the mountains in
Switzerland. That mist which covers everything in that blissful time when
childhood is just ending, and out of that vast circle, happy and gay, there is
a path growing narrower and narrower, and it is delightful and alarming to
enter the ballroom, bright and splendid as it is.... Who has not been through
it?”</p>
<p>Kitty smiled without speaking. “But how did she go through it? How I
should like to know all her love story!” thought Kitty, recalling the
unromantic appearance of Alexey Alexandrovitch, her husband.</p>
<p>“I know something. Stiva told me, and I congratulate you. I liked him so
much,” Anna continued. “I met Vronsky at the railway
station.”</p>
<p>“Oh, was he there?” asked Kitty, blushing. “What was it Stiva
told you?”</p>
<p>“Stiva gossiped about it all. And I should be so glad ... I traveled
yesterday with Vronsky’s mother,” she went on; “and his
mother talked without a pause of him, he’s her favorite. I know mothers
are partial, but....”</p>
<p>“What did his mother tell you?”</p>
<p>“Oh, a great deal! And I know that he’s her favorite; still one can
see how chivalrous he is.... Well, for instance, she told me that he had wanted
to give up all his property to his brother, that he had done something
extraordinary when he was quite a child, saved a woman out of the water.
He’s a hero, in fact,” said Anna, smiling and recollecting the two
hundred roubles he had given at the station.</p>
<p>But she did not tell Kitty about the two hundred roubles. For some reason it
was disagreeable to her to think of it. She felt that there was something that
had to do with her in it, and something that ought not to have been.</p>
<p>“She pressed me very much to go and see her,” Anna went on;
“and I shall be glad to go to see her tomorrow. Stiva is staying a long
while in Dolly’s room, thank God,” Anna added, changing the
subject, and getting up, Kitty fancied, displeased with something.</p>
<p>“No, I’m first! No, I!” screamed the children, who had
finished tea, running up to their Aunt Anna.</p>
<p>“All together,” said Anna, and she ran laughing to meet them, and
embraced and swung round all the throng of swarming children, shrieking with
delight.</p>
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