Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/111

 "How did you know? You are right!"

"Oh, what a lovely age is yours!" continued Anna. "I remember well, and know this purple haze like that which you see hanging over the mountains in Switzerland. This haze covers everything in that delicious time when childhood ends, and from out this immense circle, so joyous, so gay, grows a footpath ever narrower and narrower, and leads gayly and painfully into that labyrinth, and yet it seems so bright and so beautiful. .... Who has not passed through it?"

Kitty listened and smiled. "How did she pass through it? How I should like to know the whole romance of her life!" thought Kitty, remembering the unpoetic appearance of her husband, Alekseï Aleksandrovitch.

"I know a thing or two," continued Anna. "Stiva told me, and I congratulate you; he pleased me very much. I met Vronsky at the station."

"Akh! was he there?" asked Kitty, blushing. "What did Stiva tell you?"

"Stiva told me the whole story; and I should be delighted! I came from Petersburg with Vronsky's mother," she continued; "and his mother never ceased to speak of him. He is her favorite. I know how partial mothers are, but .... "

"What did his mother tell you?"

"Akh! many things; and I know that he is her favorite. But still it is evident he has a chivalrous nature.—Well, for example, she told me how he wanted to give up his whole fortune to his brother; how he did something still more wonderful when he was a boy—saved a woman from drowning. In a word, he is a hero!" said Anna, smiling, and remembering the two hundred rubles which he had given at the station.

But she did not tell about the two hundred rubles. Somehow it was not pleasant for her to remember that. She felt that there was something in it that concerned herself too closely, and ought not to have been.

"The countess urged me to come to see her," continued Anna, "and I should be very happy to meet her again, and I will go to-morrow.—Thank the Lord,