Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/114

 "Who can that be?" said Dolly.

"It is too early to come after me, and too late for a call," remarked Kitty.

"Doubtless somebody with papers for me," said Stepan Arkadyevitch.

As Anna was passing the staircase she saw the servant going up to announce a caller, but the caller stood in the light of the hall lamp, and was waiting. Anna glancing down saw that it was Vronsky, and a strange sensation of joy, mixed with terror, suddenly seized her heart. He was standing with his coat on, and was taking something out of his pocket. At the moment Anna reached the center of the staircase, he lifted his eyes, and saw her, and his face assumed an expression of humility and confusion. She bowed her head slightly in salutation; and as she went on her way she heard Stepan Arkadyevitch's loud voice calling him to come in, and then Vronsky's low, soft, and tranquil voice excusing himself.

When Anna reached the room with the album, he had gone, and Stepan Arkadyevitch was telling how he came to see about a dinner which they were going to give the next day in honor of some celebrity who was in town.

"And nothing would induce him to come in. What a queer fellow!" said Stepan Arkadyevitch.

Kitty blushed. She thought that she alone understood what he had come for, and why he would not come in. "He must have been at our house," she thought, "and, not finding me, have supposed that I was here; but he did not come in because it was late and Anna here."

They all exchanged glances, but nothing was said, and they began to examine Anna's album.

There was nothing extraordinary or strange in a man calling at half-past nine o'clock in the evening to inquire of a friend about the details of a proposed dinner and not coming in; yet to everybody it seemed strange, and it seemed more strange and unpleasant to Anna than to any one else.