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 after years had passed, the loving look which she gave him and which he did not return tore her heart with cruel shame.

"Pardon! pardon! A waltz! a waltz!" cried Korsunsky at the other end of the ball-room, and, seizing the first young lady at hand, he began once more to dance.

CHAPTER XXIII

took a few turns with Kitty, then she joined her mother; but she had time for only a few words with the Countess Nordstone, ere Vronsky came back to get her for the first quadrille. During the quadrille nothing of importance was said: their conversation was first on Korsunsky and his wife, whom Vronsky described very amusingly as amiable children of forty years, then on some private theatricals; and only once did his words give her a keen pang,—when he asked if Levin were there, and added that he liked him very much.

But Kitty counted little on the quadrille: she waited for the mazurka with a violent beating of the heart. She had a feeling that during the mazurka all would surely be settled. The fact that Vronsky did not ask her during the quadrille did not disturb her. She felt sure that she should be selected as his partner for the mazurka as in all preceding balls, and she refused five invitations, saying that she was engaged.

This whole ball, even to the last quadrille, seemed to Kitty like a magical dream, full of flowers, of joyous sounds, of movement; she did not cease to dance until her strength began to fail, and then she begged to rest a moment. But in dancing the last quadrille with one of those tiresome men whom she found it impossible to refuse, she found herself in the same set with Vronsky and Anna. Kitty had not fallen in with Anna since the beginning of the ball, and now again she suddenly saw her in another new and unexpected light. She seemed laboring under an excitement such as Kitty herself had experienced—that of success. She saw that Anna