Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/156

 CHAPTER XXXII

first person to meet Anna when she reached home was her son. He darted down-stairs, in spite of his governess's reproof, and with wild delight cried, "Mamma! mamma!" Rushing up to her he threw his arms around her neck.

"I told you it was mamma!" he shouted to the governess. "I knew it was!"

But the son, no less than the husband, awakened in Anna a feeling like disillusion. She imagined him better than he was in reality. She was obliged to descend to the reality in order to look on him as he was. But in fact, he was lovely, with his fair curls, his blue eyes, and his pretty plump legs in their neatly fitting stockings. She felt an almost physical satisfaction in feeling him near her, and in his caresses, and a moral calm in looking into his tender, confiding, loving eyes, and in hearing his innocent questions. She unpacked the gifts sent him by Dolly's children, and told him now there was a little girl in Moscow, named Tanya, and how this Tanya knew how to read, and was teaching the other children to read.

"Am I not as good as she?" asked Serozha.

"For me, you are worth all the rest of the world."

"I know it," said Serozha, smiling.

Anna had not finished drinking her coffee, when the Countess Lidya Ivanovna was announced. The Countess Lidya Ivanovna was a tall, stout woman, with an unhealthy, sallow complexion, and handsome, dreamy black eyes. Anna liked her, but to-day, as if for the first time, she saw her with all her faults.

"Well! my dear, did you carry the olive-branch?" demanded the Countess Lidya Ivanovna, as she entered the room.

"Yes, it is all made up," replied Anna; "but it was not as bad as we thought. As a general thing, my sister-in-law is too peremptory."

But the Countess Lidya, who was interested in every-