Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/311

 to yourself, so humiliating and painful would it be if you are mistaken.

Again and again she passed in review all the memories of her relations with this family. She remembered the innocent joy which shone on Anna Pavlovna's honest, round face when they first met; she remembered their secret discussions to find means to distract the invalid, and keep him from the forbidden work, and to get him out of doors; the attachment of the youngest child, who called her Moya Kiti, and would not go to bed without her. How beautiful everything was at that time! Then she remembered Petrof's thin face, his long neck, stretching out from his brown coat; his thin, curly hair; his blue eyes, with their questioning look, which she had feared at first; his painful efforts to seem lively and energetic when she was near; she recalled the effort that she had to make at first to overcome the repugnance which he, as well as all consumptives, caused her to feel; and the trouble which she had in finding something to talk with him about.

She remembered the sick man's humble and timid looks when he saw her, and the strange feeling of compassion and awkwardness which came over her at first, followed by the pleasant consciousness of her charitable deeds. How lovely it all had been! but it lasted only for a brief moment. Now and for several days there had been a sudden change. Anna Pavlovna received Kitty with pretended friendliness, and did not cease to watch her and her husband.

Could it be that the invalid's pathetic joy at the sight of her was the cause of Anna Pavlovna's coolness?

"Yes," she said to herself, "there was something unnatural and quite different from her ordinary sweet temper when she said to me, day before yesterday, sharply, 'There! he will not do anything without you; he would not even take his coffee, though he was awfully faint.'

"Yes! perhaps it was not agreeable to her when I gave him his plaid. It was such a simple little thing to do; but he seemed so strange, and thanked me so warmly,