Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/77

 CHAPTER XIII

dinner, and during the first part of the evening, Kitty felt as a young man feels before a battle. Her heart beat violently, and she could not concentrate her thoughts.

She felt that this evening, when they two should meet for the first time, would decide her fate. She kept seeing them in her imagination, sometimes together, sometimes separately. When she thought of the past, pleasure, almost tenderness, filled her heart at the remembrance of her relations with Levin. The recollections of her childhood and of his friendship with her departed brother imparted a certain poetic charm to her relations with him. His love for her, of which she was certain, was flattering and agreeable to her, and she found it easy to think about Levin. In her thoughts about Vronsky there was something that made her uneasy, though he was a man to the highest degree polished and self-possessed; there seemed to be something false, not in him,—for he was very simple and good,—but in herself, while all was clear and simple in her relations with Levin. But while Vronsky seemed to offer her dazzling promises and a brilliant future, the future with Levin seemed enveloped in mist.

When she went up-stairs to dress for the evening and looked into the mirror, she noticed with delight that she was looking her loveliest, and that she was in full possession of all her powers, and what was most important on this occasion, that she felt at ease and entirely self-possessed.

At half-past seven, as she was going into the drawing-room, the lackey announced, "Konstantin Dmitritch Levin." The princess was still in her room; the prince had not yet come down. "It has come at last," thought Kitty, and all the blood rushed to her heart. As she glanced into a mirror, she was startled to see how pale she looked.

She knew now, for a certainty, that he had come early,