Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/820

 Darya Aleksandrovna went over to the char à bancs when it had stopped and coolly greeted the Princess Varvara. Sviazhsky was also an acquaintance. He asked after his friend Levin and his young wife; then, casting a fleeting glance at the oddly matched horses and the patched side of the old carriage, he proposed that the ladies should get into the char a bancs.

"I will take this vehicle to go home in; the horse is quiet and the princess is an excellent driver."

"Oh, no," interrupted Anna, coming up; "remain as you are. I will go home with Dolly in the calash."

Darya Aleksandrovna's eyes were dazzled by the unexampled elegance of the carriage, and the beauty of the horses, and the refined brilliancy of the company around her, but more than all was she struck by the change that had taken place in her old friend, her dearly beloved Anna.

Any other woman, less observant, and unacquainted with Anna in days gone by, and especially any one who had not been under the sway of such thoughts as had occupied Darya Aleksandrovna on the way, would not have noticed anything peculiar about Anna. But now Darya Aleksandrovna was struck by the transient beauty characteristic of women when they are under the influence of love, and which she detected now in Anna's face. Everything about her face was extraordinarily fascinating: the well-defined dimples in her cheeks and chin, the curve of her lips, the smile, which, as it were, flitted over her features, the gleam in her eyes, the gracefulness and quickness of her movements, the richness in the tones of her voice, even the manner with which she, with a sort of sternly affectionate manner, replied to Veslovsky, who had asked permission to ride her cob so as to teach it to gallop by a pressure of the leg. It seemed as if she herself was aware of this, and rejoiced in it.

When the two ladies were seated together in the calash, they both suddenly felt a sense of constraint. Anna was confused at the scrutinizingly questioning look which Dolly fixed on her, and Dolly because she could