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There, too, she descried Stiva, and there she saw the exquisite figure and head of Anna in a black velvet gown. And he was there. Kitty had not seen him since the evening she refused Levin. With her long-sighted eyes, she knew him at once, and was even aware that he was looking at her. "Another turn, eh? You're not tired?" said Korsunsky, a little out of breath. "No, thank you!"
Divide yourselves, therefore, into three divisions, and take up your posts before the three gates; five kurens before the principal gate, and three kurens before each of the others. Let the Dadikivsky and Korsunsky kurens go into ambush and Taras and his men into ambush too.
Kitty looked into his face, which was so close to her own, and long afterwards for several years after that look, full of love, to which he made no response, cut her to the heart with an agony of shame. "Pardon! pardon! Waltz! waltz!" shouted Korsunsky from the other side of the room, and seizing the first young lady he came across he began dancing himself.
And not assisting the harassed young man she was dancing with in the conversation, the thread of which he had lost and could not pick up again, she obeyed with external liveliness the peremptory shouts of Korsunsky starting them all into the grand rond, and then into the châine, and at the same time she kept watch with a growing pang at her heart.
With a flying, feminine glance she scanned her attire, and made a movement of her head, hardly perceptible, but understood by Kitty, signifying approval of her dress and her looks. "You came into the room dancing," she added. "This is one of my most faithful supporters," said Korsunsky, bowing to Anna Arkadyevna, whom he had not yet seen. "The princess helps to make balls happy and successful.
"No, I am not going to stay," answered Anna, smiling, but in spite of her smile, both Korsunsky and the master of the house saw from her resolute tone that she would not stay. "No; why, as it is, I have danced more at your ball in Moscow than I have all the winter in Petersburg," said Anna, looking round at Vronsky, who stood near her. "I must rest a little before my journey."
Anna Arkadyevna, a waltz?" he said, bending down to her. "Why, have you met?" inquired their host. "Is there anyone we have not met? My wife and I are like white wolves everyone knows us," answered Korsunsky. "A waltz, Anna Arkadyevna?" "I don't dance when it's possible not to dance," she said. "But tonight it's impossible," answered Korsunsky. At that instant Vronsky came up.
"Nonsense, Anna Arkadyevna," said Korsunsky, drawing her bare arm under the sleeve of his dress coat, "I've such an idea for a cotillion! Un bijou!" And he moved gradually on, trying to draw her along with him. Their host smiled approvingly.
She had scarcely entered the ballroom and reached the throng of ladies, all tulle, ribbons, lace, and flowers, waiting to be asked to dance Kitty was never one of that throng when she was asked for a waltz, and asked by the best partner, the first star in the hierarchy of the ballroom, a renowned director of dances, a married man, handsome and well-built, Yegorushka Korsunsky.
No one but she herself understood her position; no one knew that she had just refused the man whom perhaps she loved, and refused him because she had put her faith in another. Countess Nordston found Korsunsky, with whom she was to dance the mazurka, and told him to ask Kitty.
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