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"How silly men are, though, in this position," he said to Tchirikov, when Levin, after looking absently at him, had moved back to his bride. "Kitty, mind you're the first to step on the carpet," said Countess Nordston, coming up. "You're a nice person!" she said to Levin. "Aren't you frightened, eh?" said Marya Dmitrievna, an old aunt. "Are you cold? You're pale.
Five minutes later there came in a friend of Kitty's, married the preceding winter, Countess Nordston. She was a thin, sallow, sickly, and nervous woman, with brilliant black eyes.
Vronsky and Kitty waltzed several times round the room. After the first waltz Kitty went to her mother, and she had hardly time to say a few words to Countess Nordston when Vronsky came up again for the first quadrille.
Kitty's lower lip began to quiver; she got up quickly. "Kitty, you're not dancing the mazurka?" "No, no," said Kitty in a voice shaking with tears. "He asked her for the mazurka before me," said Countess Nordston, knowing Kitty would understand who were "he" and "her." "She said: 'Why, aren't you going to dance it with Princess Shtcherbatskaya?" "Oh, I don't care!" answered Kitty.
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.
Levin wanted to, and could not, take part in the general conversation; saying to himself every instant, "Now go," he still did not go, as though waiting for something. The conversation fell upon table-turning and spirits, and Countess Nordston, who believed in spiritualism, began to describe the marvels she had seen. "Ah, countess, you really must take me, for pity's sake do take me to see them!
But while she looked like a butterfly, clinging to a blade of grass, and just about to open its rainbow wings for fresh flight, her heart ached with a horrible despair. "But perhaps I am wrong, perhaps it was not so?" And again she recalled all she had seen. "Kitty, what is it?" said Countess Nordston, stepping noiselessly over the carpet towards her. "I don't understand it."
"I think," he went on, "that this attempt of the spiritualists to explain their marvels as some sort of new natural force is most futile. They boldly talk of spiritual force, and then try to subject it to material experiment." Every one was waiting for him to finish, and he felt it. "And I think you would be a first-rate medium," said Countess Nordston; "there's something enthusiastic in you."
When Countess Nordston ventured to hint that she had hoped for something better, Kitty was so angry and proved so conclusively that nothing in the world could be better than Levin, that Countess Nordston had to admit it, and in Kitty's presence never met Levin without a smile of ecstatic admiration. The confession he had promised was the one painful incident of this time.
Vronsky looked wonderingly at the prince with his resolute eyes, and, with a faint smile, began immediately talking to Countess Nordston of the great ball that was to come off next week. "I hope you will be there?" he said to Kitty.
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