CHAPTER 18

STIVA AND DOLLY soon emerged, their Class IIIs scuttling noisily behind them like happy children, and both Kitty and Anna could tell that a reconciliation had taken place. The whole evening Dolly was, as always, a little mocking in her tone to her husband, while Stepan Arkadyich was happy and cheerful, but not so as to seem as though, having been forgiven, he had forgotten his offense.

At half past nine o’clock a particularly joyful and pleasant family conversation over the tea table at the Oblonskys’ was broken up by an apparently simple incident. But this simple incident for some reason struck everyone as strange. Anna had gone upstairs with her light, resolute step to retrieve a favorite polishing cloth from her valise, so that she might give Android Karenina’s monitor a sheen before displaying Memories of her Sergey. The stairs up to her room came out on the landing of the great warm main staircase.

Just as she was leaving the drawing room, the I/Doorchime/6’s tinkling greeting was heard in the hall.

“Who can that be?” said Dolly.

“It’s early for me to be fetched, and for anyone else it’s late,” observed Kitty.

“Sure to be someone from the Ministry for me,” put in Stepan Arkadyich. When Anna was passing the top of the staircase, a Class II was buzzing up to announce the visitor, while the visitor himself was standing under a lamp. Anna glancing down at once recognized Vronsky, for the crackle of the hot-whip and the twin bulges of the smokers were unmistakable. A strange feeling of pleasure and at the same time dread of something stirred in her heart; as she looked at Count Vronsky, she remembered with a kind of violence in her head the tremendous BOOM that had rent the sky at the Grav station, when last they had met.

Vronsky was standing still, not taking off his gleaming silver outer-coat, pulling something out of his pocket. At the instant when she was just facing the stairs, he raised his eyes, caught sight of her, and in the expression of his face there passed a shade of embarrassment and dismay. With a slight inclination of her head she passed, hearing behind her Stepan Arkadyich’s loud voice calling him to come up, and the quiet, soft, and composed voice of Vronsky refusing.

By the time Anna rejoined the group, he was already gone, and Stepan Arkadyich was telling them that he had called to inquire about the dinner they were giving the next day for a celebrated engineer who had just arrived. “And nothing would induce him to come up. What a queer fellow he is!” added Stepan Arkadyich.

Kitty blushed. She thought that she was the only person who knew why he had come, and why he would not come up. He has been at home, she thought, and didn’t find me, and thought I should be here, but he did not come up because he thought it late, and Anna’s here.

All then turned their attention to Android Karenina’s monitor, where Anna’s Memories of handsome young Sergey were sequentially displayed.