“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.”

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.

Kitty danced in the first couple, and luckily for her she had not to talk, because Korsunsky was all the time running about directing the figure.  Vronsky and Anna sat almost opposite her.  She saw them with her long-sighted eyes, and saw them, too, close by, when they met in the figures, and the more she saw of them the more convinced was she that her unhappiness was complete.  She saw that they felt themselves alone in that crowded room.  And on Vronsky’s face, always so firm and independent, she saw that look that had struck her, of bewilderment and humble submissiveness, like the expression of an intelligent dog when it has done wrong.

Anna smiled, and her smile was reflected by him.  She grew thoughtful, and he became serious.  Some supernatural force drew Kitty’s eyes to Anna’s face.  She was fascinating in her simple black dress, fascinating were her round arms with their bracelets, fascinating was her firm neck with its thread of pearls, fascinating the straying curls of her loose hair, fascinating the graceful, light movements of her little feet and hands, fascinating was that lovely face in its eagerness, but there was something terrible and cruel in her fascination.

Kitty admired her more than ever, and more and more acute was her suffering.  Kitty felt overwhelmed, and her face showed it.  When Vronsky saw her, coming across her in the mazurka, he did not at once recognize her, she was so changed.

“Delightful ball!” he said to her, for the sake of saying something.

“Yes,” she answered.

In the middle of the mazurka, repeating a complicated figure, newly invented by Korsunsky, Anna came forward into the center of the circle, chose two gentlemen, and summoned a lady and Kitty.  Kitty gazed at her in dismay as she went up.  Anna looked at her with drooping eyelids, and smiled, pressing her hand.  But, noticing that Kitty only responded to her smile by a look of despair and amazement, she turned away from her, and began gaily talking to the other lady.