“Yes, there is something uncanny, devilish and fascinating in her,” Kitty said to herself.

Anna did not mean to stay to supper, but the master of the house began to press her to do so.

“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.

“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.”

“Are you certainly going tomorrow then?” asked Vronsky.

“Yes, I suppose so,” answered Anna, as it were wondering at the boldness of his question; but the irrepressible, quivering brilliance of her eyes and her smile set him on fire as she said it.

Anna Arkadyevna did not stay to supper, but went home.

Chapter 24

“Yes, there is something in me hateful, repulsive,” thought Levin, as he came away from the Shtcherbatskys’, and walked in the direction of his brother’s lodgings.  “And I don’t get on with other people.  Pride, they say.  No, I have no pride.  If I had any pride, I should not have put myself in such a position.”  And he pictured to himself Vronsky, happy, good-natured, clever, and self-possessed, certainly never placed in the awful position in which he had been that evening.  “Yes, she was bound to choose him.  So it had to be, and I cannot complain of anyone or anything.  I am myself to blame.  What right had I to imagine she would care to join her life to mine?  Who am I and what am I?  A nobody, not wanted by any one, nor of use to anybody.”  And he recalled his brother Nikolay, and dwelt with pleasure on the thought of him.  “Isn’t he right that everything in the world is base and loathsome?  And are we fair in our judgment of brother Nikolay?  Of course, from the point of view of Prokofy, seeing him in a torn cloak and tipsy, he’s a despicable person.  But I know him differently.  I know his soul, and know that we are like him.  And I, instead of going to seek him out, went out to dinner, and came here.”  Levin walked up to a lamppost, read his brother’s address, which was in his pocketbook, and called a sledge.  All the long way to his brother’s, Levin vividly recalled all the facts familiar to him of his brother Nikolay’s life.  He remembered how his brother, while at the university, and for a year afterwards, had, in spite of the jeers of his companions, lived like a monk, strictly observing all religious rites, services, and fasts, and avoiding every sort of pleasure,