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feet; and the thick rolls of fair chignon kept up on her head as
if they were her own hair. All the three buttons buttoned up
without tearing on the long glove that covered her hand without
concealing its lines. The black velvet of her locket nestled
with special softness round her neck. That velvet was delicious;
at home, looking at her neck in the looking glass, Kitty had felt
that that velvet was speaking. About all the rest there might be
a doubt, but the velvet was delicious. Kitty smiled here too, at
the ball, when she glanced at it in the glass. Her bare
shoulders and arms gave Kitty a sense of chill marble, a feeling
she particularly liked. Her eyes sparkled, and her rosy lips
could not keep from smiling from the consciousness of her own
attractiveness. 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. He had only just left the
Countess Bonina, with whom he had danced the first half of the
waltz, and, scanning his kingdom--that is to say, a few couples
who had started dancing--he caught sight of Kitty, entering, and
flew up to her with that peculiar, easy amble which is confined
to directors of balls. Without even asking her if she cared to
dance, he put out his arm to encircle her slender waist. She
looked round for someone to give her fan to, and their hostess,
smiling to her, took it.
"How nice you've come in good time," he said to her, embracing
her waist; "such a bad habit to be late." Bending her left hand,
she laid it on his shoulder, and her little feet in their pink
slippers began swiftly, lightly, and rhythmically moving over the
slippery floor in time to the music.
"It's a rest to waltz with you," he said to her, as they fell
into the first slow steps of the waltz. "It's exquisite--such
lightness, precision." He said to her the same thing he said to
almost all his partners whom he knew well.
She smiled at his praise, and continued to look about the room
over his shoulder. She was not like a girl at her first ball,
for whom all faces in the ballroom melt into one vision of
fairyland. And she was not a girl who had gone the stale round
of balls till every face in the ballroom was familiar and
tiresome. But she was in the middle stage between these two; she
was excited, and at the same time she had sufficient
self-possession to be able to observe. In the left corner of the
ballroom she saw the cream of society gathered together.
There--incredibly naked--was the beauty Lidi, Korsunsky's wife;
there was the lady of the house; there shone the bald head of
Krivin, always to be found where the best people were. In that
direction gazed the young men, not venturing to approach. There,
too, she descried Stiva, and there she saw the exquisite figure
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