Anna Karenina

was a wet day; it had been raining all the morning, and the
invalids, with their parasols, had flocked into the arcades.

Kitty was walking there with her mother and the Moscow colonel, smart
and jaunty in his European coat, bought ready-made at Frankfort. They
were walking on one side of the arcade, trying to avoid Levin, who was
walking on the other side. Varenka, in her dark dress, in a black hat
with a turn-down brim, was walking up and down the whole length of the
arcade with a blind Frenchwoman, and, every time she met Kitty, they
exchanged friendly glances.

“Mamma, couldn’t I speak to her?” said Kitty, watching her unknown
friend, and noticing that she was going up to the spring, and that they
might come there together.

“Oh, if you want to so much, I’ll find out about her first and make her
acquaintance myself,” answered her mother. “What do you see in her out
of the way? A companion, she must be. If you like, I’ll make
acquaintance with Madame Stahl; I used to know her belle-sœur,” added
the princess, lifting her head haughtily.

Kitty knew that the princess was offended that Madame Stahl had seemed
to avoid making her acquaintance. Kitty did not insist.

“How wonderfully sweet she is!” she said, gazing at Varenka just as she
handed a glass to the Frenchwoman. “Look how natural and sweet it all
is.”

“It’s so funny to see your engouements,” said the princess. “No, we’d
better go back,” she added, noticing Levin coming towards them with his
companion and a German doctor, to whom he was talking very noisily and
angrily.

They turned to go back, when suddenly they heard, not noisy talk, but
shouting. Levin, stopping short, was shouting at the doctor, and the
doctor, too, was excited. A crowd gathered about them. The princess and
Kitty beat a hasty retreat, while the colonel joined the crowd to find
out what was the matter.

A few minutes later the colonel overtook them.

“What was it?” inquired the princess.

“Scandalous and disgraceful!” answered the colonel. “The one thing to
be dreaded is meeting Russians abroad. That tall gentleman was abusing
the doctor, flinging all sorts of insults at him because he wasn’t
treating him quite as he liked, and he began waving his stick at him.
It’s simply a scandal!”

“Oh, how unpleasant!” said the princess. “Well, and how did it end?”

“Luckily at that point that ... the one in the mushroom hat ...
intervened. A Russian lady, I think she is,” said the colonel.

“Mademoiselle Varenka?” asked Kitty.

“Yes, yes. She came to the rescue before anyone; she took the man by
the arm and led him away.”

“There, mamma,” said Kitty; “you wonder that I’m enthusiastic about
her.”

The next day, as she watched her unknown friend, Kitty noticed that
Mademoiselle Varenka was already on the same terms with Levin and his
companion as with her other protégés. She went up to them, entered
into conversation with them, and served as interpreter for the woman,
who could not speak any foreign language.

Kitty began to entreat her mother still more urgently to let her make
friends with Varenka. And, disagreeable as it was to the princess to
seem to take the first step in wishing to make the acquaintance of
Madame Stahl, who thought fit to give herself airs, she made inquiries
about Varenka, and, having ascertained particulars about her tending to
prove that there could be no harm though little good in the
acquaintance, she herself approached Varenka and made acquaintance with
her.

Choosing a time when her daughter had gone to the spring, while Varenka
had stopped outside the baker’s, the princess went up to her.

“Allow me to make your acquaintance,” she said, with her dignified
smile. “My daughter has lost her heart to you,” she said. “Possibly you
do not know me. I am....”

“That feeling is more than reciprocal, princess,” Varenka answered
hurriedly.

“What a good deed you did yesterday to our poor compatriot!” said the
princess.

Varenka flushed a little. “I don’t remember. I don’t think I did
anything,” she said.

“Why, you saved that Levin from disagreeable consequences.”

“Yes, sa compagne called me, and I tried to pacify him, he’s very
ill, and was dissatisfied with the doctor. I’m used to looking after
such invalids.”

“Yes, I’ve heard you live at Mentone with your aunt—I think—Madame
Stahl: I used to know her belle-sœur.”

“No, she’s not my aunt. I call her mamma, but I am not related to her;
I was brought up by her,” answered Varenka, flushing a little again.

This was so simply said, and so sweet was the truthful and candid
expression of her face, that the princess saw why Kitty had taken such
a fancy to Varenka.

“Well, and what’s this Levin going to do?” asked the princess.

“He’s going away,” answered Varenka.

At that instant Kitty came up from the spring beaming with delight that
her mother had become acquainted with her unknown friend.

“Well, see, Kitty, your intense desire to make friends with
Mademoiselle....”

“Varenka,” Varenka put in smiling, “that’s what everyone calls me.”

Kitty blushed with pleasure, and slowly, without speaking, pressed her
new friend’s hand, which did not respond to her pressure, but lay
motionless in her hand. The hand did not respond to her pressure, but
the face of Mademoiselle Varenka glowed with a soft, glad, though
rather mournful smile, that showed large but handsome teeth.

“I have long wished for this too,” she said.

“But you are so busy.”

“Oh, no, I’m not at all busy,” answered Varenka, but at that moment she
had to leave her new friends because two little Russian girls, children
of an invalid, ran up to her.

“Varenka, mamma’s calling!” they cried.

And Varenka went after them.