youth: before Kitty knew where she was she found herself not
merely under Anna's sway, but in love with her, as young girls do
fall in love with older and married women. Anna was not like a
fashionable lady, nor the mother of a boy of eight years old. In
the elasticity of her movements, the freshness and the unflagging
eagerness which persisted in her face, and broke out in her smile
and her glance, she would rather have passed for a girl of
twenty, had it not been for a serious and at times mournful look
in her eyes, which struck and attracted Kitty. Kitty felt that
Anna was perfectly simple and was concealing nothing, but that
she had another higher world of interests inaccessible to her,
complex and poetic.

After dinner, when Dolly went away to her own room, Anna rose
quickly and went up to her brother, who was just lighting a
cigar.

"Stiva," she said to him, winking gaily, crossing him and
glancing towards the door, "go, and God help you."

He threw down the cigar, understanding her, and departed through
the doorway.

When Stepan Arkadyevitch had disappeared, she went back to the
sofa where she had been sitting, surrounded by the children.
Either because the children saw that their mother was fond of
this aunt, or that they felt a special charm in her themselves,
the two elder ones, and the younger following their lead, as
children so often do, had clung about their new aunt since
before dinner, and would not leave her side. And it had become a
sort of game among them to sit a close as possible to their aunt,
to touch her, hold her little hand, kiss it, play with her ring,
or even touch the flounce of her skirt.

"Come, come, as we were sitting before," said Anna Arkadyevna,
sitting down in her place.

And again Grisha poked his little face under her arm, and nestled
with his head on her gown, beaming with pride and happiness.

"And when is your next ball?" she asked Kitty.

"Next week, and a splendid ball. One of those balls where one
always enjoys oneself."

"Why, are there balls where one always enjoys oneself?" Anna
said, with tender irony.

"It's strange, but there are. At the Bobrishtchevs' one always
enjoys oneself, and at the Nikitins' too, while at the Mezhkovs'
it's always dull. Haven't you noticed it?"

"No, my dear, for me there are no balls now where one enjoys
oneself," said Anna, and Kitty detected in her eyes that
mysterious world which was not open to her. "For me there a