Android Karenina

“No, he understands, he understood!” Dolly broke in. “But I… you are forgetting me… does it make it easier for me?”

A

“I know more of the world than you do,” she said. “I know how men like Stiva look at it. They project a sort of electric barrier that can’t be crossed between them and their families. I don’t understand it, but it is so.”

“Yes, but he has kissed her…”

“Dolly, hush, darling. I saw Stiva when he was in love with you. I remember the time when he came to me and cried, talking of you, and all the wild oscillations of his heart for you, and I know that the longer he has lived with you the loftier you have been in his eyes. You know we have sometimes laughed at him for putting in at every word:’Dolly’s a marvelous woman.’ You have always been a divinity for him, and you are that still, and this has not been an infidelity of the heart…”

“But if it is repeated?”

“It ca

“Yes, but could you forgive it?”

“I don’t know, I can’t judge… Yes, I can,” said A

“Oh, of course,” Dolly interposed quickly, as though saying what she had more than once thought, “else it would not be forgiveness. If one forgives, it must be completely, completely. Come, let us go; I’ll take you to your room,” she said, getting up to flick Dolichka back to life, while A

“My dear, how glad I am you came,” Dolly said, and then offered a polite bow to Android Karenina, who tilted her head with kindness in place of a smile. “That both of you came. It has made things better, ever so much better.”

CHAPTER 17

THE WHOLE OF THAT DAY ANNA and Android Karemna spent at the Oblonskys’, and received no one, though some of A

Oblonsky did dine at home: the conversation was general, and his wife, speaking to him, addressed him as “Stiva,” as she had not done before. In the relations of the husband and wife the same estrangement still remained, but there was no talk now of separation, and Stepan Arkadyich saw the possibility of explanation and reconciliation. Small Stiva, while attending as usual to his master, once dared to flash the red eye-shapes of his frontal display flirtatiously at Dolichka, who turned away but did not swat him.

Immediately after di

After di

“Stiva,” she said to him, winking gaily, crossing him and glancing toward the door, “go, and God help you.”

He chucked the cigar into Small Stiva’s core, where it was consumed, winked back at his sister, and departed through the doorway.

“And when is your next float?” A

“Next week, and a splendid float it shall be! Finally I am considered a woman, old enough to receive my very own Class III at last.”

“My congratulations,” murmured A

“Yes,” Kitty added brightly. “I feel it will be one of those floats where one always enjoys oneself.”

“For me there are no floats now where one enjoys oneself,” said A

“How can you be dull at a float?”

“Why should I not be dull at a float?” inquired A

“Because you always look nicer than anyone.”

A

“Are you coming to this float?” Kitty asked. “I shall be so glad if you go. I should so like to see you dancing.”

“Anyway, if I do go, I shall comfort myself with the thought that it’s a pleasure to you.”

“I imagine your android at the ball glowing with a lilac hue,” Kitty said, daring a quick glance at Android Karenina, who had her faceplate turned toward the window, gazing it seemed at the Eye in the Tower, in its slow, eternal revolution.

“And why lilac precisely?” asked A

“How do you know? Yes.”

“Oh! What a happy time you are at,” pursued A

Kitty smiled without speaking. But how did she go through it? How I should like to know all her love story! thought Kitty, recalling the foreboding, unromantic appearance of Alexei Alexandrovich, her husband.

“I know something. Stiva told me, and I congratulate you. I liked him so much,” A

“Oh, was he there?” asked Kitty, blushing. “What was it Stiva told you?”

“Stiva gossiped about it all. I traveled yesterday with Vronsky’s mother,” she went on, “and his mother talked without a pause of him; he’s her favorite. I know mothers are partial, but…”

“What did his mother tell you?”

“Oh, a great deal! And I know that he’s her favorite; still one can see how chivalrous he is… Well, for instance, she told me that he has served in the Border Wars, and is now with a regiment hunting UnConSciya operatives. He has destroyed many koschei, saving many lives. He’s a hero, in fact,” said A