Don Quixote

lips could not
help but smile from the consciousness of their own attractiveness. She
had scarcely entered the ballroom and reached the
tulle-ribbon-lace-colored throng of ladies, 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 conductor of the dances and
master of ceremonies, married man, handsome and well built, Iegorushka
Korsunsky. He had only just left the Countess Banina, with whom he had
danced the first turn of the waltz, and, scanning his demesne- 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 conductors of the dances. Bowing and 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 good of you to come in good time," he said to her, embracing
her waist; "such a bad habit to be late."
{PART_ONE|CHAPTER_XXII ^paragraph 5}
Bending her left arm, 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 charming- 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 very flower of society grouped together.
There- impossibly naked- was the beauty Liddy, Korsunsky's wife; there
was the lady of the house; there shone the bald pate of Krivin, always
to be found wherever 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 charming figure and head of Anna in a
black velvet gown. And he was there. Kitty had not seen him since
the evening she refused Levin. With her farsighted eyes, knew him at
once, and was even aware that he was looking at her.
"Another turn, eh? You're not tired?" said Korsunsky, a little out
of breath.
"No, thank you!"
{PART_ONE|CHAPTER_XXII ^paragraph