He flushed slightly, and hurriedly asked her to waltz, but he had only just put his arm round her waist and taken the first step when the music suddenly stopped.

Kitty looked into his face, which was so close to her own, and long afterwards--for several years after--that look, full of love, to which he made no response, cut her to the heart with an agony of shame.

"_Pardon! pardon!_ Waltz! waltz!" shouted Korsunsky from the other side of the room, and seizing the first young lady he came across he began dancing himself.

Vronsky and Kitty waltzed several times round the room.

After the first waltz Kitty went to her mother, and she had hardly time to say a few words to Countess Nordston when Vronsky came up again for the first quadrille.