“But he didn’t disdain it; I believe he cared for me, but he was a dutiful son...”

“Yes, but if it hadn’t been on account of his mother, if it had been his own doing?...” said Kitty, feeling she was giving away her secret, and that her face, burning with the flush of shame, had betrayed her already.

“In that case he would have done wrong, and I should not have regretted him,” answered Varenka, evidently realizing that they were now talking not of her, but of Kitty.

“But the humiliation,” said Kitty, “the humiliation one can never forget, can never forget,” she said, remembering her look at the last ball during the pause in the music.

“Where is the humiliation? Why, you did nothing wrong?”