Anna in black velvet

Kitty and her mother climb the lighted staircase past powdered footmen in red liveries. It is one of Kitty's happy days: nothing pinches, nothing slips, and the black velvet ribbon at her neck is, she is certain, eloquent. Korsunsky, the dirigeur, takes her for the waltz without asking. Across the room the élite are grouped, and among them Anna — not in lilac as Kitty had imagined but in low-necked black velvet with Venetian lace, a garland of pansies in her own black hair and pearls at her throat, her dress serving only as a frame. Kitty sees her charm fully for the first time. Anna approves her dress with a movement of the head and says, 'You even come into the room dancing.' Vronsky approaches; Anna takes no notice of his bow and goes off to waltz with Korsunsky. He asks Kitty only belatedly, and the look of love she gives him meets no response.

Tolstoy spends a page on Kitty's dress so that the black velvet can annihilate it in a sentence. The chapter's device is the inventory: catalogue everything Kitty has done to be seen, then show a woman who is seen without having done anything. The one look Kitty gives Vronsky is dated forward — 'for years after' — before the ball has even turned.