APDL Eductation Resources/APDL Eductation Resources.iso/text/authors/tolstoy/annakareni/ANNA_K_1

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                         1870

                     ANNA KARENINA

                     by Leo Tolstoy

             translated by Constance Garnett

                        PART ONE


              Vengeance is mine; I will repay


                           I.


Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its
own way.

Everything was in confusion in the Oblonskys' house. The wife had
discovered that the husband was carrying on an intrigue with a
French girl, who had been a governess in their family, and she had
announced to her husband that she could not go on living in the same
house with him. This position of affairs had now lasted two days,
and not only the husband and wife themselves, but all the members of
their family and the household, were painfully conscious of it. All
the members of the family and the household felt that there was no
sense in their living together, and that even stray people brought
together by chance in any inn had more in common with one another than
they, the members of the family and the household of the Oblonskys.
The wife did not leave her own apartments; the husband had not been
home for two days. The children ran wild all over the house; the
English governess quarreled with the housekeeper, and wrote to a
friend asking her to look out for a new employ for her; the man cook
had walked off the day before just at dinnertime; the kitchenmaid
and the coachman had given warning.

Two days after the quarrel, Prince Stepan Arkadyevich Oblonsky-
Stiva, as he was called in the fashionable world- woke up at his usual
hour, that is, at eight o'clock in the morning, not in his wife's
bedroom, but on the leather-covered sofa in his study. He turned
over his stout, well-cared-for person on the springy sofa, as though
he would sink into a long sleep again; he vigorously embraced the
pillow on its other side and buried his face in it; but all at once he
jumped up, sat up on the sofa, and opened his eyes.

"Yes, yes, how was it now?" he thought, going over his dream.
"Yes, how was it? Yes! Alabin was giving a dinner at Darmstadt; no,
not Darmstadt, but something American. Yes, but then, Darmstadt was in
America. Yes, Alabin was giving a dinner on glass tables, and the
tables sang, Il mio tesoro- no, not Il mio tesoro, but something
better, and there were some sort of little decanters on the table,
and, at the same time, these decanters were women," he recalled.

Stepan Arkadyevich's eyes twinkled gaily, and he pondered with a
smile. "Yes, it was jolly, very jolly. There was a great deal more
that was delightful, only there's no putting it into words, or even
expressing it in one's waking thoughts." And noticing a gleam of light
peeping in beside one of the woolen-cloth curtains, he cheerfully
dropped his feet over the edge of the sofa and felt about with them
for his slippers, a present on his last birthday, worked for him by
his wife on gold-colored morocco. And, as he used to do for the last
nine years, he stretched out his hand, without getting up, toward
the place where his dressing gown always hung in the bedroom. And
thereupon he suddenly remembered that he was not sleeping in his
wife's room, but in his study, as well as the reason; the smile
vanished from his face and he knit his brows.

"Ah, ah, ah! Oo!..." he muttered, recalling everything that had
happened. And again every detail of his quarrel with his wife was
present to his imagination, all the hopelessness of his position, and,
worst of all, his own fault.

"Yes, she won't forgive me, and she can't forgive me. And the most
awful thing about it is that it's all my fault- all my fault, though
I'm not to blame. That's the point of the whole tragedy," he
reflected. "Oh, oh, oh!" he kept repeating in despair, as he
remembered the acutely painful sensations caused him by this quarrel.

Most unpleasant of all was the first minute when, on coming from the
theater, good-humored and lighthearted, with a huge pear in his hand
for his wife, he had not found his wife in the drawing room, to his
surprise, nor in the study, but saw her at last in her bedroom,
clutching the unlucky letter that revealed everything.

She, his Dolly, forever fussing and worrying over household details,
and limited in her ideas, as he considered, was sitting motionless
with the letter in her hand, looking at him with an expression of
horror, despair and indignation.

"What is this? This?" she asked, pointing to the letter.

And at this recollection, Stepan Arkadyevich, as is so often the
case, was not so much annoyed at the fact itself as at the way in
which he had met his wife's words.

There happened to him at that instant that which happens to people
when they are unexpectedly caught in something very disgraceful. He
did not succeed in adapting his face to the situation in which he
was placed toward his wife by the discovery of his fault. Instead of
being hurt, denying, defending himself, begging forgiveness; instead
of remaining indifferent even- anything would have been better than
what he did do- his face utterly without his volition ("cerebral
reflexes," mused Stepan Arkadyevich, who was fond of physiology) had
assumed its habitual good-humored, and therefore stupid, smile.

This stupid smile he could not forgive himself. Catching sight of
that smile Dolly shuddered as though from physical pain, broke out
with her characteristic heat into a flood of cruel words, and rushed
out of the room. Since then she had refused to see her husband.

"It's all the fault of that stupid smile," Stepan Arkadyevich was
thinking.

"But what's to be done? What's to be done?" he kept saying to
himself in despair- and found no answer.

                           II.


Stepan Arkadyevich was a truthful man in his relations with himself.
He was incapable of self-deception and of persuading himself that he
repented his conduct. He could not at this date repent the fact that
he, handsome, susceptible to love, a man of thirty-four, was not in
love with his wife, the mother of five living and two dead children,
and only a year younger than himself. All he repented was that he
had not succeeded better in hiding this from his wife. But he felt all
the difficulty of his position and was sorry for his wife, his
children, and himself. Possibly he might have managed to conceal his
sins better from his wife if he had anticipated that the knowledge
of them would have had such an effect upon her. He had never clearly
reflected on the subject, but he had vaguely conceived that his wife
must long ago have suspected him of being unfaithful to her, and had
shut her eyes to the fact. He had even supposed that she, a worn-out
woman no longer young or good-looking, and in no way remarkable or
uncommon- merely a good mother- ought from a sense of fairness to take
an indulgent view. It had turned out quite the other way.

"Oh, it's awful! Oh dear, oh dear! Awful!" Stepan Arkadyevich kept
repeating to himself, and he could think of nothing to be done. "And
how well things were going up till now! How well we got on! She was
contented and happy in her children; I never interfered with her in
anything; I let her manage the children and the house just as she
liked. True, it's bad her having been a governess in our house. That's
bad! There's something common, vulgar, in flirting with one's
governess. But what a governess!" (He vividly recalled the roguish
black eyes of Mlle. Roland and her smile.) "But after all, while she
was in the house, I kept myself in hand. And the worst of it all is
that she's already... It seems as if ill luck would have it so! Oh,
oh! But what, what is to be done?"

There was no solution, save that universal solution which life gives
to all questions, even the most complex and insolvable: One must
live in the needs of the day- that is, forget oneself. To forget
himself in sleep was impossible now, at least till nighttime; he could
not go back now to the music sung by the decanter women; so he must
forget himself in the dream of daily life.

"Then we shall see," Stepan Arkadyevich said to himself, and getting
up he put on a gray dressing gown lined with blue silk, tied the
tassels in a knot, and, drawing a deep breath of air into his broad
chest, he walked to the window with his usual confident step,
turning out his feet that carried his full frame so easily. He
pulled up the blind and rang the bell loudly. It was at once
answered by the appearance of an old friend, his valet, Matvei,
carrying his clothes, his boots and a telegram. Matvei was followed by
the barber with all the necessaries for shaving.

"Are there any papers from the board?" asked Stepan Arkadyevich,
taking the telegram and seating himself at the looking glass.

"On the table," replied Matvei, glancing with inquiring sympathy
at his master; and, after a short pause, he added with a sly smile:

"They've sent from the carriage jobber."

Stepan Arkadyevich made no reply, but merely glanced at Matvei in
the looking glass. The glance, in which their eyes met in the
looking glass, made it clear that they understood one another.
Stepan Arkadyevich's eyes seemed to ask: "Why do you tell me that?
Don't you know?"

Matvei put his hands in his jacket pockets, thrust out one leg,
and gazed silently, with a good-humored, faint smile, at his master.

"I told them to come on Sunday, and till then not to trouble you
or themselves for nothing," he said. He had obviously prepared the
sentence beforehand.

Stepan Arkadyevich saw Matvei wanted to make a joke and attract
attention to himself. Tearing open the telegram, he read it through,
guessing at the words, misspelled as they always are in telegrams, and
his face brightened.

"Matvei, my sister Anna Arkadyevna will be here tomorrow," he
said, checking for a minute the sleek, plump hand of the barber,
cutting a pink path between his long, curly side whiskers.

"Thank God!" said Matvei, showing by this response that he, like his
master, realized the significance of this arrival: Anna Arkadyevna,
the sister his master was so fond of, might bring about a
reconciliation between husband and wife.

"Alone, or with her husband?" inquired Matvei.

Stepan Arkadyevich could not answer, as the barber was at work on
his upper lip, and he raised one finger. Matvei nodded at the
looking glass.

"Alone. Is the room to be got ready upstairs?"

"Inform Darya Alexandrovna: where she orders."

"Darya Alexandrovna?" Matvei repeated, as though in doubt.

"Yes, inform her. Here, take the telegram; give it to her, and
then do what she tells you."

"You want to try it out," Matvei guessed, but only said: "Yes, sir."

Stepan Arkadyevich was already washed and combed and ready to be
dressed, when Matvei, stepping slowly in his creaky boots, came back
into the room with the telegram in his hand. The barber had gone.

"Darya Alexandrovna told me to inform you that she is going away.
'Let him'- that is you- 'do as he likes,'" he said, laughing only with
his eyes, and, putting his hands in his pockets, he watched his master
with his head on one side. Stepan Arkadyevich was silent a minute.
Then a good-humored and rather pitiful smile showed itself on his
handsome face.

"Eh, Matvei?" he said, shaking his head.

"Never mind, sir; everything will come round," said Matvei.

"Come round?"

"Just so, sir."

"Do you think so?- Who's there?" asked Stepan Arkadyevich, hearing
the rustle of a woman's dress at the door.

"It's I," said a firm, pleasant feminine voice, and the stern,
pockmarked face of Matriona Philimonovna, the nurse, was thrust in
at the door.

"Well, what's the matter, Matriosha?" queried Stepan Arkadyevich,
meeting her in the doorway.

Although Stepan Arkadyevich was completely in the wrong as regards
his wife, and was conscious of this himself, almost everyone in the
house (even the nurse, Darya Alexandrovna's chief ally) was on his
side.

"Well, what now?" he asked cheerlessly.

"Go to her, sir; own your fault again. Maybe God will aid you. She
is suffering so, it's pitiful to see her; and besides, everything in
the house is topsy-turvy. You must have pity, sir, on the children.
Beg her forgiveness, sir. There's no help for it! One must pay the
piper...."

"But she won't see me."

"You do your part. God is merciful; pray to God, sir- pray to God."

"Come, that'll do, you can go," said Stepan Arkadyevich, blushing
suddenly. "Well, now, let's dress," he turned to Matvei and resolutely
threw off his dressing gown.

Matvei was already holding up the shirt like a horse's collar,
and, blowing off some invisible speck, he slipped it with obvious
pleasure over the well-cared-for person of his master.

                           III.


When he was dressed, Stepan Arkadyevich sprinkled some scent on
himself, pulled down his shirt cuffs, distributed into his pockets his
cigarettes, pocketbook, matches and watch, with its double chain and
seals, and, shaking out his handkerchief, feeling himself clean,
fragrant, healthy and physically at ease, in spite of his
misfortune, he walked with a slight swing of each leg into the
dining room, where coffee was already waiting for him- and,
alongside of his cup, the letters and papers from the office.

He read the letters. One was very unpleasant, from a merchant who
was buying a forest on his wife's property. To sell this forest was
absolutely essential; but at present, until he was reconciled with his
wife, the subject could not be discussed. The most unpleasant thing of
all was that his pecuniary interests should in this way enter into the
question of his reconciliation with his wife. And the idea that he
might be led on by his interests, that he might seek a
reconciliation with his wife on account of the sale of the forest-
that idea hurt him.

When he had finished his letters, Stepan Arkadyevich moved the
office papers close to him, rapidly looked through two cases, made a
few notes with a big pencil, and, pushing away the papers, turned to
his coffee. Sipping it, he opened a still damp morning paper and began
to read it.

Stepan Arkadyevich took in and read a liberal paper, not an
extreme one, but one advocating the views held by the majority. And in
spite of the fact that science, art and politics had no special
interest for him, he firmly held those views on all these subjects
which were held by the majority and by his paper, and he only
changed them when the majority changed them- or, more strictly
speaking, he did not change them, but they imperceptibly changed of
themselves within him.

Stepan Arkadyevich had not chosen his political opinions or his
views- these political opinions and views had come to him of
themselves- just as he did not choose the shapes of his hat and
coat, but simply accepted those that were being worn. And for him,
living in a certain society- owing to the need, ordinarily developed
at years of discretion, for some degree of mental activity- to have
views was just as indispensable as to have a hat. If there was a
reason for his preferring liberal to conservative views, which were
held also by many of his circle, it arose not from his considering
liberalism more rational, but from its being in closer accordance with
his manner of life. The liberal party said that in Russia everything
was wrong, and indeed Stepan Arkadyevich had many debts and was
decidedly short of money. The liberal party said that marriage was
an institution quite out of date, and that it stood in need of
reconstruction, and indeed family life afforded Stepan Arkadyevich
little gratification, and forced him into lying and hypocrisy, which
were so repulsive to his nature. The liberal party said, or rather
allowed it to be understood, that religion was only a curb to keep
in check the barbarous classes of the people, and indeed Stepan
Arkadyevich could not stand through even a short service without his
legs aching, and could never make out what was the object of all the
terrible and high-flown language about another world when life might
be so very amusing in this world. And with all this Stepan
Arkadyevich, who liked a merry joke, was fond of embarrassing some
plain man by saying that if one were to pride oneself on one's origin,
one ought not to stop at Rurik and disown the founder of the line- the
monkey. And so liberalism had become a habit of Stepan Arkadyevich,
and he liked his newspaper, as he did his cigar after dinner, for
the slight fog it diffused in his brain. He read the leading
article, which maintained that it was quite senseless in our day to
raise an outcry that radicalism was threatening to swallow up all
conservative elements, and that the government ought to take
measures to crush the revolutionary hydra; that, on the contrary,
"in our opinion the danger lies not in that imaginary revolutionary
hydra, but in the obstinacy of traditionalism clogging progress,"
etc., etc. He read another article, too, a financial one, which
alluded to Bentham and Mill, and dropped some innuendoes reflecting on
the ministry. With his characteristic quick-wittedness he caught the
drift of each innuendo, divined whence it came, at whom and on what
ground it was aimed, and that afforded him, as it always did, a
certain gratification. But today that gratification was embittered
by Matriona Philimonovna's advice and the unsatisfactory state of
his household. He read, too, that Count Beist was rumored to have left
for Wiesbaden, and that one need have no more gray hair, and of the
sale of a light carriage, and of a young person seeking a situation;
but these items of information did not give him, as usual, a quiet,
ironical gratification.

Having finished the paper, a second cup of coffee and a roll and
butter, he got up, shaking the crumbs off his waistcoat; and, squaring
his broad chest, he smiled joyously; not because there was anything
particularly agreeable in his mind- the joyous smile was evoked by a
good digestion.

But this joyous smile at once recalled everything to him, and he
grew thoughtful.

Two childish voices (Stepan Arkadyevich recognized the voices of
Grisha, his youngest boy, and Tania, his eldest girl) were heard
outside the door. They were carrying something, and dropped it.

"I told you not to sit passengers on the roof," said the little girl
in English; "there, pick them up!"

"Everything's in confusion," thought Stepan Arkadyevich; "there
are the children running about by themselves." And going to the
door, he called them. They left off the box that represented a
train, and came in to their father.

The little girl, her father's favorite, ran up boldly, embraced
him and hung laughingly on his neck, enjoying as she always did the
well-known smell of scent that came from his whiskers. At last the
little girl kissed his face, which was flushed from his stooping
posture and beaming with tenderness, loosed her hands, and was about
to run away again; but her father held her back.

"How is mamma?" he asked, passing his hand over his daughter's
smooth, soft little neck. "Good morning," he said, smiling to the boy,
who had come up to greet him.

He was conscious that he loved the boy less, and always tried to
be fair; but the boy felt it, and did not smile responsively to his
father's chilly smile.

"Mamma? She is up," answered the girl.

Stepan Arkadyevich sighed.

"That means she hasn't slept again all night," he thought.

"Well, is she cheerful?"

The little girl knew that there was a quarrel between her father and
mother, and that her mother could not be cheerful, and that her father
must be aware of this, and that he was pretending when he asked
about it so lightly. And she blushed for her father. He at once
perceived it, and blushed too.

"I don't know," she said. "She did not say we must do our lessons,
but she said we were to go for a walk with Miss Hoole to
grandmamma's."

"Well, go, Tania, my darling. Oh, wait a minute, though," he said,
still holding her and stroking her soft little hand.

He took off the mantelpiece, where he had put it yesterday, a little
box of sweets, and gave her two, picking out her favorites, a
chocolate and a bonbon.

"For Grisha?" said the little girl, pointing to the chocolate.

"Yes, yes." And still stroking her little shoulder, he kissed the
nape of her neck, and let her go.

"The carriage is ready," said Matvei; "but there's someone to see
you with a petition."

"Been here long?" asked Stepan Arkadyevich.

"Half an hour or so."

"How many times have I told you to tell me at once?"

"One must let you drink your coffee in peace, at least," said
Matvei, in the affectionately gruff tone with which it was
impossible to be angry.

"Well, show the person up at once," said Oblonsky, frowning with
vexation.

The petitioner, the widow of a staff captain Kalinin, came with a
request impossible and unreasonable; but Stepan Arkadyevich, as he
generally did, made her sit down, heard her to the end attentively
without interrupting her, and gave her detailed advice as to how and
to whom to apply, and even wrote for her, easily and clearly, in his
large, sprawling calligraphic and legible hand, a little note to a
personage who might be of use to her. Having got rid of the staff
captain's widow, Stepan Arkadyevich took his hat and stopped to
recollect whether he had forgotten anything. It appeared that he had
forgotten nothing except what he wanted to forget- his wife.

"Ah, yes!" He bowed his head, and his handsome face assumed a
melancholy expression. "To go, or not to go?" he said to himself;
and an inner voice told him he must not go, that nothing could come of
it but falsity; that to amend, to set right their relations was
impossible, because it was impossible to make her attractive again and
able to inspire love, or to make him an old man, not susceptible to
love. Except deceit and lying nothing could come of it now; and deceit
and lying were opposed to his nature.

"It must be some day, though: it can't go on like this," he said,
trying to give himself courage. He set straight his chest, took out
a cigarette, lighted it, took two whiffs at it, flung it into a
mother-of-pearl ash tray, and with rapid steps walked through the
drawing room and opened the other door into his wife's bedroom.

                           IV.


Darya Alexandrovna, in a dressing jacket, and with her now scanty
hair (once luxuriant and beautiful) fastened up with hairpins on the
nape of her neck, with a sunken, thin face and large, startled eyes,
which looked prominent from the thinness of her face, was standing,
among a litter of all sorts of things scattered all over the room,
before an open bureau, from which she was taking something. Hearing
her husband's steps, she stopped, looking toward the door, and
trying in vain to give her features a severe and contemptuous
expression. She felt she was afraid of him, and afraid of the coming
interview. She was just attempting to do what she had attempted to
do ten times already in these last three days- to sort out the
children's things and her own, so as to take them to her mother's- and
again she could not bring herself to do this; but now again, as each
time before, she kept saying to herself, that things cannot go on like
this, that she must undertake something, punish him, put him to shame,
avenge on him some little part at least of the suffering he had caused
her. She still continued to tell herself that she should leave him,
but she was conscious that this was impossible; it was impossible
because she could not get out of the habit of regarding him as her
husband and of loving him. Besides this, she realized that if even
here in her own house she could hardly manage to look after her five
children properly, they would be still worse off where she was going
with all of them. As it was, even in the course of these three days,
the youngest was unwell from being given unwholesome soup, and the
others had almost gone without their dinner the day before. She was
conscious that it was impossible to go away; but, cheating herself,
she went on all the same sorting out her things and pretending she was
going.

Seeing her husband, she dropped her hands into the drawer of the
bureau as though looking for something, and only looked round at him
when he had come quite up to her. But her face, to which she tried
to give a severe and resolute expression, expressed bewilderment and
suffering.

"Dolly!" he said in a subdued and timid voice. He had hunched up his
shoulders and tried to look pitiful and humble, but for all that he
was radiant with freshness and health. In a rapid glance she scanned
his figure, beaming with freshness and health. "Yes, he is happy and
content!" she thought; "while I... And that disgusting good nature
which everyone likes him for and praises- I hate that good nature of
his," she thought. Her mouth stiffened, the muscles of the cheek
trembled on the right side of her pale, nervous face.

"What do you want?" she said in a rapid, deep, unnatural voice.

"Dolly!" he repeated, with a quiver in his voice. "Anna is coming
today."

"Well, what is that to me? I can't see her!" she cried.

"But you must, really, Dolly..."

"Go away, go away, go away!" she shrieked, without looking at him,
as though this shriek were called up by physical pain.

Stepan Arkadyevich could be calm when he thought of his wife, he
could hope that everything would come round, as Matvei expressed it,
and had been able to go on reading his paper and drinking his
coffee; but when he saw her tortured, suffering face, heard the tone
of her voice, submissive to fate and full of despair, his breath was
cut short and a lump came to this throat, and his eyes began to
shine with tears.

"My God! What have I done? Dolly! For God's sake!... You know..." He
could not go on; there was a sob in his throat.

She shut the bureau with a slam, and glanced at him.

"Dolly, what can I say?... One thing: forgive me... Remember, cannot
nine years of our life atone for an instant..."

She dropped her eyes and listened, expecting what he would say, as
if beseeching him in some way or other to make her believe
differently.

"...instant of passion..." he said, and would have gone on, but at
that word, as at a pang of physical pain, her lips stiffened again,
and again the muscles of her right cheek worked.

"Go away, go out of the room!" she shrieked still more shrilly, "and
don't talk to me of your passions and your vilenesses."

She tried to go out, but tottered, and clung to the back of a
chair to support herself. His face relaxed, his lips became puffy;
tears welled up in his eyes.

"Dolly!" he said, sobbing now. "For mercy's sake, think of the
children; they are not to blame! I am to blame- punish me then, make
me expiate my fault. Anything I can do, I am ready to do! I am to
blame, no words can express how much I am to blame! But, Dolly,
forgive me!"

She sat down. He listened to her hard, heavy breathing, and he was
unutterably sorry for her. She made several attempts to speak, but
could not. He waited.

"You remember the children, Stiva, to play with them; but I
remember, and know that they go to ruin now," she said- obviously
one of the phrases she had more than once repeated to herself in the
course of the last three days.

She had called him "Stiva," and he glanced at her with gratitude and
moved to take her hand, but she drew back from him with aversion.

"I remember the children, and for that reason I would do anything in
the world to save them; but I don't myself know the means. By taking
them away from their father, or by leaving them with a vicious father-
yes, a vicious father.... Tell me, after what... has happened, can
we live together? Is that possible? Do tell me- is it possible?" she
repeated, raising her voice. "After my husband, the father of my
children, enters into a love affair with his own children's
governess...."

"But what's to be done? What's to be done?" he kept saying in a
pitiful voice, not knowing what he was saying, as his head sank
lower and lower.

"You are loathsome to me, repulsive!" she shrieked, getting more and
more heated. "Your tears mean nothing! You have never loved me; you
have neither a heart nor a sense of honor! You are hateful to me,
disgusting, a stranger- yes, a complete stranger!" With pain and wrath
she uttered the word so terrible to herself- stranger.

He looked at her, and the fury expressed in her face alarmed and
amazed him. He did not understand that it was his pity for her that
exasperated her. She saw in him compassion for her, but not love. "No,
she hates me. She will not forgive me," he thought.

"It is awful Awful!" he said.

At that moment in the next room a child began to cry; probably it
had fallen down. Darya Alexandrovna listened, and her face suddenly
softened.

She seemed pulling herself together for a few seconds, as though she
did not know where she was nor what she was doing, and, getting up
rapidly, she moved toward the door.

"Well, she loves my child," he thought, noticing the change of her
face at the child's cry, "my child: how can she hate me then?"

"Dolly, one word more," he said, following her.

"If you follow me, I will call in the servants, and the children!
Let them all know you are a scoundrel! I am going away at once, and
you may live here with your mistress!"

And she went out, slamming the door.

Stepan Arkadyevich sighed, mopped his face, and with a subdued tread
walked out of the room. "Matvei says everything will come round; but
how? I don't see the least chance of it. Ah, ah, how horrible it is!
And how vulgarly she shouted," he said to himself, remembering her
shrieks and the words- "scoundrel" and "mistress." "And very likely
the maids were listening! Horribly vulgar, horribly." Stepan
Arkadyevich stood a few seconds alone, wiped his eyes, thrust out
his chest and walked out of the room.

It was Friday, and in the dining room the watchmaker, a German,
was winding up the clock. Stepan Arkadyevich remembered his joke about
this punctual, bald watchmaker, "that the German was wound up for a
whole lifetime himself, to wind up watches," and he smiled. Stepan
Arkadyevich was fond of a nice joke. "And maybe it will come round!"
That's a good expression, 'come round,' he thought. "I must tell
that."

"Matvei!" he shouted. "Arrange everything with Marya in the
sitting room for Anna Arkadyevna," he said to Matvei when he came in.

"Yes, sir."

Stepan Arkadyevich put on his fur coat and went out on the front
steps.

"You won't dine at home?" said Matvei, seeing him off.

"It all depends. But here's for the housekeeping," he said, taking
ten roubles from his pocketbook. "Will it be enough?"

"Enough or not enough, we must make it do," said Matvei, slamming
the carriage door and going back to the steps.

Darya Alexandrovna meanwhile having pacified the child, and
knowing from the sound of the carriage that he had gone off, went back
to her bedroom. It was her only refuge from the household cares
which crowded upon her directly she went out from it. Even now, in the
short time she had been in the nursery, the English governess and
Matriona Philimonovna had succeeded in putting several questions to
her, which did not admit of delay, and which only she could answer:
"What were the children to put on for their walk? Should they have any
milk? Should not a new cook be sent for?"

"Ah, let me alone, let me alone!" she said, and going back to her
bedroom she sat down in the same place she had occupied when talking
to her husband, clasping tightly her thin hands, her rings slipping
down on her bony fingers, and fell to going over her recollections
of the entire interview. "He has gone! But what has he finally arrived
at with her?" she thought. "Can it be he sees her? Why didn't I ask
him! No, no, reconciliation is impossible. Even if we remain in the
same house, we are strangers- strangers forever!" She repeated again
with special significance the word so dreadful to her. "And how I
loved him! my God, how I loved him!... How I loved him! And now
don't I love him? Don't I love him more than before? The most horrible
thing is," she began, but did not finish her thought, because Matriona
Philimonovna put her head in at the door.

"Let us send for my brother," she said; "he can get a dinner anyway,
or we shall have the children getting nothing to eat till six again,
like yesterday."

"Very well, I will come directly and see about it. But did you
send for some new milk?"

And Darya Alexandrovna plunged into the duties of the day, and
drowned her grief in them for a time.

                           V.


Stepan Arkadyevich had learned easily at school, thanks to his
excellent abilities, but he had been idle and mischievous, and
therefore was one of the lowest in his class. But in spite of his
habitually dissipated mode of life, his inferior grade in the service,
and his comparative youth, he occupied the honorable and lucrative
position of president of one of the government boards at Moscow.
This post he had received through his sister Anna's husband, Alexei
Alexandrovich Karenin, who held one of the most important positions in
the ministry to which the Moscow office belonged. But if Karenin had
not got his brother-in-law this berth, then through a hundred other
personages- brothers, sisters, cousins, uncles and aunts- Stiva
Oblonsky would have received this post or some other like it, together
with the salary of six thousand absolutely needful for him, as his
affairs, in spite of his wife's considerable property, were in a
poor state.

Half Moscow and Peterburg were friends and relations of Stepan
Arkadyevich. He was born in the midst of those who had been, and had
become, the powerful ones of this world. One-third of the men in the
government, the older men, had been friends of his father's, and had
known him in pinafores; another third were his intimate chums, and the
remainder were friendly acquaintances. Consequently the distributors
of earthly blessings in the shape of posts, rents, concessions and
such, were all his friends, and could not overlook one of their own
set; and Oblonsky had no need to make any special exertion to get a
lucrative post. He had only not to refuse things, not to show
jealousy, not to be quarrelsome or take offense, all of which from his
characteristic good nature he never did. It would have struck him as
absurd if he had been told that he would not get a position with the
salary he required, especially as he expected nothing out of the
way; he only wanted what the men of his own age and standing did
get, and he was no worse qualified for performing duties of this
kind than any other man.

Stepan Arkadyevich was not merely liked by all who knew him for
his good humor, his bright disposition and his unquestionable honesty;
in him, in his handsome, radiant figure, his sparkling eyes, black
hair and eyebrows, and his white and pink complexion, there was
something which produced a physical effect of kindliness and good
humor on the people who met him. "Aha! Stiva! Oblonsky! The man
himself!" was almost always said with a smile of delight on meeting
him. Even though it happened at times that after a conversation with
him it seemed that nothing particularly delightful had happened, the
next day, and the next, everyone was just as delighted to meet him
again.

After filling for two years the post of president of one of the
government boards at Moscow, Stepan Arkadyevich had won the respect,
as well as the liking, of his fellow officials, subordinates and
superiors, and all who had had business with him. The principal
qualities in Stepan Arkadyevich which had gained him this universal
respect in the service consisted, in the first place, of his extreme
indulgence for others, founded on a consciousness of his own
shortcomings; secondly, of his perfect liberalism- not the
liberalism he read of in the papers, but the liberalism that was in
his blood, in virtue of which he treated all men perfectly equally and
exactly the same, whatever their fortune or rank might be; and
thirdly- the most important point- of his complete indifference to the
business in which he was engaged, in consequence of which he was never
carried away, and made no mistakes.

On reaching the offices of the board Stepan Arkadyevich, escorted by
a deferential porter with a portfolio, went into his little private
room, put on his uniform, and went into the board room. The clerks and
officials all rose, greeting him with good-humored deference. Stepan
Arkadyevich moved quickly, as always, to his place, shook hands with
the members of the board, and sat down. He made a joke or two, and
talked just as much as was consistent with due decorum, and began
work. No one knew better than Stepan Arkadyevich how to hit on that
exact limit of freedom, simplicity and official stiffness which is
necessary for the agreeable conduct of business. A secretary, with the
good-humored deference common to everyone in Stepan Arkadyevich's
office, came up with papers, and began to speak in the familiar and
easy tone which had been introduced by Stepan Arkadyevich.

"We have succeeded in getting the information from the government
department of Penza. Here, would you care?..."

"You've got it at last?" said Stepan Arkadyevich, laying his
finger on the paper. "Now, gentlemen..."

And the sitting of the board began.

"If they but knew," he thought, inclining his head with an important
air and listening to the report, "what a guilty little boy their
president was half an hour ago!" And his eyes were laughing during the
reading of the report. Till two o'clock the sitting would go on
without a break- then there would be an interval and luncheon.

It was not yet two, when the large glass doors of the board room
suddenly opened and someone came in.

All the members of the board, sitting at the table, from below the
portrait of the Czar and from behind the mirror of justice,
delighted at any distraction, looked round at the door; but the
doorkeeper standing there at once drove out the intruder, and closed
the glass door after him.

When the case had been read through, Stepan Arkadyevich got up and
stretched, and by way of tribute to the liberalism of the times took
out a cigarette, being in the board room, and went into his private
room. Two of his board fellows, the old veteran in the service,
Nikitin, and the Kammerjunker Grinevich, went in with him.

"We shall have time to finish after lunch," said Stepan Arkadyevich.

"To be sure we shall!" said Nikitin.

"A pretty sharp fellow this Fomin must be," said Grinevich of one of
the persons taking part in the case they were examining.

Stepan Arkadyevich frowned at Grinevich's words, giving him
thereby to understand that it was improper to pass judgment
prematurely, and made him no reply.

"Who was it who came in?" he asked the doorkeeper.

"Some fellow, your excellency, sneaked in without permission
directly my back was turned. He was asking for you. I told him: when
the members come out, then..."

"Where is he?"

"Maybe he's gone into the passage, he was strolling here till now.
That's he," said the doorkeeper, pointing to a strongly built, broad
shouldered man with a curly beard, who, without taking off his
sheepskin cap, was running lightly and rapidly up the worn steps of
the stone staircase. One of the officials going down- a lean fellow
with a portfolio- stood out of his way, looked disapprovingly at the
legs of the running man, and then glanced inquiringly at Oblonsky.

Stepan Arkadyevich was standing at the top of the stairs. His
good-naturedly beaming face above the embroidered collar of his
uniform beamed more than ever when he recognized the man coming up.

"Why, it's actually you, Levin, at last!" he said with a friendly
mocking smile, gazing on the approaching man. "How is it you have
deigned to look me up in this den?" said Stepan Arkadyevich and, not
content with shaking hands, he kissed his friend. "Have you been
here long?"

"I have just come, and very much wanted to see you," said Levin,
looking about him shyly, and, at the same time, angrily and uneasily.

"Well, let's go into my room," said Stepan Arkadyevich, who knew his
friend's sensitive and irritable shyness, and, taking his arm, he drew
him along, as though guiding him through dangers.

Stepan Arkadyevich was on familiar terms with almost all his
acquaintances, and called almost all of them by their Christian names:
old men of sixty, boys of twenty, actors, ministers, merchants and
adjutant generals, so that many of his intimate chums were to be found
at the extreme ends of the social ladder, and would have been very
much surprised to learn that they had, through the medium of Oblonsky,
something in common. He was the familiar friend of everyone with
whom he took a glass of champagne, and he took a glass of champagne
with everyone, and when in consequence he met any of his
disreputable chums, as he used in joke to call many of his friends, in
the presence of his subordinates, he well knew how, with his
characteristic tact, to diminish any possible disagreeable impression.
Levin was not a disreputable chum, but Oblonsky, with his ready
tact, felt that Levin fancied Oblonsky might not care to show his
intimacy with him before subordinates, and so Stepan Arkadyevich
made haste to take him off into his room.

Levin was almost of the same age as Oblonsky; their intimacy did not
rest merely on champagne. Levin had been the friend and companion of
his early youth. They were fond of one another in spite of the
difference of their characters and tastes, as friends are fond of
one another who have been together in early youth. But in spite of
this, each of them- as is often the way with men who have selected
careers of different kinds- though in discussion he would even justify
the other's career, in his heart despised it. It seemed to each of
them that the life he led himself was the only real life, and the life
led by his friend was a mere phantasm. Oblonsky could not restrain a
slight mocking smile at the sight of Levin. How often he had seen
him come up to Moscow from the country where he was doing something,
but what precisely Stepan Arkadyevich could never quite make out,
and indeed took no interest in the matter. Levin arrived in Moscow
always excited and in a hurry, rather ill at ease and irritated by his
own want of ease, and for the most part with a perfectly new,
unexpected view of things. Stepan Arkadyevich laughed at this, and
liked it. In the same way Levin in his heart despised the town mode of
life of his friend, and his official duties, which he laughed at and
regarded as trifling. But the difference was that Oblonsky, since he
was doing the same as everyone did, laughed assuredly and
good-humoredly, while Levin laughed without assuredness and
sometimes angrily.

"We have long been expecting you," said Stepan Arkadyevich, going
into his room and letting Levin's hand go as though to show that
here all danger was over. "I am very, very glad to see you," he went
on. "Well, what now? How are you? When did you come?"

Levin was silent, looking at the unfamiliar faces of Oblonsky's
two companions, and especially at the elegant Grinevich's hands-
with such long white fingers, such long yellow nails, curved at
their end, and such huge shining studs on the shirt cuff, that
apparently these hands absorbed all his attention, and allowed him
no freedom of thought. Oblonsky noticed this at once, and smiled.

"Ah, to be sure, let me introduce you," he said. "My colleagues:
Philip Ivanich Nikitin, Mikhail Stanislavich Grinevich"- and turning
to Levin- "a Zemstvo member, a modern Zemstvo man, a gymnast who lifts
five poods with one hand, a cattle breeder and sportsman, and my
friend- Constantin Dmitrievich Levin, the brother of Sergei
Ivanovich Koznishev."

"Delighted," said the veteran.

"I have the honor of knowing your brother, Sergei Ivanovich," said
Grinevich, holding out his slender hand with its long nails.

Levin frowned, shook hands coldly, and at once turned to Oblonsky.
Though he had a great respect for his half-brother, an author well
known to all Russia, he could not endure it when people treated him
not as Constantin Levin, but as the brother of the celebrated
Koznishev.

"No, I am no longer a Zemstvo man. I have quarreled with them all,
and don't go to the sessions any more," he said, turning to Oblonsky.

"You've been quick about it!" said Oblonsky with a smile. "But
how? Why?"

"It's a long story. I will tell you some time," said Levin- but
began telling him at once. "Well, to put it shortly, I was convinced
that nothing was really done by the Zemstvo councils, or ever could
be," he began, as though someone had just insulted him. "On one side
it's a plaything; they play at being a parliament, and I'm neither
young enough nor old enough to find amusement in playthings; and on
the other side" (he stammered) "it's a means for the coterie of the
district to feather their nests. Formerly they did this through
wardships and courts of justice, now they do it through the Zemstvo-
instead of taking the bribes, they take the unearned salary," he said,
as hotly as though one of those present had opposed his opinion.

"Aha! You're in a new phase again, I see- a conservative," said
Stepan Arkadyevich. "However, we can go into that later."

"Yes, later. But I had to see you," said Levin, looking with
hatred at Grinevich's hand.

Stepan Arkadyevich gave a scarcely perceptible smile.

"But you used to say you'd never wear European dress again," he
said, gazing on Levin's new suit, obviously cut by a French tailor.
"So! I see: a new phase."

Levin suddenly blushed, not as grown men blush, slightly, without
being themselves aware of it, but as boys blush, feeling that they are
ridiculous through their shyness, and consequently ashamed of it,
and blushing still more, almost to the point of tears. And it was so
strange to see this sensible, manly face in such a childish plight,
that Oblonsky left off looking at him.

"Oh, where shall we meet? You know I want very much to talk to you,"
said Levin.

Oblonsky seemed to ponder.

"I'll tell you what: let's go to Gurin's to lunch, and there we
can talk. I am free till three."

"No," answered Levin, after an instant's thought, "I have another
visit to make."

"All right, then, let's dine together."

"Dine together? But I have nothing very particular- just a word or
two, a question; then a little chatting."

"Well, let's have your word or two right now- and we'll talk it over
in the course of the dinner."

"Well, it's this," said Levin, "however- it's of no importance."

His face suddenly assumed an expression of anger from the effort
he was making to surmount his shyness.

"What are the Shcherbatskys doing? Everything as it used to be?"
he said.

Stepan Arkadyevich, who had long known that Levin was in love with
his sister-in-law, Kitty, gave a hardly perceptible smile, and his
eyes sparkled merrily.

"You've said your word or two, but I can't answer in a few words,
because... Excuse me for just a minute...."

A secretary came in, with respectful familiarity and the modest
consciousness, characteristic of every secretary, of superiority to
his chief in the knowledge of affairs; he went up to Oblonsky with
some papers, and began, under pretense of asking a question, to
explain some objection. Stepan Arkadyevich, without hearing him out,
laid his hand genially on the secretary's sleeve.

"No, you do as I told you," he said, smoothing his remark with a
smile, and with a brief explanation of his view of the matter he moved
away the papers, and said: "So do it that way, if you please, Zakhar
Nikitich."

The secretary retired in confusion. During the consultation with the
secretary Levin had completely recovered from his embarrassment. He
was standing with elbows on the back of a chair, and on his face was a
look of ironical attention.

"I don't understand it- I don't understand it," he said.

"What don't you understand?" said Oblonsky, smiling just as
cheerfully, and picking up a cigarette. He expected some queer
outburst from Levin.

"I don't understand what you are doing," said Levin, shrugging his
shoulders. "How can you be serious about it?"

"Why not?"

"Why, because there's nothing in it."

"You think so- yet we're overwhelmed with work."

"On paper. But, there, you've a gift for it," added Levin.

"That's to say, you think there's a lack of something in me?"

"Perhaps so," said Levin. "But all the same I admire your
grandeur, and am proud to have such a great person as a friend. You've
not answered my question, though," he went on, with a desperate effort
looking Oblonsky straight in the face.

"Oh, that's all very well. You wait a bit, and you'll come to this
yourself. It's very nice for you to have three thousand dessiatinas in
the Karazinsky district, and such muscles, and the freshness of a girl
of twelve; still you'll be one of us one day. Yes, as to your
question, there is no change, but it's a pity you've been away so
long."

"Oh, why so?" Levin queried, frightened.

"Oh, nothing," responded Oblonsky. "We'll talk it over. But what's
brought you up to town?"

"Oh, we'll talk about that, too, later on," said Levin, reddening
again up to his ears.

"All right. I see," said Stepan Arkadyevich. "I should ask you to
come to us, you know, but my wife's not quite well. But I'll tell
you what: if you want to see them, they're sure now to be at the
Zoological Gardens from four to five. Kitty skates. You drive along
there, and I'll come and fetch you, and we'll go and dine somewhere
together."

"Capital. So good-by till then."

"Now mind, you'll forget- I know you!- or rush off home to the
country!" Stepan Arkadyevich called out laughing.

"No, truly!"

And Levin went out of the room, recalling only when he was in the
doorway that he had forgotten to take leave of Oblonsky's colleagues.

"That gentleman must be a man of great energy," said Grinevich, when
Levin had gone away.

"Yes, my dear sir," said Stepan Arkadyevich, nodding his head, "he's
a lucky fellow! Three thousand dessiatinas in the Karazinsky district;
everything before him; and what youth and vigor! Not like some of us."

"But why are you complaining, Stepan Arkadyevich?"

"Why, it goes hard with me, very bad," said Stepan Arkadyevich
with a heavy sigh.

                           VI.


When Oblonsky asked Levin what had brought him to town, Levin
blushed, and was furious with himself for blushing, because he could
not answer: "I have come to make your sister-in-law a proposal,"
though that was solely what he had come for.

The families of the Levins and the Shcherbatskys were old, noble
Moscow families, and had always been on intimate and friendly terms.
This intimacy had grown still closer during Levin's student days. He
had both prepared for the university with the young Prince
Shcherbatsky, the brother of Kitty and Dolly, and had entered at the
same time with him. In those days Levin was a frequent visitor at
the house of the Shcherbatskys, and he was in love with the
Shcherbatsky household. Strange as it may appear, it was with the
household, the family that Constantin Levin was in love, especially
with the feminine half of the household. Levin did not remember his
own mother, and his only sister was older than he was, so that it
was in the Shcherbatskys' house that he saw for the first time that
inner life of an old, noble, cultured and honorable family of which he
had been deprived by the death of his father and mother. All the
members of that family, especially the feminine half, were pictured by
him, as it were, wrapped about with a mysterious poetical veil, and he
not only perceived no defects whatever in them, but, under the
poetical veil that shrouded them, he assumed the existence of the
loftiest sentiments and every possible perfection. Why it was the
three young ladies had one day to speak French, and the next
English; why it was that at certain hours they played by turns on
the piano, the sounds of which were audible in their brother's room
above, where the students used to work; why they were visited by those
professors of French literature, of music, of drawing, of dancing; why
at certain hours all the three young ladies, with Mademoiselle
Linon, drove in the coach to the Tverskoy boulevard, dressed in
their satin cloaks, Dolly in a long one, Natalie in a half-long one,
and Kitty in one so short that her shapely legs in tightly-drawn red
stockings were visible to all beholders; why it was they had to walk
about the Tverskoy boulevard escorted by a footman with a gold cockade
in his hat- all this and much more that was done in their mysterious
world he did not understand, but he was sure that everything that
was done there was very good, and he was in love precisely with the
mystery of the proceedings.

In his student days he had all but been in love with the eldest,
Dolly, but she was soon married to Oblonsky. Then he began being in
love with the second. He felt, as it were, that he had to be in love
with one of the sisters, only he could not quite make out which. But
Natalie, too, had hardly made her appearance in the world when she
married the diplomat Lvov. Kitty was still a child when Levin left the
university. Young Shcherbatsky went into the navy, was drowned in
the Baltic and Levin's visits to the Shcherbatskys, despite his
friendship with Oblonsky, became less frequent. But when early in
the winter of this year Levin came to Moscow, after a year in the
country, and saw the Shcherbatskys, he realized which of the three
sisters he was indeed destined to love.

One would have thought that nothing could be simpler than for him, a
man of good family, rather rich than poor, and thirty-two years old,
to make the young Princess Shcherbatskaia an offer of marriage; in all
likelihood he would at once have been looked upon as a good match. But
Levin was in love, and so it seemed to him that Kitty was so perfect
in every respect, a creature so far above everything earthly, while he
was a creature so low and so earthly that it could not even be
conceived that other people and she herself could regard him as worthy
of her.

After spending two months in Moscow in a state of befuddlement,
seeing Kitty almost every day in society, into which he went so as
to meet her, he abruptly decided that it could not be, and went back
to the country.

Levin's conviction that it could not be was founded on the idea that
in the eyes of her family he was a disadvantageous and worthless match
for the charming Kitty, and that Kitty herself could not love him.
In her family's eyes he had no ordinary, definite career and
position in society, while his comrades by this time, when he was
thirty-two, were already one a colonel, and another a professor,
another director of a bank and railways, or chairman of a board,
like Oblonsky. But he (he knew very well how he must appear to others)
was a country gentleman, occupied in breeding cattle, shooting game
and building barns; in other words, a fellow of no ability, who had
not turned out well, and who was doing just what, according to the
ideas of the world, is done by people fit for nothing else.

The mysterious, enchanting Kitty herself could not love such an ugly
person as he conceived himself to be, and, above all, such an
ordinary, in no way striking person. Moreover, his attitude to Kitty
in the past- the attitude of a grown-up person to a child, arising
from his friendship with her brother- seemed to him yet another
obstacle to love. An ugly, good-natured man, as he considered himself,
might, he supposed, be liked as a friend; but to be loved with such
a love as that with which he loved Kitty, one would need to be
handsome and, still more, a distinguished man.

He had heard that women often did care for ugly and ordinary men,
but he did not believe it, for he judged by himself, and he could
not himself have loved any but beautiful, mysterious and exceptional
women.

But, after spending two months alone in the country, he was
convinced that this was not one of those passions of which he had
had experience in his early youth; that this feeling gave him not an
instant's rest; that he could not live without deciding the question
as to whether she would or would not be his wife; that his despair had
arisen only from his own imaginings, and that he had no sort of
proof that he would be rejected. So he had now come to Moscow with a
firm determination to make a proposal, and get married if he were
accepted. Or... he could not conceive what would become of him if he
were rejected.

                           VII.


On arriving in Moscow by a morning train, Levin had put up at the
house of his elder half-brother, Koznishev. After changing his clothes
he went down to his brother's study, intending to talk to him at
once about the object of his visit, and to ask his advice; but his
brother was not alone. With him there was a well-known professor of
philosophy, who had come from Charkov expressly to clear up a
difference that had arisen between them on a very important
philosophical question. The professor was carrying on a hot crusade
against materialists. Sergei Koznishev had been following this crusade
with interest, and after reading the professor's last article had
written him a letter stating his objections. He accused the
professor of making too great concessions to the materialists. And the
professor had promptly appeared to argue the matter out. The point
in discussion was the question then in vogue: Is there a line to be
drawn between psychical and physiological phenomena in man? And if so,
where?

Sergei Ivanovich met his brother with the smile of chilly
friendliness he always had for everyone, and, introducing him to the
professor, went on with the conversation.

A little man in spectacles, with a narrow forehead, tore himself
from the discussion for an instant to greet Levin, and then went on
talking without paying any further attention to him. Levin sat down to
wait till the professor should go, but he soon began to get interested
in the subject under discussion.

Levin had come across the magazine articles about which they were
disputing, and had read them, interested in them as a development of
the first principles of science, familiar to him when a natural
science student at the university. But he had never connected these
scientific deductions as to the origin of man as an animal, as to
reflex action, biology and sociology, with those questions as to the
meaning to himself of life and death, which had of late been more
and more often in his mind.

As he listened to his brother's argument with the professor, he
noticed that they connected these scientific questions with those
spiritual problems- that at times they almost touched on the latter;
but every time they were close upon what seemed to him the chief point
they promptly beat a hasty retreat, and plunged again into a sea of
subtle distinctions, reservations, quotations, allusions and appeals
to authorities, and it was with difficulty that he understood what
they were talking about.

"I cannot admit it," said Sergei Ivanovich, with his habitual
clearness and distinctness of expression, and elegance of diction.
"I cannot in any case agree with Keiss that my whole conception of the
external world has been derived from impressions. The most fundamental
idea- the idea of existence- has not been received by me through
sensation; indeed, there is no special sense organ for the
transmission of such an idea."

"Yes, but they- Wurst, and Knaust, and Pripassov- would answer
that your consciousness of existence is derived from the conjunction
of all your sensations, that that consciousness of existence is the
result of your sensations. Wurst, indeed, says plainly that,
assuming there are no sensations, it follows that there is no idea
of existence."

"I maintain the contrary," began Sergei Ivanovich.

But here it seemed again to Levin that, just as they were close upon
the real point of the matter, they were again retreating, and he
made up his mind to put a question to the professor.

"According to that, if my senses are annihilated, if my body is
dead, I can have no existence of any sort?" he queried.

The professor, in annoyance, and, as it were, mental suffering at
the interruption, looked round at the strange inquirer, more like a
hauler of a barge than a philosopher, and turned his eyes upon
Sergei Ivanovich, as though to ask: What's one to say to him? But
Sergei Ivanovich, who had been talking with far less stress and
one-sidedness than the professor, and who had sufficient breadth of
mind to answer the professor, and at the same time to comprehend the
simple and natural point of view from which the question was put,
smiled and said:

"That question we have no right to answer as yet...."

"We have not the requisite data," confirmed the professor, and he
went back to his argument. "No," he said; "I would point out the
fact that if, as Pripassov directly asserts, sensation is based on
impression, then we are bound to distinguish sharply between these two
conceptions."

Levin listened no more, and simply waited for the professor to go.

                           VIII.


When the professor had gone, Sergei Ivanovich turned to his brother.

"Delighted that you've come. For how long? How's your farming
getting on?"

Levin knew that his elder brother took little interest in farming,
and only put the question in deference to him, and therefore he told
him only about the sale of his wheat and money matters.

Levin had meant to tell his brother of his determination to get
married, and to ask his advice; he had indeed firmly resolved to do
so. But after seeing his brother, listening to his conversation with
the professor, hearing afterward the unconsciously patronizing tone in
which his brother questioned him about agricultural matters (their
mother's property had not been divided, and Levin took charge of
both their shares), Levin felt that he could not for some reason
broach to him his intention of marrying. He felt that his brother
would not look on it as he would have wished him.

"Well, how is your Zemstvo doing?" asked Sergei Ivanovich, who was
greatly interested in Zemstvo establishments and attached great
importance to them.

"I really don't know."

"What! But surely, you're a member of the board?"

"No, I'm not a member now; I've resigned," answered Levin, "and I no
longer attend the sessions."

"What a pity!" commented Sergei Ivanovich, frowning.

Levin in self-defense began to describe what took place at the
sessions in his district.

"That's how it always is!" Sergei Ivanovich interrupted him. "We
Russians are always like that. Perhaps it's our strong point,
really- this faculty of seeing our own shortcomings; but we overdo it,
we comfort ourselves with irony, which we always have on the tip of
our tongues. All I say is, give such rights as our Zemstvo
establishments to any other European people, and... Why, the Germans
or the English would have worked their way to freedom with them, while
we simply turn them into ridicule."

"But how can it be helped?" said Levin penitently. "It was my last
trial. And I did try with all my soul. I can't. I'm no good at it."

"It's not that you're no good at it," said Sergei Ivanovich, "it
is that you don't look at it as you should."

"Perhaps not," Levin answered dejectedly.

"Oh! do you know brother Nikolai's turned up again?"

This brother Nikolai was the elder brother of Constantin Levin,
and half-brother of Sergei Ivanovich; a man who was done for, who
had dissipated the greater part of his fortune, was living in the
strangest and lowest company, and had quarreled with his brothers.

"What did you say?" Levin cried with horror. "How do you know?"

"Procophii saw him in the street."

"Here in Moscow? Where is he? Do you know?" Levin got up from his
chair, as though on the point of starting off at once.

"I'm sorry I told you," said Sergei Ivanovich, shaking his head at
his younger brother's excitement. "I sent to find out where he is
living, and sent him his I O U to Trubin, which I paid. This is the
answer he sent me."

And Sergei Ivanovich took a note from under a paperweight and handed
it to his brother.

Levin read in the queer, familiar handwriting: "I humbly beg you
to leave me in peace. That's the only favor I ask of my gracious
brothers.- Nikolai Levin."

Levin read it, and without raising his head stood with the note in
his hands opposite Sergei Ivanovich.

There was a struggle in his heart between the desire to forget his
unhappy brother for the time, and the consciousness that it would be
base to do so.

"He obviously wants to offend me," pursued Sergei Ivanovich; "but he
cannot offend me, and I should have wished with all my heart to assist
him, but I know it's impossible to do that."

"Yes, yes," repeated Levin. "I understand and appreciate your
attitude to him; but I shall go and see him."

"If you want to, do; but I shouldn't advise it," said Sergei
Ivanovich. "As regards myself, I have no fear of your doing so; he
will not make you quarrel with me; but for your own sake, I should say
you would do better not to go. You can't do him any good; still, do as
you please."

"Very likely I can't do any good, but I feel- especially at such a
moment- but that's another thing- I feel I could not be at peace."

"Well, that's something I don't understand," said Sergei
Ivanovich. "One thing I do understand," he added, "it's a lesson in
humility. I have come to look very differently and more indulgently on
what is called infamy since brother Nikolai has become what he is...
you know what he did...."

"Oh, it's awful, awful!" repeated Levin.

After obtaining his brother's address from Sergei Ivanovich's
footman, Levin was on the point of setting off at once to see him, but
on second thought he decided to put off his visit till the evening.
The thing to do to set his heart at rest was to accomplish what he had
come to Moscow for. From his brother's Levin went to Oblonsky's
office, and on getting news of the Shcherbatskys from him, he drove to
the place where he had been told he might find Kitty.

                           IX.


At four o'clock, conscious of his throbbing heart, Levin stepped out
of a hired sleigh at the Zoological Gardens and turned along the
path to the frozen mounds and the skating ground, knowing that he
would certainly find her there, as he had seen the Shcherbatskys'
carriage at the entrance.

It was a bright, frosty day. Rows of carriages, sleighs, drivers and
gendarmes were standing in the approach. Crowds of well-dressed
people, with hats bright in the sun, swarmed about the entrance and
along the well-swept paths between the little houses adorned with
carving in the Russian style. The old curly birches of the gardens,
all their twigs laden with snow, looked as though freshly decked in
sacred vestments.

He walked along the path toward the skating ground, and kept
saying to himself- "You mustn't be excited, you must be calm. What's
the matter with you? What do you want? Be still, foolish one," he
conjured his heart. And the more he tried to compose himself, the more
breathless he found himself. An acquaintance met him and called him by
his name, but Levin did not even recognize him. He went toward the
mounds, whence came the clank of the chains of sleighs as they slipped
down or were dragged up, the rumble of the sliding sleighs and the
sounds of merry voices. He walked on a few steps, and the skating
ground lay open before him, and at once, amid all the skaters, he
recognized her.

He knew she was there by the rapture and the terror that seized
his heart. She was standing talking to a lady at the opposite end of
the ground. There was apparently nothing striking either in her
dress or her attitude, but for Levin she was as easy to find in that
crowd as a rose among nettles. Everything was made bright by her.
She was the smile that shed light on all around her. "Is it possible I
can go over there on the ice- approach her?" he thought. The place
where she stood seemed to him a holy shrine, unapproachable, and there
was one moment when he was almost retreating, so overwhelmed was he
with terror. He had to make an effort to master himself, and to remind
himself that people of all sorts were moving about her, and that he,
too, might have come there to skate. He descended, for a long while
avoiding looking at her as at the sun, yet seeing her, as one does the
sun, without looking.

On that day of the week, and at that time of day, people of one set,
all acquainted with one another, used to meet on the ice. There were
skillful skaters there, showing off their skill, and beginners
clinging to chairs with timid, awkward movements, and boys and elderly
people skating with hygienic motives. They seemed to Levin an elect
band of blissful beings because they were here, near her. All the
skaters, it seemed, with perfect self-possession, skated toward her,
skated by her, even spoke to her, and were happy, quite apart from
her, enjoying the capital ice and the fine weather.

Nikolai Shcherbatsky, Kitty's cousin, in a short jacket and tight
trousers, was sitting on a bench with his skates on. Seeing Levin,
he shouted to him:

"Ah, the first skater in Russia! Been here long? First-rate ice-
do put your skates on."

"I haven't got my skates," Levin answered, marveling at this
boldness and ease in her presence, and not for one second losing sight
of her, though he did not look at her. He felt as though the sun
were coming near him. She was in a corner, and turning out her slender
feet in their high boots, she, with obvious timidity, skated toward
him. A boy in Russian dress, desperately waving his arms and bending
down to the ground, overtook her. She skated a little uncertainly;
taking her hands out of the little muff that hung on a cord, she
held them ready for emergency, and looking toward Levin, whom she
had recognized, she smiled at him and at her own fears. When she had
got round the turn, she got a start with one foot and skated
straight up to Shcherbatsky. Clutching at his arm, she nodded with a
smile to Levin. She was more beautiful than he had imagined her.

When he thought of her, he could call up a vivid picture of her to
himself, especially the charm of that little fair head, so freely
set on the shapely girlish shoulders, and so full of childish
brightness and kindness. Her childish countenance, together with the
delicate beauty of her figure, made up that special charm of hers,
which he appreciated so well. But what always struck him in her as
something unlooked for was the expression of her eyes- soft, serene
and truthful; and, above all, her smile, which always transported
Levin to an enchanted world, where he felt moved and tender, as he
remembered himself during certain rare days of his early childhood.

"Have you been here long?" she said, giving him her hand. "Thank
you," she added, as he picked up the handkerchief that had fallen
out of her muff.

"I? Not long ago... yesterday... I mean I arrived... today..."
answered Levin, in his emotion not comprehending her question
immediately. "I meant to come and see you," he said; and then,
recollecting what his intention was in seeking her, he was promptly
overcome with confusion, and blushed. "I didn't know you could
skate, and skate so well."

She looked at him attentively, as though wishing to make out the
cause of his confusion.

"Your praise is worth having. The tradition is kept up here that you
are the best of skaters," she said, with her little black-gloved
hand brushing some needles of hoarfrost off her muff.

"Yes, I used to skate with passion once upon a time; I wanted to
attain perfection."

"You do everything with passion, I think," she said smiling. "I
should so like to see how you skate. Do put on skates, and let's skate
together."

"Skate together Can that be possible?" thought Levin, gazing at her.

"I'll put them on directly," he said.

And he went off to get skates.

"It's a long while since we've seen you here, sir," said the
attendant, supporting his foot, and screwing on the heel of the skate.
"Except you, there's none of the gentlemen first-rate skaters. Will
that be all right?" said he, tightening the strap.

"Oh, yes, yes; make haste, please," answered Levin, with
difficulty restraining the smile of rapture which would overspread his
face. "Yes," he thought, "this is life, this is happiness! Together,
she said; let us skate together! Speak to her now? But that's just why
I'm afraid to speak- because I'm happy now, happy even though only
in hope.... And then?... But I must! I must! I must! Away,
faintheartedness!"

Levin rose to his feet, took off his overcoat, and, gaining speed
over the rough ice round the pavilion, came out on the smooth ice
and skated without effort, as it were, by, simple exercise of will,
increasing and slackening speed and turning his course. He
approached her with timidity, but again her smile reassured him.

She gave him her hand, and they set off side by side, going faster
and faster, and the more rapidly they moved the more tightly she
grasped his hand.

"With you I should soon learn; I somehow feel confidence in you,"
she said to him.

"And I have confidence in myself when you are leaning on me," he
said, but was at once frightened at what he had said, and blushed. And
indeed, no sooner had he uttered these words, than all at once, like
the sun going behind a cloud, her face lost all its tenderness, and
Levin detected the familiar change in her expression that denoted
mental concentration; a tiny wrinkle came upon her smooth brow.

"Is there anything troubling you? However, I've no right to ask such
a question," he said hurriedly.

"Oh, why so?... No, I have nothing to trouble me," she responded
coldly, and immediately added: "You haven't seen Mlle. Linon, have
you?"

"Not yet."

"Go and speak to her- she likes you so much."

"What's wrong? I have offended her. Lord help me!" thought Levin,
and he flew towards the old Frenchwoman with the gray ringlets, who
was sitting on a bench. Smiling and showing her false teeth, she
greeted him as an old friend.

"Yes, you see we're growing up," she said to him, glancing toward
Kitty, "and growing old. Tiny bear has grown big now!" pursued the
Frenchwoman, laughing, and she reminded him of his joke about the
three young ladies whom he had compared to the three bears in the
English nursery tale. "Do you remember that's what you used to call
them?"

He remembered absolutely nothing, but she had been laughing at the
joke for ten years now and was fond of it.

"Now, go and skate, go and skate. Our Kitty has learned to skate
nicely, hasn't she?"

When Levin darted up to Kitty her face was no longer stern; her eyes
looked at him with the same sincerity and tenderness, but Levin
fancied that in her tenderness there was a certain note of
deliberate composure. And he felt depressed. After talking a little of
her old governess and her peculiarities, she questioned him about
his life.

"Surely, you must feel dull in the country in the winter," she said.

"No, I'm not dull- I am very busy," he said, feeling that she was
making him submit to her composed tone, which he would not have the
strength to break through- just as had been the case at the
beginning of the winter.

"Are you going to stay in town long?" Kitty questioned him.

"I don't know," he answered, not thinking of what he was saying. The
thought came into his mind that if he were held in submission by her
tone of quiet friendliness he would end by going back again without
deciding anything, and he resolved to mutiny against it.

"How is it you don't know?"

"I don't know. It depends upon you," he said, and was immediately
horror-stricken at his own words.

Whether it was that she did not hear his words, or that she did
not want to hear them, she made a sort of stumble, twice struck out,
and hurriedly skated away from him. She skated up to Mlle. Linon, said
something to her, and went toward the pavilion where the ladies took
off their skates.

"My God! What have I done! Merciful God! Help me, guide me," said
Levin, praying inwardly, and at the same time, feeling a need of
violent exercise, he skated about, describing concentric and eccentric
circles.

At that moment one of the young men, the best of the skaters of
the day, came out of the coffeehouse on his skates, with a cigarette
in his mouth. Taking a run he dashed down the steps on his skates,
crashing and leaping. He flew down, and without even changing the
free-and-easy position of his hands, skated away over the ice.

"Ah, that's a new trick!" said Levin, and he promptly ran up to
the top to perform this new trick.

"Don't break your neck! This needs practice!" Nikolai Shcherbatsky
shouted after him.

Levin went to the steps, took a run from above as best he could, and
dashed down, preserving his balance in this unwonted movement with his
hands. On the last step he stumbled, but barely touching the ice
with his hand, with a violent effort recovered himself, and skated
off, laughing.

"What a fine, darling chap he is!" Kitty was thinking at that
moment, as she came out of the pavilion with Mlle. Linon and looked
toward him with a smile of quiet kindness, as though he were a
favorite brother. "And can it be my fault, can I have done anything
wrong? They talk of coquetry. I know it's not he that I love; but
still I am happy with him, and he's so nice. Only, why did he say
that?..." she mused.

Catching sight of Kitty going away, and her mother meeting her at
the steps, Levin, flushed from his rapid exercise, stood still and
pondered a minute. He took off his skates, and overtook the mother and
daughter at the entrance of the gardens.

"Delighted to see you," said Princess Shcherbatskaia. "On
Thursdays we are home, as always."

"Today, then?"

"We shall be pleased to see you," the Princess said stiffly.

This stiffness hurt Kitty, and she could not resist the desire to
smooth over her mother's coldness. She turned her head, and with a
smile said:

"Good-by till this evening."

At that moment Stepan Arkadyevich, his hat cocked on one side,
with beaming face and eyes, strode into the garden like a buoyant
conqueror. But as he approached his mother-in-law, he responded to her
inquiries about Dolly's health with a mournful and guilty countenance.
After a little subdued and dejected conversation with her he set
straight his chest again, and took Levin by the arm.

"Well, shall we set off?" he asked. "I've been thinking about you
all this time, and I'm very, very glad you've come," he said,
looking him in the face with a significant air.

"Yes, come along," answered Levin in ecstasy, hearing unceasingly
the sound of that voice saying, "Good-by till this evening," and
seeing the smile with which it was said.

"To England or The Hermitage?"

"It's all the same to me."

"Well, then, England it is," said Stepan Arkadyevich, selecting that
restaurant because he owed more there than at The Hermitage, and
consequently considered it mean to avoid it. "Have you got a sleigh?
That's fine- for I sent my carriage home."

The friends hardly spoke all the way. Levin was wondering what
that change in Kitty's expression had meant, and alternately
assuring himself that there was hope, and falling into despair, seeing
clearly that his hopes were insane, and yet all the while he felt
himself quite another man, utterly unlike what he had been before
her smile and those words, "Good-by till this evening."

Stepan Arkadyevich was absorbed during the drive in composing the
menu of the dinner.

"You like turbot, don't you?" he said to Levin as they were
arriving.

"Eh?" responded Levin. "Turbot? Yes, I'm awfully fond of turbot."

                           X.


When Levin went into the restaurant with Oblonsky, he could not help
noticing a certain peculiarity of expression, as it were, a restrained
radiance, about the face and whole figure of Stepan Arkadyevich.
Oblonsky took off his overcoat, and with his hat over one ear walked
into the dining room, giving directions to the Tatar waiters, who were
clustered about him in evening coats, and with napkins under their
arms. Bowing right and left to acquaintances who, here as
everywhere, greeted him joyously, he went up to the bar, took a little
wineglass of vodka and a snack of fish, and said to the painted
Frenchwoman decked in ribbons, lace and ringlets, behind the desk,
something so amusing that even that Frenchwoman was moved to genuine
laughter. Levin for his part refrained from taking any vodka only
because he found most offensive this Frenchwoman, all made up, it
seemed, of false hair, poudre de riz and vinaigre de toilette. He made
haste to move away from her, as from a dirty place. His whole soul was
filled with memories of Kitty, and there was a smile of triumph and
happiness shining in his eyes.

"This way, Your Excellency, please. Your Excellency won't be
disturbed here," said a particularly pertinacious, white-headed old
Tatar with immense hips and coattails gaping widely behind. "Walk
in, your Excellency," he said to Levin- being attentive to his guest
as well, by way of showing his respect to Stepan Arkadyevich.

Instantly flinging a fresh cloth over the round table under the
bronze sconce, though it already had a tablecloth on it, he pushed
up velvet chairs and came to a standstill before Stepan Arkadyevich
with a napkin and a bill of fare in his hands, awaiting his commands.

"If you prefer it, Your Excellency, a private room will be free
directly: Prince Golitsin with a lady. Fresh oysters have come in."

"Ah, oysters!" Stepan Arkadyevich became thoughtful.

"How if we were to change our program, Levin?" he said, keeping
his finger on the bill of fare. And his face expressed serious
hesitation. "Are the oysters good? Mind, now!"

"They're Flensburg, Your Excellency. We've no Ostend."

"Flensburg will do- but are they fresh?"

"Only arrived yesterday."

"Well, then, how if we were to begin with oysters, and so change the
whole program? Eh?"

"It's all the same to me. I should like cabbage soup and porridge
better than anything; but of course there's nothing like that here."

"Porridge a la Russe, Your Honor would like?" said the Tatar,
bending down to Levin, like a nurse speaking to a child.

"No, joking apart, whatever you choose is sure to be good. I've been
skating, and I'm hungry. And don't imagine," he added, detecting a
look of dissatisfaction on Oblonsky's face, "that I shan't
appreciate your choice. I don't object to a good dinner."

"I should hope so! After all, it's one of the pleasures of life,"
said Stepan Arkadyevich. "Well, then, my friend, you give us two- or
better say three- dozen oysters, clear soup with vegetables..."

"Printaniere," prompted the Tatar. But Stepan Arkadyevich apparently
did not care to allow him the satisfaction of giving the French
names of the dishes.

"With vegetables in it, you know. Then turbot with thick sauce,
then... roast beef; and mind it's good. Yes, and capons, perhaps,
and then stewed fruit."

The Tatar, recollecting that it was Stepan Arkadyevich's way not
to call the dishes by the names in the French bill of fare, did not
repeat them after him, but could not resist rehearsing the whole
menu to himself according to the bill: "Soupe printaniere, turbot
sauce Beaumarchais, poulard a l'estragon, Macedoine de fruits..."
and then instantly, as though worked by springs, laying down one bound
bill of fare, he took up another, the list of wines, and submitted
it to Stepan Arkadyevich.

"What shall we drink?"

"What you like, only not too much. Champagne," said Levin.

"What! to start with? You're right though, I dare say. Do you like
the white seal?"

"Cachet blanc," prompted the Tatar.

"Very well, then, give us that brand with the oysters, and then
we'll see."

"Yes, sir. And what table wine?"

"You can give us Nuits. Oh, no- better the classic Chablis."

"Yes, sir. And your cheese, Your Excellency?"

"Oh, yes, Parmesan. Or would you like another?"

"No, it's all the same to me," said Levin, unable to suppress a
smile.

And the Tatar ran off with flying coattails, and in five minutes
darted in with a dish of opened oysters in their nacreous shells,
and a bottle between his fingers.

Stepan Arkadyevich crushed the starchy napkin, tucked it into his
waistcoat, and, settling his arms comfortably, started on the oysters.

"Not bad," he said, detaching the jellied oysters from their
pearly shells with a small silver fork, and swallowing them one
after another. "Not bad," he repeated, turning his dewy, brilliant
eyes now upon Levin, now upon the Tatar.

Levin ate the oysters too, though white bread and cheese pleased him
better. But he was admiring Oblonsky. Even the Tatar, uncorking the
bottle and pouring the sparkling wine into the delicate
funnel-shaped glasses, and adjusting his white cravat, kept on
glancing at Stepan Arkadyevich with a perceptible smile of
satisfaction.

"You don't care much for oysters, do you?" said Stepan
Arkadyevich, emptying his wineglass, "or are you worried about
something. Eh?"

He wanted Levin to be in good spirits. But it was not that Levin was
not in good spirits, he was ill at ease. With what he had in his soul,
he felt hard and awkward in the restaurant, in the midst of private
rooms where men were dining with ladies, in all this fuss and
bustle; the surroundings of bronzes, looking glasses, gas and
Tatars- all of this was offensive to him. He was afraid of sullying
what his soul was brimful of.

"I? Yes, I am worried; but besides that, all this bothers me," he
said. "You can't conceive how queer it all seems to a countryman
like me, as queer as that gentleman's nails I saw at your office...."

"Yes, I saw how much interested you were in poor Grinevich's nails,"
said Stepan Arkadyevich, laughing.

"It's too much for me," responded Levin. "Do try, now, to put
yourself in my place- take the point of view of a countryman. We in
the country try to bring our hands into such a state as will be most
convenient for working with. So we cut our nails; sometimes we tuck up
our sleeves. And here people purposely let their nails grow as long as
possible, and link on small saucers by way of studs, so that they
can do nothing with their hands."

Stepan Arkadyevich smiled gaily.

"Oh, yes, that's just a sign that he has no need to do coarse
work. His work is with the mind...."

"Maybe. But still it's queer to me, just as at this moment it
seems queer to me that we countryfolks try to satiate ourselves as
soon as we can, so as to be ready for work, while here are we trying
to delay satiety as long as possible, and with that object are
eating oysters...."

"Why, of course," objected Stepan Arkadyevich. "But that's just
the aim of culture- to make everything a source of enjoyment."

"Well, if that's its aim, I'd rather be a savage."

"You are a savage, as it is. All you Levins are savages."

Levin sighed. He remembered his brother Nikolai, and felt ashamed
and pained, and he scowled; but Oblonsky began speaking of a subject
which at once drew his attention.

"Oh, I say, are you going tonight to our people- the Shcherbatskys',
I mean?" he said, his eyes sparkling significantly as he pushed away
the empty rough shells, and drew the cheese toward him.

"Yes, I shall certainly go," replied Levin; "though I fancied the
Princess was not very warm in her invitation."

"What nonsense! That's her manner.... Come, boy, the soup!... That's
her manner- grande dame," said Stepan Arkadyevich. "I'm coming, too,
but I have to go to the Countess Bonin's rehearsal. Come, isn't it
true that you're a savage? How do you explain the sudden way in
which you vanished from Moscow? The Shcherbatskys were continually
asking me about you, as though I ought to know. The only thing I
know is that you always do what no one else does."

"Yes," said Levin, slowly and with emotion, "you're right. I am a
savage. Only, my savageness is not in having gone away, but in
coming now. Now I have come..."

"Oh, what a lucky fellow you are!" broke in Stepan Arkadyevich,
looking into Levin's eyes.

"Why?"

"I can tell the gallant steeds," by some... I don't know what...
'paces'; I can tell youths 'by their faces,'" declaimed Stepan
Arkadyevich. "Everything is before you."

"Why, is it over for you already?"

"No; not over exactly, but the future is yours, and the present is
mine, and the present- well, it's only fair to middling."

"How so?"

"Oh, things aren't right. But I don't want to talk of myself,
besides I can't explain it all," said Stepan Arkadyevich. "Well, why
have you come to Moscow, then?... Hi! clear the table!" he called to
the Tatar.

"Are you trying to surmise?" responded Levin, his eyes, gleaming
in their depth, fixed on Stepan Arkadyevich.

"I am, but I can't be the first to talk about it. You can see by
that whether I surmise right or wrong," said Stepan Arkadyevich,
gazing at Levin with a subtle smile.

"Well, and what have you to say to me?" said Levin in a quivering
voice, feeling that all the muscles of his face were quivering too.
"How do you look at it?

Stepan Arkadyevich slowly emptied his glass of Chablis, never taking
his eyes off Levin.

"I?" said Stepan Arkadyevich. "There's nothing I desire so much as
that- nothing! It would be the best thing that could happen."

"But you're not making a mistake? You know what we're speaking
of?" said Levin, piercing him with his eyes. "You think it's
possible?"

"I think it's possible. Why not?"

"No! Do you really think it's possible? No- tell me all you think!
Oh, but if... If refusal's in store for me!... Indeed I feel sure..."

"What makes you think so?" said Stepan Arkadyevich, smiling at his
excitement.

"It seems so to me sometimes. That will be awful for me, and for her
too."

"Oh, well, anyway there's nothing awful in it for a girl. Every
girl's proud of a proposal."

"Yes, every girl, but not she."

Stepan Arkadyevich smiled. He so well knew that feeling of
Levin's, that for him all the girls in the world were divided into two
classes: one class- all the girls in the world except her, and those
girls with all sorts of human failings, and very ordinary girls: the
other class- she alone, having no failings of any sort and higher than
all humanity.

"Stay, take some sauce," he said, holding back Levin's hand, who was
pushing the sauce away.

Levin obediently helped himself to sauce, but would not let Stepan
Arkadyevich go on with his dinner.

"No, stop a minute, stop a minute," he said. "You must understand
that it's a question of life and death for me. I have never spoken
to anyone of this. And there's no one to whom I could speak of it,
except yourself. You know we're utterly unlike each other, different
in tastes, and views, and everything; but I know you're fond of me and
understand me, and that's why I like you awfully. But for God's
sake, be quite straightforward with me."

"I tell you what I think," said Stepan Arkadyevich, smiling. "But
I'll say more: my wife is a wonderful woman..." Stepan Arkadyevich
sighed, recalling his relations with his wife, and, after a moment's
silence, resumed- "She has a gift of foreseeing things. She sees right
through people; but that's not all; she knows what will come to
pass, especially in the way of marriages. She foretold, for
instance, that Princess Shahovskaia would marry Brenteln. No one would
believe it, but it came to pass. And she's on your side."

"How do you mean?"

"It's not only that she likes you- she says that Kitty is certain to
be your wife."

At these words Levin's face suddenly lighted up with a smile, a
smile not far from touching tears.

"She says that!" cried out Levin. "I always said she was charming,
your wife. There, that's enough said about it," he said, getting up
from his seat.

"Well, but do sit down."

But Levin could not sit down. He walked with his firm tread twice up
and down the little cage of a room, blinked his eyelids that his tears
might not fall, and only then sat down to the table.

"You must understand," said he, "it's not love. I've been in love,
but it's not that. It's not my feeling, but a sort of force outside me
that has taken possession of me. I went away, you see, because I
made up my mind that it could never be- you understand, like a
happiness which is not of this earth; but I've struggled with
myself, and I see there's no living without it. And it must be
settled."

"What did you go away for?"

"Ah, stop a minute! Ah, the thoughts that come crowding on one!
The questions one must ask oneself! Listen. You can't imagine what
you've done for me by what you said. I'm so happy that I've become
positively hateful; I've forgotten everything. I heard today that my
brother Nikolai... you know, he's here... I had forgotten even him. It
seems to me that he's happy too. It's a sort of madness. But one
thing's awful.... Here, you've been married, you know the
feeling.... It's awful that we- fully mature- with a past... a past
not of love, but of sins... are brought all at once so near to a
creature pure and innocent; it's loathsome, and that's why one can't
help feeling oneself unworthy."

"Oh, well, you haven't many sins on your conscience."

"Ah, still," said Levin, "'When, with loathing, I go o'er my life, I
shudder and I curse and bitterly regret...' Yes."

"What would you have? That's the way of the world," said Stepan
Arkadyevich.

"There's one comfort, like that of the prayer which I always
liked: 'Forgive me not according to my deeds, but according to Thy
loving-kindness.' That's the only way she can forgive me."

                           XI.


Levin emptied his glass, and they were silent for a while.

"There's one other thing I ought to tell you. Do you know
Vronsky?" Stepan Arkadyevich asked Levin.

"No, I don't. Why do you ask?"

"Give us another bottle," Stepan Arkadyevich directed the Tatar, who
was filling up their glasses and fidgeting round them just when he was
least wanted.

"Why, you ought to know Vronsky because he's one of your rivals."

"Who's Vronsky?" said Levin, and his face was suddenly transformed
from the look of childlike ecstasy which Oblonsky had just been
admiring to an angry and unpleasant expression.

"Vronsky is one of the sons of Count Kirill Ivanovich Vronsky, and
one of the finest specimens of the gilded youth of Peterburg. I made
his acquaintance in Tver, when I was there on official business, and
he came there for the levy of recruits. Fearfully rich, handsome,
great connections, an aide-de-camp, and with all that a very fine
good-natured fellow. But he's more than simply a good-natured
fellow, as I've found out here- he's a cultured man, too, and very
intelligent; he's a man who'll make his mark."

Levin scowled and kept silent.

"Well, he turned up here soon after you'd gone, and, as I can see,
he's over head and ears in love with Kitty, and you know that her
mother..."

"Excuse me, but I know nothing," said Levin, frowning gloomily.
And immediately he recalled his brother Nikolai, and how vile he was
to have been able to forget him.

"You wait a bit- wait a bit," said Stepan Arkadyevich, smiling and
touching his hand. "I've told you what I know, and I repeat that in
this delicate and tender matter, as far as one can conjecture, I
believe the chances are in your favor."

Levin dropped back in his chair; his face was pale.

"But I would advise you to settle the thing as soon as possible,"
pursued Oblonsky, filling up his glass.

"No, thanks, I can't drink any more," said Levin, pushing away his
glass. "I shall get drunk.... Come, tell me how are you getting on?"
he went on, obviously anxious to change the conversation.

"One word more: in any case I advise you to settle the question
soon. Tonight I don't advise you to speak," said Stepan Arkadyevich.
"Go round tomorrow morning, make a proposal in classic form, and God
bless you...."

"Oh, do you still think of coming to me for some shooting? Come next
spring, do," said Levin.

Now his whole soul was full of remorse that he had begun this
conversation with Stepan Arkadyevich. His peculiar feeling was
profaned by talk of the rivalry of some Peterburg officer, of the
suppositions and the counsels of Stepan Arkadyevich.

Stepan Arkadyevich smiled. He knew what was passing in Levin's soul.

"I'll come some day," he said. "Yes, my dear, women- they're the
pivot everything turns upon. Things are in a bad way with me, very
bad. And it's all through women. Tell me frankly, now," he pursued,
picking up a cigar and keeping one hand on his glass; "give me your
advice."

"Why, what is it?"

"I'll tell you. Suppose you're married; you love your wife, but
are fascinated by another woman..."

"Excuse me, but I'm absolutely unable to comprehend how just as I
can't comprehend how I could now, after my dinner, go straight to a
baker's shop and steal a loaf."

Stepan Arkadyevich's eyes sparkled more than usual.

"Why not? A loaf will sometimes smell so good that one can't
resist it.


          "Himmlisch ist's wenn ich bezwungen

             Meine irdische Begier;

           Aber doch wenn's nicht gelungen

             Hatt' ich auch recht hubsch Plaisir!"


As he said this, Stepan Arkadyevich smiled subtly. Levin, too, could
not help smiling.

"Yes, but joking apart," resumed Oblonsky, "you must understand that
the woman, a sweet, gentle, loving creature, poor and lonely, has
sacrificed everything. Now, when the thing's done, don't you see,
can one possibly cast her off? Even supposing one parts from her, so
as not to break up one's family life, still, can one help feeling
for her, setting her on her feet, lightening her lot?"

"Well, you must excuse me there. You know to me all women are
divided into two classes.... Well, no... it would be truer to say:
there are women, and there are... I've never seen charming fallen
beings, and I never shall see them, but such creatures as that painted
Frenchwoman at the counter with the ringlets are vermin to my mind,
and all fallen women are like her."

"But the Magdalen?"

"Ah, drop that! Christ would never have said those words if He had
known how they would be abused. Of all the Gospel those words are
the only ones remembered. However, I'm not saying so much what I
think, as what I feel. I have a loathing for fallen women. You're
afraid of spiders, and I of these vermin. Most likely you've not
made a study of spiders and don't know their character; and so it is
with me."

"It's very well for you to talk like that; it's very much like
that gentleman in Dickens who used to fling all difficult questions
over his right shoulder with his left hand. But denying the facts is
no answer. What's to be done- you tell me that; what's to be done?
Your wife gets older, while you're full of life. Before you've time to
look round, you feel that you can't love your wife with love,
however much you may esteem her. And then all at once love turns up-
and you're done for; you're done for," Stepan Arkadyevich said with
weary despair.

Levin smiled slightly.

"Yes, you're done for," resumed Oblonsky. "But what's to be done?"

"Don't steal loaves."

Stepan Arkadyevich laughed outright.

"Oh, moralist! But you must understand, there are two women; one
insists only on her rights, and those rights are your love, which
you can't give her; while the other sacrifices everything for you
and asks for nothing. What are you to do? How are you to act?
There's a fearful tragedy in it."

"If you care for my profession of faith as regards that, I'll tell
you that I don't believe there was any tragedy about it. And this is
why. To my mind, love... both sorts of love, which you remember
Plato defines in his Banquet, serve as the touchstone of men. Some men
only understand one sort, and some only the other. And those who
only know the nonplatonic love talk in vain of tragedy. In such love
there can be no sort of tragedy. 'I'm much obliged for the
gratification, my humble respects,'- that's all the tragedy. And in
platonic love there can be no tragedy, because in that love all is
clear and pure, because..."

At that instant Levin recollected his own sins and the inner
conflict he had lived through. And he added unexpectedly:

"But perhaps you are right. Very likely... I don't know- I
positively don't know."

"You see," said Stepan Arkadyevich, "you're very much all of a
piece. That's your quality and your failing. You have a character
that's all of a piece, and you want the whole of life to be of a piece
too- but that's not how it is. You despise public official work
because you want the reality to be constantly corresponding with the
aim- and that's not how it is. You want a man's work, too, always to
have a defined aim, and love and family life always to be undivided-
and that's not how it is. All the variety, all the charm, all the
beauty of life is made up of light and shadow."

Levin sighed and made no reply. He was thinking of his own
affairs, and was not listening to Oblonsky.

And suddenly both of them felt that though they were friends, though
they had been dining together, and drunk wine which should have
drawn them closer, yet each was thinking only of his own affairs,
and they had nothing to do with one another. Oblonsky had more than
once experienced this extreme sense of aloofness, instead of intimacy,
coming on after dinner, and he knew what to do in such cases.

"Let's have the check!" he called, and he went into the next room,
where he promptly came across an aide-de-camp of his acquaintance
and dropped into conversation with him about an actress and her
protector. And at once, in this conversation with the aide-de-camp,
Oblonsky had a sense of relaxation and relief after his conversation
with Levin, which always put him to too great a mental and spiritual
strain.

When the Tatar appeared with a check of twenty-six roubles and
some kopecks, besides a tip for himself, Levin, who would another time
have been horrified, like anyone from the country, at his share of
fourteen roubles, did not notice it, paid, and set off homeward to
dress and go to the Shcherbatskys', where his fate was to be decided.

                           XII.


The young princess Kitty Shcherbatskaia was eighteen. It was the
first winter that she had been out in the world. Her success in
society had been greater than that of either of her elder sisters, and
greater even than her mother had anticipated. To say nothing of the
young men who danced at the Moscow balls being almost all in love with
Kitty, two serious suitors had already, the first winter, made their
appearance: Levin, and, immediately after his departure, Count
Vronsky.

Levin's appearance at the beginning of the winter, his frequent
visits, and evident love for Kitty, had led to the first serious
conversations between Kitty's parents as to her future, and to
disputes between them. The Prince was on Levin's side; he said he
wished for nothing better for Kitty. The Princess for her part,
going round the question in the manner peculiar to women, maintained
that Kitty was too young, that Levin had done nothing to prove that he
had serious intentions, that Kitty felt no great attraction to him,
and there were some other reasons too; but she did not state the
principal point, which was that she looked for a better match for
her daughter, that Levin was not to her liking, and that she did not
understand him. When Levin had abruptly departed, the Princess was
delighted, and said to her husband triumphantly: 'You see, I was
right.' When Vronsky appeared on the scene, she was still more
delighted, confirmed in her opinion that Kitty was to make not
simply a good, but a brilliant match.

In the mother's eyes there could be no comparison between Vronsky
and Levin. The mother disliked in Levin his strange and uncompromising
opinions and his shyness in society, founded on his pride, as she
supposed, and his queer sort of life, as she considered it, absorbed
in cattle and peasants. She did not very much like it that he, who was
in love with her daughter, had kept coming to the house for six weeks,
as though he were waiting for something, inspecting, as though he were
afraid he might be doing them too great an honor by making a proposal,
and did not realize that a man who continually visits at a house where
there is a young unmarried girl, is bound to make his intentions
clear. And suddenly, without doing so, he disappeared. "It's as well
he's not attractive enough for Kitty to have fallen in love with him,"
thought the mother.

Vronsky satisfied all the mother's desires. Very wealthy, clever, of
aristocratic family, on the highroad to a brilliant career in the army
and at court, and a fascinating man. Nothing better could be wished
for.

Vronsky openly flirted with Kitty at balls, danced with her, and
came continually to the house; consequently there could be no doubt of
the seriousness of his intentions. But, in spite of that, the mother
had spent the whole of that winter in a state of terrible anxiety
and agitation.

Princess Shcherbatskaia had herself been married thirty years ago,
her aunt arranging the match. The wooer, about whom everything was
well known beforehand, had come, looked at his intended, and been
looked at. The matchmaking aunt had ascertained and communicated their
mutual impression. That impression had been favorable. Afterward, on a
day fixed beforehand, the expected proposal was made to her parents,
and accepted. All had passed very simply and easily. So it seemed,
at least, to the Princess. But over her own daughters she had felt how
far from simple and easy is the business, apparently so commonplace,
of marrying off one's daughters. The panics that had been lived
through, the thoughts that had been brooded over, the money that had
been wasted, and the disputes with her husband over marrying the two
elder girls, Darya and Natalya! Now, since the youngest began to
come out in the world, the Princess was going through the same
terrors, the same doubts, and still more violent quarrels with her
husband, than she had over the elder girls. The old Prince, like all
fathers indeed, was exceedingly scrupulous on the score of the honor
and reputation of his daughters; he was unreasonably jealous over
his daughters, especially over Kitty, who was his favorite, and at
every turn he had scenes with the Princess for compromising her
daughter. The Princess had grown accustomed to this already with her
other daughters, but now she felt that there was more ground for the
Prince's scrupulousness. She saw that of late years much was changed
in the manners of society, that a mother's duties had become still
more difficult. She saw that girls of Kitty's age formed some sort
of clubs, went to some sort of lectures, mixed freely in men's
society, drove about the streets alone; many of them did not curtsy;
and, what was the most important thing, all of them were firmly
convinced that to choose their husband was their own affair, and not
their parents'. "Marriages aren't made nowadays as they used to be,"
was thought and said by all these young girls, and even by their
elders. But just how marriages were made nowadays, the Princess
could not learn from anyone. The French fashion- of the parents
arranging their children's future- was not accepted; it was condemned.
The English fashion of the complete independence of girls was also not
accepted, and not possible in Russian society. The Russian fashion
of matchmaking was considered unseemly; it was ridiculed by
everyone- even by the Princess herself. But how girls were to be
married, and how parents were to marry them, no one knew. Everyone
with whom the Princess had chanced to discuss the matter said the same
thing: "Mercy on us, it's high time in our day to cast off all that
old-fashioned business. It's the young people have to marry, and not
their parents; and so we ought to leave the young people to arrange it
as they choose." It was very easy for anyone to say who had no
daughters, but the Princess realized that, in the process of getting
to know each other, her daughter might fall in love, and fall in
love with someone who did not care to marry her, or who was quite
unfit to be her husband. And, however much it was instilled into the
Princess that in our times young people ought to arrange their lives
for themselves, she was unable to believe it, just as she would have
been unable to believe that, at any time whatever, loaded pistols were
the most suitable playthings for children five years old. And so the
Princess was more uneasy over Kitty than she had been over the elder
daughters.

Now she was afraid that Vronsky might confine himself to simply
flirting with her daughter. She saw that her daughter was in love with
him, but tried to comfort herself with the thought that he was an
honorable man, and would not do this. But at the same time she knew
how easy it is, with the freedom of manners of today, to turn a girl's
head, and how lightly men generally regard such a crime. The week
before, Kitty had told her mother of a conversation she had with
Vronsky during a mazurka. This conversation had partly reassured the
Princess; yet her assurance could not be perfect. Vronsky had told
Kitty that both he and his brother were so used to obeying their
mother that they never made up their minds to any important
undertaking without consulting her. "And, just now, I am impatiently
awaiting my mother's coming from Peterburg, as a peculiar piece of
luck," he had told her.

Kitty had repeated this without attaching any significance to the
words. But her mother saw them in a different light. She knew that the
old lady was expected from day to day, that she would be pleased at
her son's choice, and she felt it strange that he should not make
his proposal through fear of vexing his mother. However, she was so
anxious for the marriage itself, and still more for relief from her
fears, that she believed it was so. Bitter as it was for the
Princess to see the unhappiness of her eldest daughter, Dolly, on
the point of leaving her husband, her anxiety over the decision of her
youngest daughter's fate engrossed all her feelings. Today, with
Levin's reappearance, a fresh source of anxiety arose. She was
afraid that her daughter, who had at one time, as she fancied, a
feeling for Levin, might, from an extreme sense of honesty, refuse
Vronsky, and that Levin's arrival might generally complicate and delay
the affair, now so near conclusion.

"Why, has he been here long?" the Princess asked about Levin, as
they returned home.

"He came today, maman."

"There's one thing I want to say..." began the Princess, and from
her serious and alert face, Kitty guessed what it would be.

"Mamma," she said, flushing hotly and turning quickly to her,
"please, please don't say anything about that. I know, I know all
about it."

She wished what her mother wished for, but the motives of her
mother's wishes hurt her.

"I only want to say that to raise hopes..."

"Mamma, darling, for goodness' sake, don't talk about it. It's so
horrible to talk about it."

"I won't," said her mother, seeing the tears in her daughter's eyes;
"but one thing, my love; you promised me you would have no secrets
from me. You won't?"

"Never, mamma- none," answered Kitty, flushing and looking her
mother straight in the face; "but I have nothing to tell you now,
and I... I... If I wanted to, I don't know what to say or how... I
don't know..."

"No, she could not tell an untruth with those eyes," thought the
mother, smiling at her agitation and happiness. The Princess smiled:
so immense and so important seemed to the poor child everything that
was taking place just now in her soul.

                           XIII.


After dinner, and till the beginning of the evening, Kitty was
experiencing a sensation akin to that of a young man before a
battle. Her heart throbbed violently, and her thoughts would not
rest on anything.

She felt that this evening, when both these men would meet for the
first time, would be a turning point in her life. And she was
continually picturing them to herself, at one moment each
individually, and then both together. When she mused on the past,
she dwelt with pleasure, with tenderness, on the memories of her
relations with Levin. The memories of childhood and of Levin's
friendship with her dead brother have a special poetic charm to her
relations with him. His love for her, of which she felt certain, was
flattering and delightful to her; and it was easy for her to think
of Levin. In her memories of Vronsky there always entered a certain
element of awkwardness, though he was in the highest degree a
fashionable and even-tempered man, as though there were some false
note- not in Vronsky, he was very simple and charming- but in herself;
while with Levin she felt herself perfectly simple and clear. But,
on the other hand, directly she thought of the future with Vronsky,
there arose before her a perspective of brilliant happiness; with
Levin the future seemed misty.

When she went upstairs to dress, and looked into the looking
glass, she noticed with joy that it was one of her good days, and that
she was in complete possession of all her forces- she needed this so
for what lay before her: she was conscious of external composure and
free grace in her movements.

At half-past seven she had only just gone down into the drawing
room, when the footman announced, "Constantin Dmitrievich Levin."
The Princess was still in her room, and the Prince had not come in.
"So it is to be," thought Kitty, and all the blood seemed to rush to
her heart. She was horrified at her paleness, as she glanced into
the looking glass.

At that moment she knew beyond doubt that he had come early on
purpose to find her alone and to propose to her. And only then for the
first time the whole thing presented itself in a new, different
aspect; only then she realized that the question did not affect her
only- with whom she would be happy, and whom she loved- but that she
would have that moment to wound a man whom she liked. And to wound him
cruelly... Wherefore? Because he, dear fellow, loved her, was in
love with her. But there was no help for it; it must be so- it would
have to be so.

"My God! shall I myself really have to say it to him?" she
thought. "Can I tell him I don't love him? That will be a lie. What am
I to say to him? That I love someone else? No, that's impossible.
I'm going away- I'm going away."

She had reached the door, when she heard his step. "No It's not
honest. What have I to be afraid of? I have done nothing wrong. What
is to be, will be! I'll tell the truth. And with him one can't be
ill at ease. Here he is," she said to herself, seeing his powerful and
timid figure, with his shining eyes fixed on her. She looked
straight into his face, as though imploring him to spare her, and gave
him her hand.

"It's not time yet; I think I'm too early," he said glancing round
the empty drawing room. When he saw that his expectations were
realized, that there was nothing to prevent him from speaking, his
face became somber.

"Oh, no," said Kitty, and sat down at a table.

"But this was just what I wanted, to find you alone," he began,
without sitting down, and not looking at her, so as not to lose
courage.

"Mamma will be down directly. She was very much tired yesterday.
Yesterday..."

She talked on, not knowing what her lips were uttering, and not
taking her supplicating and caressing eyes off him.

He glanced at her; she blushed, and ceased speaking.

"I told you I did not know whether I should be here long... that
it depended on you..."

She dropped her head lower and lower, not knowing herself what
answer she should make to what was coming.

"That it depended on you," he repeated. "I meant to say... I meant
to say... I came for this... To have you be my wife!" he blurted
out, not knowing what he was saying, but feeling that the most
terrible thing was said, he stopped short and looked at her.

She was breathing heavily, without looking at him. She was feeling
ecstasy. Her soul was flooded with happiness. She had never
anticipated that his utterance of love would produce such a powerful
effect on her. But it lasted only an instant. She remembered
Vronsky. She lifted her clear, truthful eyes, and, seeing Levin's
desperate face, she answered hastily:

"That cannot be... Forgive me."

A moment ago, and how close she had been to him, of what
importance in his life! And how aloof and remote from him she had
become now!

"It could not have been otherwise," he said, without looking at her.
He bowed, and was about to leave.

                           XIV.


But at that very moment the Princess came in. There was a look of
horror on her face when she beheld them alone, and saw their disturbed
faces. Levin bowed to her, and said nothing. Kitty neither spoke nor
lifted her eyes. "Thank God, she has refused him," thought the mother,
and her face lighted up with the habitual smile with which she greeted
her guests on Thursdays. She sat down and began questioning Levin
about his life in the country. He sat down again, waiting for other
visitors to arrive, in order to go off unnoticed.

Five minutes later there came in a friend of Kitty's, married the
preceding winter- Countess Nordstone.

She was a thin, sallow, sickly and nervous woman, with brilliant
black eyes. She was fond of Kitty, and her affection for her showed
itself, as the affection of married women for girls always does, in
the desire to make a match for Kitty after her own ideal of married
happiness; she wanted her to marry Vronsky. Levin she had often met at
the Shcherbatskys' early in the winter, and she had always disliked
him. Her invariable and favorite pursuit, when they met, consisted
in making fun of him.

"I do like it when he looks down at me from the height of his
grandeur, or breaks off his wise conversation with me because I'm a
fool, or is condescending to me. I like that so- to see him
condescending! I am so glad he can't bear me," she used to say of him.

She was right, for Levin actually could not bear her, and despised
her for what she was proud of and regarded as a fine characteristic-
her nervousness, her refined contempt and indifference for
everything coarse and earthly.

The Countess Nordstone and Levin had got into that mutual relation
not infrequently seen in society, when two persons, who remain
externally on friendly terms, despise each other to such a degree that
they cannot even take each other seriously, and cannot even be
offended by each other.

The Countess Nordstone pounced upon Levin at once.

"Ah, Constantin Dmitrievich! So you've come back to our corrupt
Babylon," she said, giving him her tiny, yellow hand and recalling
what he had chanced to say early in the winter, that Moscow was a
Babylon. "Come, is Babylon reformed, or have you degenerated?" she
added, glancing with a simper at Kitty.

"It's very flattering for me, Countess, that you remember my words
so well," responded Levin, who had succeeded in recovering his
composure, and at once from habit dropped into his tone of joking
hostility to the Countess Nordstone. "They must certainly make a great
impression on you."

"Oh, I should think so! I always note everything down. Well,
Kitty, have you been skating again?..."

And she began talking to Kitty. Awkward as it was for Levin to
withdraw now, it would still have been easier for him to perpetrate
this awkwardness than to remain all the evening and see Kitty, who
glanced at him now and then and avoided his eyes. He was on the
point of getting up, when the Princess, noticing that he was silent,
addressed him.

"Shall you be long in Moscow? You're busy with the Zemstvo,
though, aren't you, and can't be away for long?"

"No, Princess, I'm no longer a member of the board," he said. "I
have come up for a few days."

"There's something the matter with him," thought Countess Nordstone,
glancing at his stern, serious face. "He isn't in his old
argumentative mood. But I'll draw him out. I do love making a fool
of him before Kitty, and I'll do it."

"Constantin Dmitrievich," she said to him, "do explain to me please,
what does it mean- you know all about such things- in our village of
Kaluga all the peasants and all the women have drunk up all they
possessed, and now they can't pay us any rent. What's the meaning of
that? You always praise the mouzhiks so."

At that instant another lady came into the room, and Levin got up.

"Excuse me, Countess, but I really know nothing about it, and
can't tell you anything," he said, and looked round at the officer who
came in behind the lady.

"That must be Vronsky," thought Levin, and, to be sure of it,
glanced at Kitty. She had already had time to look at Vronsky, and
looked round at Levin. And, simply from the look in her eyes, that
grew unconsciously brighter, Levin knew that she loved this man-
knew it as surely as if she had told him in so many words. But what
sort of a man was he?

Now, whether for good or for ill, Levin could not choose but remain;
he must find out what the man was like whom she loved.

There are people who, on meeting a successful rival, no matter in
what, are at once disposed to turn their backs on everything good in
him, and to see only what is bad. There are people who, on the
contrary, desire above all to find in that successful rival the
qualities by which he has worsted them, and seek with a throbbing ache
at heart only what is good. Levin belonged to the second class. But he
had no difficulty in finding what was good and attractive in
Vronsky. It was apparent at the first glance. Vronsky was a squarely
built, dark man, not very tall, with a good-humored, handsome and
exceedingly calm and firm face. Everything about his face and
figure, from his short-cropped black hair and freshly shaven chin down
to his loosely fitting, brand-new uniform, was simple and at the
same time elegant. Making way for the lady who had come in, Vronsky
went up to the Princess and then to Kitty.

As he approached her, his beautiful eyes shone with an especially
tender light, and with a faint, happy and modestly triumphant smile
(so it seemed to Levin), bowing carefully and respectfully over her,
he held out his small broad hand to her.

Greeting and saying a few words to everyone, he sat down without
once glancing at Levin, who had never taken his eyes off him.

"Let me introduce you," said the Princess, indicating Levin.
"Constantin Dmitrievich Levin, Count Alexei Kirillovich Vronsky."

Vronsky got up and, looking cordially at Levin, shook hands with
him.

"I believe I was to have dined with you this winter," he said,
smiling his simple and open smile; "but you had unexpectedly left
for the country."

"Constantin Dmitrievich despises and hates the town, and us
townspeople," said Countess Nordstone.

"My words must make a deep impression on you, since you remember
them so well," said Levin, and, suddenly becoming conscious that he
had said just the same thing before, he reddened.

Vronsky looked at Levin and Countess Nordstone, and smiled.

"Are you always in the country?" he inquired. "I should think it
must be dull in the winter."

"It's not dull if one has work to do; besides, one's not dull by
oneself," Levin replied abruptly.

"I am fond of the country," said Vronsky, noticing, yet affecting
not to notice, Levin's tone.

"But I hope, Count, you would not consent to live in the country
always," said Countess Nordstone.

"I don't know; I have never tried for long. I experienced a queer
feeling once," he went on. "I never longed so for the country- Russian
country, with bast shoes and peasants- as when I was spending a winter
with my mother in Nice. Nice itself is dull enough, you know. And,
indeed, Naples and Sorrento are only pleasant for a short time. And
it's just there that Russia comes back to one's mind most vividly, and
especially the country. It's as though..."

He talked on, addressing both Kitty and Levin, turning his serene,
friendly eyes from one to the other, and saying obviously just what
came into his head.

Noticing that Countess Nordstone wanted to say something, he stopped
short without finishing what he had begun, and listened attentively to
her.

The conversation did not flag for an instant, so that the old
Princess, who always kept in reserve, in case a subject should be
lacking, two heavy guns- the classical and professional education, and
universal military service- had not to move out either of them,
while Countess Nordstone had no chance of chaffing Levin.

Levin wanted to, and could not, take part in the general
conversation; saying to himself every instant, "Now go," he still
did not go, as though waiting for something.

The conversation fell upon table turning and spirits, and Countess
Nordstone, who believed in spiritualism, began to describe the
miracles she had seen.

"Ah, Countess, you really must take me; for pity's sake do take me
to see them! I have never seen anything extraordinary, though I am
always on the lookout for it everywhere," said Vronsky, smiling.

"Very well- next Saturday," answered Countess Nordstone. "But you,
Constantin Dmitrievich- are you a believer?" she asked Levin.

"Why do you ask me? You know what I shall say."

"But I want to hear your opinion."

"My opinion," answered Levin, "is merely that this table turning
proves that educated society- so called- is no higher than the
peasants. They believe in the evil eye, and in witchcraft and
conjurations, while we..."

"Oh, then you aren't a believer?"

"I can't believe, Countess."

"But if I've seen for myself?"

"The peasant women, too, tell us they have seen hobgoblins."

"Then you think I tell a lie?"

And she laughed a mirthless laugh.

"Oh, no, Masha, Constantin Dmitrievich merely said he could not
believe," said Kitty, blushing for Levin, and Levin saw this, and,
still more exasperated, would have answered; but Vronsky with his
bright frank smile rushed to the support of the conversation, which
was threatening to become disagreeable.

"You do not admit the possibility at all?" he queried. "But why not?
We admit the existence of electricity, of which we know nothing. Why
should there not be some new force, still unknown to us, which..."

"When electricity was discovered," Levin interrupted hurriedly,
"it was only the phenomenon that was discovered, and it was unknown
from what it proceeded and what were its effects, and ages passed
before its applications were conceived. But the spiritualists, on
the contrary, have begun with tables writing for them, and spirits
appearing to them, and have only later started saying that it is an
unknown force."

Vronsky listened attentively to Levin, as he always did listen,
obviously interested in his words.

"Yes, but the spiritualists say we don't know at present what this
force is, but there is a force, and these are the conditions in
which it acts. Let the scientific men find out what the force consists
of. No, I don't see why there should not be a new force, if it..."

"Why, because with electricity," Levin interrupted again, "every
time you rub tar against wool, a certain phenomenon is manifested; but
in this case it does not happen every time, and so it follows it is
not a natural phenomenon."

Feeling probably that the conversation was taking a tone too serious
for a drawing room, Vronsky made no rejoinder, but by way of trying to
change the conversation, he smiled brightly, and turned to the ladies.

"Do let us try at once, Countess," he said; but Levin would finish
saying what he thought.

"I think," he went on, "that this attempt of the spiritualists to
explain their miracles as some sort of new natural force is most
futile. They boldly talk of spiritual force, and then try to subject
it to material experiment."

Everyone was waiting for him to finish, and he felt this.

"Why, I think you would be a first-rate medium," said Countess
Nordstone, "there's something enthusiastic about you."

Levin opened his mouth, was about to say something, reddened, and
said nothing.

"Do let us try table turning at once, please," said Vronsky.
"Princess, will you allow it?

And Vronsky stood up, looking about for a little table.

Kitty got up to fetch a table, and, as she passed, her eyes met
Levin's. She felt for him with her whole heart, the more because she
was pitying him for a suffering of which she was herself the cause.
"If you can forgive me, forgive me," said her eyes, "I am so happy."

"I hate them all, and you, and myself," his eyes responded, and he
took up his hat. But he was not destined to escape. just as they
were arranging themselves round the table, and Levin was on the
point of retiring, the old Prince came in, and, after greeting the
ladies, addressed Levin.

"Ah!" he began joyously. "Been here long, my boy? I didn't even know
you were in town. Very glad to see you." The old Prince embraced
Levin, and, talking to him, did not observe Vronsky, who had risen,
and was calmly waiting till the Prince should turn to him.

Kitty felt how grievous her father's cordiality was to Levin after
what had happened. She saw, too, how coldly her father responded at
last to Vronsky's bow, and how Vronsky looked with amiable
perplexity at her father, trying and failing to understand how and why
anyone could be hostilely disposed toward him, and she flushed.

"Prince, let us have Constantin Dmitrievich," said Countess
Nordstone, "we want to try an experiment."

"What experiment? Table turning? Well, you must excuse me, ladies
and gentlemen, but to my mind it is better fun to play the ring game,"
said the old Prince, looking at Vronsky, and guessing that it had been
his suggestion. "There's some sense in that, anyway."

Vronsky looked wonderingly at the Prince with his firm eyes, and,
with a faint smile, began immediately talking to Countess Nordstone of
the great ball that was to come off next week.

"I hope you will be there?" he said to Kitty. As soon as the old
Prince turned away from him, Levin slipped out unnoticed, and the last
impression he carried away with him of that evening was the smiling,
happy face of Kitty answering Vronsky's inquiry about the ball.

                           XV.


At the end of the evening Kitty told her mother of her
conversation with Levin, and in spite of all the pity she felt for
Levin, she was glad at the thought that she had received a proposal.
She had no doubt that she had acted rightly. But after she had gone to
bed, she could not sleep for a long while. One impression pursued
her relentlessly. It was Levin's face, with his scowling brows, and
his kind eyes looking out in dark dejection below them, as he stood
listening to her father, and glancing at her and at Vronsky. And she
felt so sorry for him that tears came into her eyes. But immediately
she thought of the man for whom she had given him up. She vividly
recalled his manly, firm face, his noble calmness, and the good nature
so conspicuous toward everyone. She remembered the love for her of the
man she loved, and once more all was gladness in her soul, and she lay
on the pillow smiling with happiness. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry; but
what could I do? It's not my fault," she said to herself; but an inner
voice told her otherwise. Whether she felt remorse at having
captivated Levin, or at having refused him, she did not know. But
her happiness was poisoned by doubts. "Lord, have pity on us; Lord,
have pity, Lord, have pity!" she said over to herself till she fell
asleep.

Meanwhile there took place below, in the Prince's little study,
one of the scenes so often repeated between the parents on account
of their favorite daughter.

"What? I'll tell you what!" shouted the Prince, brandishing his
arms, and at once wrapping his squirrel-lined dressing gown round
him again. "That you've no pride, no dignity; that you're
disgracing, ruining your daughter by this vulgar, stupid matchmaking!"

"But, really, for mercy's sake, Prince, what have I done?" said
the Princess, almost crying.

She, pleased and happy after her conversation with her daughter, had
gone to the Prince to say good night as usual, and though she had no
intention of telling him of Levin's proposal and Kitty's refusal,
still she hinted to her husband that she fancied things were
practically settled with Vronsky, and would be definitely so as soon
as his mother arrived. And thereupon, at those words, the Prince had
all at once flown into a passion, and begun to use unseemly language.

"What have you done? I'll tell you what. First of all, you're trying
to allure an eligible gentleman, and all Moscow will be talking of it,
and with good reason. If you have evening parties, invite everyone,
don't pick out the possible suitors. Invite all these whelps [so the
Prince styled the youths of Moscow]; engage a piano player, and let
them dance- and not as you did tonight: only the wooers, and doing
your matching. It makes me sick- sick to see it- and you've gone on
till you've turned the poor lass's head. Levin's a thousand times
the better man. As for this Peterburg swell- they're turned out by
machinery, all on one pattern, and all precious rubbish. But if he
were a prince of the blood, my daughter need not run after anyone."

"But what have I done?"

"Why, you've..." The Prince was yelling wrathfully.

"I know if one were to listen to you," interrupted the Princess, "we
should never marry off our daughter. If it's to be so, we'd better
go into the country."

"Well, we had better."

"But do wait a minute. Do I wheedle them? I don't wheedle them in
the least. A young man, and a very nice one, has fallen in love with
her, and she, I fancy..."

"Oh, yes, you fancy! And how if she really is in love, and he's no
more thinking of marriage than I am!... Oh, that I should live to
see it!... "Ah- spiritualism! Ah- Nice! Ah- the ball!'" And the
Prince, imagining that he was mimicking his wife, made a mincing
curtsy at each word. "And this is how we prepare wretchedness for
Katenka; and she's really got the notion into her head...."

"But what makes you suppose so?"

"I don't suppose; I know. For such things we have eyes; womenfolk
haven't. I see a man who has serious intentions, that's Levin: and I
see a quail, like this cackler, who's only amusing himself."

"Oh, well, when once you get an idea into your head!..."

"Well, you'll remember my words, but too late, just as with
Dashenka."

"Well, well, we won't talk of it," the Princess stopped him,
recollecting her unlucky Dolly.

"By all means, and good night!"

And signing each other with the cross, the husband and wife parted
with a kiss, feeling that each remained of his or her own opinion.

The Princess had at first been quite certain that that evening had
settled Kitty's fortune, and that there could be no doubt of Vronsky's
intentions, but her husband's words had disturbed her. And returning
to her own room, in terror before the unknown future, she, too, like
Kitty, repeated several times in her heart, "Lord, have pity; Lord,
have pity; Lord, have pity!"

                           XVI.


Vronsky had never had a real home life. His mother had been in her
youth a brilliant society woman, who had had during her married
life, and still more afterward, many love affairs notorious in the
whole fashionable world. His father he scarcely remembered, and he had
been educated in the Corps of Pages.

Leaving the school very young as a brilliant officer, he had at once
got into the circle of wealthy Peterburg army men. Although he did
go more or less into Peterburg society, his love affairs had always
hitherto been outside it.

In Moscow he had for the first time felt, after his luxurious and
coarse life at Peterburg, all the charm of intimacy with a sweet and
innocent girl of his own rank, who cared for him. It never even
entered his head that there could be any harm in his relations with
Kitty. At balls he danced principally with her. He was a constant
visitor at her house. He talked to her as people commonly do talk in
society- all sorts of nonsense, but nonsense to which he could not
help attaching a special meaning in her case. Although he said nothing
to her that he could not have said before everybody, he felt that
she was becoming more and more dependent upon him, and the more he
felt this, the better he liked it, and the tenderer was his feeling
for her. He did not know that this mode of behavior in relation to
Kitty had a definite character, that it is courting young girls with
no intention of marriage, and that such courting is one of the evil
actions common among brilliant young men such as he was. It seemed
to him that he was the first who had discovered this pleasure, and
he was enjoying his discovery.

If he could have heard what her parents were saying that evening, if
he could have put himself at the point of view of the family, and have
heard that Kitty would be unhappy if he did not marry her, he would
have been greatly astonished, and would not have believed it. He could
not believe that what gave such great and delicate pleasure to him,
and above all to her, could be wrong. Still less could he have
believed that he ought to marry.

Marriage had never presented itself to him as a possibility. He
not only disliked family life, but a family, and especially a husband,
in accordance with the views general in the bachelor world in which he
lived, were conceived as something alien, repellent, and, above all,
ridiculous. But though Vronsky had not the least suspicion of what the
parents were saying, he felt on coming away from the Shcherbatskys'
that the secret spiritual bond which existed between him and Kitty had
grown so much stronger that evening that some step must be taken.
But what step could and should be taken he could not imagine.

"What is so exquisite," he thought, as he returned from the
Shcherbatskys', carrying away with him, as he always did, a
delicious feeling of purity and freshness, arising partly from the
fact that he had not been smoking for a whole evening, and with it a
new feeling of tenderness at her love for him- "what is so exquisite
is that not a word has been said by me or by her, yet we understand
each other so well in this unseen language of looks and tones, that
this evening more clearly than ever she told me she loves me. And
how sweetly, simply, and most of all, how trustfully! I feel myself
better, purer. I feel that I have a heart, and that there is a great
deal of good in me Those sweet, loving eyes! When she said: 'Indeed
I do...'"

"Well, what then? Oh, nothing. It's good for me, and good for
her." And he began wondering where to finish the evening.

He passed in review the places he might go to. "Club? a game of
bezique; champagne with Ignatov? No, I'm not going. Chateau des
Fleurs; there I shall find Oblonsky, songs, the cancan. No, I'm sick
of it. That's why I like the Shcherbatskys', because I'm growing
better. I'll go home." He went straight to his room at Dussot's Hotel,
ordered supper, and then undressed, and as soon as his head touched
the pillow, fell into a sound sleep.

                           XVII.


Next day, at eleven o'clock in the morning, Vronsky drove to the
station of the Peterburg railway to meet his mother, and the first
person he came across on the great flight of steps was Oblonsky, who
was expecting his sister by the same train.

"Ah! Your Excellency!" cried Oblonsky, "Whom are you meeting?"

"My mother," Vronsky responded, smiling, as everyone did who met
Oblonsky. He shook hands with him, and together they ascended the
steps. "She is to be here from Peterburg today."

"I was looking out for you till two o'clock last night. Where did
you go from the Shcherbatskys'?"

"Home," answered Vronsky. "I must own I felt so well content
yesterday after the Shcherbatskys' that I didn't care to go anywhere."

"'I can tell the gallant steeds' by some... I don't know what...
'paces'; I can tell youths 'by their faces,'" declaimed Stepan
Arkadyevich, just as he had done before to Levin.

Vronsky smiled with a look that seemed to say that he did not deny
it, but he promptly changed the subject.

"And whom are you meeting?" he asked.

"I? I've come to meet a pretty woman," said Oblonsky.

"So that's it!"

"Honi soit qui mal y pense! My sister Anna."

"Ah! that's Madame Karenina," said Vronsky.

"You know her, no doubt?"

"I think I do. Or perhaps not... I really am not sure," Vronsky
answered heedlessly, with a vague recollection of something stiff
and tedious evoked by the name Karenina.

"But Alexei Alexandrovich, my celebrated brother-in-law, you
surely must know. All the world knows him."

"I know him by reputation and by sight. I know that he's clever,
learned, religious somewhat... But you know that's not... not in my
line," said Vronsky in English.

"Yes, he's a very remarkable man; rather a conservative, but a
very nice man," observed Stepan Arkadyevich, "a very nice man."

"Oh, well, so much the better for him," said Vronsky smiling. "Oh,
you've come," he said, addressing a tall old footman of his mother's
standing at the door; "come here."

Besides the charm Oblonsky had in general for everyone, Vronsky
had felt of late specially drawn to him by the fact that in his
imagination he was associated with Kitty.

"Well, what do you say? Shall we give a supper on Sunday for the
diva?" he said to him with a smile, taking his arm.

"Of course. I'm collecting subscriptions. Oh, did you make the
acquaintance of my friend Levin?" asked Stepan Arkadyevich.

"Yes; but he left rather early."

"He's a capital fellow," pursued Oblonsky. "Isn't he?"

"I don't know why it is," responded Vronsky, "in all Moscow
people- present company of course excepted," he put in jestingly,
"there's something uncompromising. They are all on the defensive, lose
their tempers, as though they all want to make one feel something...."

"Yes, that's true, it's so," said Stepan Arkadyevich, laughing
cheerfully.

"Will the train be in soon?" Vronsky asked a railway official.

"The train's signaled," answered the man.

The approach of the train was more and more evident by the
preparatory bustle in the station, the rush of porters, the movement
of gendarmes and attendants, and crowding people meeting the train.
Through the frosty vapor could be seen workmen in short sheepskins and
soft felt boots crossing the rails of the curving line. The hiss of
the boiler could be heard on the distant rails, and the rumble of
something heavy.

"No," said Stepan Arkadyevich, who felt a great inclination to
tell Vronsky of Levin's intentions in regard to Kitty. "No, you
haven't got a true impression of Levin. He's a very nervous man, and
is sometimes out of humor, it's true, but then he is often very
charming. He has such a true, honest nature, and a heart of gold.
But yesterday there were special reasons," pursued Stepan Arkadyevich,
with a meaning smile, totally oblivious of the genuine sympathy he had
felt the day before for his friend, and feeling the same sympathy now,
only for Vronsky. "Yes, there were reasons why he could not help being
either particularly happy or particularly unhappy."

Vronsky stood still and asked directly: "How so? Do you mean he
proposed to your belle-soeur yesterday?"

"Maybe," said Stepan Arkadyevich. "I fancied something of the sort
yesterday. Yes, if he went away early, and was out of humor too,
such must be the case.... He's been so long in love, and I'm very
sorry for him."

"So that's it!... I should imagine, though, she might reckon on a
better match," said Vronsky, setting his chest straight and walking
about again, "though I don't know him, of course," he added. "Yes,
that is a hateful position! That's why most fellows prefer to have
to do with the Claras. If you don't succeed with them it only proves
that you've not enough cash, but in this case one's dignity is in
the balance. But here's the train."

The engine had already whistled in the distance. A few instants
later the platform began to shake, and, with puffs of steam hanging
low in the air from the frost, the engine rolled up, with the rod of
the middle wheel rhythmically moving up and down, and the bowed,
muffled figure of the engine driver covered with hoarfrost. Behind the
tender, setting the platform more and more slowly and more
powerfully shaking, came the luggage van with a dog whining in it.
At last the passenger carriages rolled in, quivering before coming
to a standstill.

A smart guard jumped out, giving a whistle, and after him one by one
the impatient passengers began to get down: an officer of the
guards, holding himself erect, and looking severely about him; a
nimble young merchant with a bag, smiling gaily; a peasant with a sack
over his shoulder.

Vronsky, standing beside Oblonsky, watched the carriages and the
passengers, totally oblivious of his mother. What he had just heard
about Kitty excited and delighted him. Unconsciously he straightened
his chest, and his eyes flashed. He felt himself a conqueror.

"Countess Vronskaia is in that compartment," said the smart guard,
going up to Vronsky.

The guard's words roused him, and forced him to think of his
mother and his approaching meeting with her. He did not in his heart
respect his mother, and, without acknowledging it to himself, he did
not love her, though in accordance with the ideas of the set in
which he lived, and with his own upbringing, he could not have
conceived of any behavior to his mother not in the highest degree
respectful and obedient, and the more externally obedient and
respectful, the less in his heart he respected and loved her.

                           XVIII.


Vronsky followed the guard to the carriage, and at the door of the
compartment he stopped short to make room for a lady who was getting
out.

With the habitual feeling of a man of the world, from one glance
at this lady's appearance Vronsky classified her as belonging to the
best society. He begged pardon, and was getting into the carriage, but
felt he must glance at her once more; not because she was very
beautiful, not because of that elegance and modest grace which were
apparent in her whole figure, but because in the expression of her
charming face, as she passed close by him, there was something
peculiarly caressing and soft. As he looked round, she too turned
her head. Her shining gray eyes, that looked dark because of her thick
lashes, rested with friendly attention on his face, as though she were
recognizing him, and then promptly turned away to the passing crowd,
as though seeking someone. In that brief look Vronsky had time to
notice the suppressed animation which played over her face, and
flitted between the brilliant eyes and the faint smile that curved her
red lips. It was as though her nature were so brimming over with
something that, against her will, it showed itself now in the flash of
her eyes, and now in her smile. Deliberately she shrouded the light in
her eyes, but it shone against her will in her faintly perceptible
smile.

Vronsky stepped into the carriage. His mother, a dried-up old lady
with black eyes and ringlets, screwed up her eyes, scanning her son,
and smiled slightly with her thin lips. Getting up from the seat and
handing her maid a handbag, she gave her little wrinkled hand to her
son to kiss, and lifting his head from her hand, kissed him on the
cheek.

"You got my telegram? Quite well? Thank God."

"You had a good journey?" said her son, sitting down beside her, and
involuntarily listening to a woman's voice outside the door. He knew
it was the voice of the lady he had met at the door.

"All the same I don't agree with you," said the lady's voice.

"It's the Peterburg view, madame."

"Not Peterburg, but simply feminine," she responded.

"Well, well, allow me to kiss your hand."

"Good-by, Ivan Petrovich. And would you see if my brother is here,
and send him to me?" said the lady in the doorway, and stepped back
again into the compartment.

"Well, have you found your brother?" said Countess Vronskaia,
addressing the lady.

Vronsky understood now that this was Madame Karenina.

"Your brother is here," he said, standing up. "Excuse me, I did
not know you, and, indeed, our acquaintance was so slight," said
Vronsky bowing, "that no doubt you do not remember me."

"Oh, no," said she, "I should have known you because your mother and
I have been talking, I think, of nothing but you all the way." As
she spoke she let the animation that would insist on coming out show
itself in her smile. "And still no sign of my brother."

"Do call him, Aliosha," said the old countess.

Vronsky stepped out onto the platform and shouted: "Oblonsky! Here!"

Madame Karenina, however, did not wait for her brother, but catching
sight of him she stepped out with her light, resolute step. And as
soon as her brother had reached her, with a gesture that struck
Vronsky by its decision and its grace, she flung her left arm around
his neck, drew him rapidly to her, and kissed him warmly. Vronsky
looked on, never taking his eyes from her, and smiled, he could not
have said why. But recollecting that his mother was waiting for him,
he went back again into the carriage.

"She's very sweet, isn't she?" said the Countess of Madame Karenina.
"Her husband put her with me, and I was delighted to have her. We've
been talking all the way. And so you, I hear... vous filez le
parfait amour. Tant mieux, mon cher, tant mieux."

"I don't know what you are referring to, maman," he answered coldly.
"Come, maman, let us go."

Madame Karenina entered the carriage again to say good-by to the
Countess.

"Well, Countess, you have met your son, and I my brother," she
said gaily. "And all my stories are exhausted; I should have nothing
more to tell you."

"Oh, no," said the Countess, taking her hand. "I could go all around
the world with you and never be dull. You are one of those
delightful women in whose company it's sweet either to be silent or to
chat. Now please don't fret over your son; you can't expect never to
be parted."

Madame Karenina stood quite still, holding herself very erect, and
her eyes were smiling.

"Anna Arkadyevna," the Countess said in explanation to her son, "has
a little son eight years old, I believe, and she has never been parted
from him before, and she keeps fretting over leaving him."

"Yes, the Countess and I have been talking all the time, I of my son
and she of hers," said Madame Karenina, and again a smile lighted up
her face- a caressing smile intended for him.

"I am afraid that you must have been dreadfully bored," he said,
promptly catching the ball of coquetry she had flung him. But
apparently she did not care to pursue the conversation in that strain,
and she turned to the old Countess.

"Thank you so much. The time has passed so quickly. Good-by,
Countess."

"Good-by, my love," answered the Countess. "Let me kiss your
pretty face. I speak plainly, at my age, and I tell you simply that
I've lost my heart to you."

Stereotyped as the phrase was, Madame Karenina obviously believed it
and was delighted by it. She flushed, bent down slightly, and put
her cheek to the Countess's lips, drew herself up again, and, with the
same smile fluttering between her lips and her eyes, she gave her hand
to Vronsky. He pressed the little hand she gave him, and was
delighted, as though at something special, by the energetic squeeze
with which she freely and vigorously shook his hand. She went out with
the rapid step which bore her rather fully developed figure with
such strange lightness.

"Very charming," said the Countess.

That was precisely what her son was thinking. His eyes followed
her till her graceful figure was out of sight, and then the smile
remained on his face. He saw out of the window how she went up to
her brother, put her arm in his, and began telling him something
animatedly- obviously something that had nothing to do with him,
Vronsky, and at that he felt annoyed.

"Well, maman, are you perfectly well?" he repeated, turning to his
mother.

"Everything has been delightful. Alexandre has been very good, and
Marie has grown very pretty. She's very interesting."

And she began telling him again of what interested her most- the
christening of her grandson, for which she had been staying in
Peterburg, and the special favor shown her elder son by the Czar.

"Here's Lavrentii," said Vronsky, looking out of the window; "now we
can go, if you like."

The old butler who had traveled with the Countess came to the
carriage to announce that everything was ready, and the Countess got
up to go.

"Come; there's not such a crowd now," said Vronsky.

The maid took a handbag and the lap dog, the butler and a porter the
other baggage. Vronsky gave his mother his arm; but just as they
were getting out of the carriage several men ran suddenly by with
panic-stricken faces. The stationmaster, too, ran by in his
extraordinarily colored cap. Obviously something unusual had happened.
The crowd was running to the tail end of the train.

"What?... What?... Where?... Flung himself!... Crushed!..." was
heard among the crowd.

Stepan Arkadyevich, with his sister on his arm, turned back. They
too looked scared, and stopped at the carriage door to avoid the
crowd.

The ladies got in, while Vronsky and Stepan Arkadyevich followed the
crowd to find out details of the disaster.

A watchman, either drunk or too much muffled up in the bitter frost,
had not heard the train moving back, and had been crushed.

Before Vronsky and Oblonsky came back the ladies heard the facts
from the butler.

Oblonsky and Vronsky had both seen the mutilated corpse. Oblonsky
was evidently distressed. He frowned and seemed ready to cry.

"Ah, how awful! Ah, Anna, if you had seen it! Ah, how awful!" he
kept repeating.

Vronsky did not speak; his handsome face was serious, but
perfectly calm.

"Ah, if you had seen it, Countess," said Stepan Arkadyevich. "And
his wife was there.... It was awful to see her!... She flung herself
on the body. They say he was the only support of an immense family.
How awful!"

"Couldn't one do anything for her?" said Madame Karenina in an
agitated whisper.

Vronsky glanced at her, and immediately got out of the carriage.

"I'll be back directly, maman," he remarked, turning round in the
doorway.

When he came back a few minutes later, Stepan Arkadyevich was
already in conversation with the Countess about a new singer, while
she was impatiently looking toward the door, waiting for her son.

"Now let us be off," said Vronsky, coming in.

They went out together. Vronsky was in front with his mother. Behind
walked Madame Karenina with her brother. Just as they were going out
of the station the stationmaster overtook Vronsky.

"You gave my assistant two hundred roubles. Would you kindly explain
for whose benefit you intend them?"

"For the widow," said Vronsky, shrugging his shoulders. "I should
have thought there was no need to ask."

"You gave that?" cried Oblonsky behind, and, pressing his sister's
hand, he added: "Most charming, most charming! Isn't he a fine fellow?
Good-by, Countess."

And he and his sister stood still, looking for her maid.

When they went out the Vronskys' carriage had already driven away.
People coming in were still talking of what had happened.

"What a horrible death!" said a gentleman, passing by. "They say
he was cut in two."

"On the contrary, I think it's the easiest- instantaneous," observed
another.

"How is it they don't take proper precautions?" a third was saying.

Madame Karenina seated herself in the carriage, and Stepan
Arkadyevich saw with surprise that her lips were quivering, and that
she was with difficulty restraining her tears.

"What is it, Anna?" he asked, when they had driven a few hundred
sagenes.

"It's an omen of evil," she said.

"What nonsense!" said Stepan Arkadyevich. "You've come, that's the
chief thing. You can't conceive how I'm resting my hopes on you."

"Have you known Vronsky long? she asked.

"Yes. You know we're hoping he will marry Kitty."

"Yes?" said Anna softly. "Come now, let us talk of you," she
added, tossing her head, as though she would physically shake off
something superfluous oppressing her. "Let us talk of your affairs.
I got your letter, and here I am."

"Yes, all my hopes are in you," said Stepan Arkadyevich.

"Well, tell me all about it."

And Stepan Arkadyevich began his story.

On reaching home Oblonsky helped his sister out, sighed, pressed her
hand, and set off to his office.

                           XIX.


When Anna entered the tiny drawing room, she found Dolly sitting
there with a white-headed plump little boy, already resembling his
father; she was listening to a lesson in French reading. As the boy
read, he kept twisting and trying to tear off a button that was nearly
off his jacket. His mother had several times taken his hand from it,
but the plump little hand went back to the button again. His mother
pulled the button off and put it in her pocket.

"Keep your hands still, Grisha," she said, and she took up her work,
a coverlet she had long been making. She always set to work on it at
depressed moments, and now she knitted at it nervously, twitching
her fingers and counting the stitches. Though she had sent word the
day before to her husband that it was nothing to her whether his
sister came or not, she had made everything ready for her arrival, and
was expecting her sister-in-law with agitation.

Dolly was crushed by her sorrow, utterly swallowed up by it. Still
she did not forget that Anna, her sister-in-law, was the wife of one
of the most important personages in Peterburg, and was a Peterburg
grande dame. And, thanks to this circumstance, she did not carry out
her threat to her husband- that is to say, she had not forgotten
that her sister-in-law was coming. "And, after all, Anna is in no wise
to blame," thought Dolly. "I know nothing save the very best about
her, and I have seen nothing but kindness and affection from her
toward myself." It was true that as far as she could recall her
impressions at Peterburg at the Karenins', she did not like their
household itself; there was something artificial about the whole
arrangement of their family life. "But why should I not receive her?
If only she doesn't take it into her head to console me!" thought
Dolly. "All consolations and exhortations and Christian forgiveness- I
have thought all this over a thousand times, and it's all no use."

All these days Dolly had been alone with her children. She did not
want to talk of her sorrow, but with that sorrow in her heart she
could not talk of outside matters.

She knew that in one way or another she would tell Anna
everything, and she was alternately glad at the thought of speaking
freely, and angry at the necessity of speaking of her humiliation with
her, his sister, and of hearing her ready-made phrases of
exhortation and consolation.

She had been on the lookout for her, glancing at her watch every
minute, and, as often happens, let slip that precise minute when her
visitor arrived, so that she did not hear the bell.

Catching the sound of skirts and of light steps at the door, she
looked round, and her careworn face unconsciously expressed not
gladness, but wonder. She got up and embraced her sister-in-law.

"What, here already?" she said as she kissed her.

"Dolly, how glad I am to see you!"

"I am glad, too," said Dolly, faintly smiling, and trying by the
expression of Anna's face to find out whether she knew. "Most likely
she knows," she thought, noticing the sympathy in Anna's face.
"Well, come along, I'll take you to your room," she went on, trying to
defer as long as possible the time of explanation.

"Is this Grisha? Heavens, how he's grown!" said Anna; and kissing
him, never taking her eyes off Dolly, she stood still and flushed.
"No, please, let us stay here."

She took off her shawl and her hat, and catching it in a lock of her
black hair, which was a mass of curls, she tossed her head and shook
her hair down.

"You are radiant with health and happiness!" said Dolly, almost with
envy.

"I?... Yes," said Anna. "Merciful heavens, Tania! You're the same
age as my Seriozha," she added, addressing the little girl as she
ran in. She took her in her arms and kissed her. "Delightful child,
delightful! Show me them all."

She mentioned them, not only remembering the names, but the years,
months, characters, illnesses of all the children, and Dolly could not
but appreciate that.

"Very well, we will go to them," she said. "It's a pity Vassia's
asleep."

After seeing the children, they sat down, alone now, in the
drawing room, to coffee. Anna took the tray, and then pushed it away
from her.

"Dolly," she said, "he has told me."

Dolly looked coldly at Anna; she was waiting now for
hypocritically sympathetic phrases, but Anna said nothing of the sort.

"Dolly, darling," she said, "I don't want to intercede for him,
nor to try to comfort you- that's impossible. But, my dearest, I'm
simply sorry, sorry from my heart for you!"

Under the thick lashes of her shining eyes tears suddenly glittered.
She moved nearer to her sister-in-law and took her hand in her own,
vigorous and little. Dolly did not shrink away, but her face did not
lose its frigid expression. She said:

"To comfort me is impossible. Everything's lost after what has
happened, everything's over!"

And directly she had said this, her face suddenly softened. Anna
lifted the wasted, thin hand of Dolly, kissed it and said:

"But, Dolly, what's to be done, what's to be done? How is it best to
act in this awful position- that's what you must think of."

"All's over, and there's nothing more," said Dolly. "And the worst
of it all is, you see, that I can't cast him off: there are the
children- my hands are tied. And I can't live with him! It's a torture
for me to see him."

"Dolly, darling, he has spoken to me, but I want to hear it from
you: tell me all about it."

Dolly looked at her inquiringly.

Sympathy and love unfeigned were apparent on Anna's face.

"Very well," she suddenly said. "But I will begin at the
beginning. You know how I was married. With the education maman gave
us I was more than innocent- I was foolish. I knew nothing. They
say, I know, men tell their wives of their former lives, but Stiva"-
she corrected herself- "Stepan Arkadyevich told me nothing. You'll
hardly believe it, but till now I imagined that I was the only woman
he had known. So I lived eight years. You must understand that I was
not only far from suspecting infidelity, but I regarded it as
impossible, and then- try to imagine it- with such conceptions to find
out suddenly all the horror, all the loathsomeness... You must try and
understand me. To be fully convinced of one's happiness, and all at
once..." continued Dolly, holding back her sobs, "To get a letter...
His letter to his mistress, a governess in my employ. No, it's too
awful!" She hastily pulled out her handkerchief and hid her face in
it. "I can understand if it were passion," she went on, after a
brief silence, "but to deceive me deliberately, slyly... And with
whom?... To go on being my husband while he and she... It's awful! You
can't understand..."

"Oh, yes, I understand! I understand! Dolly, dearest, I do
understand," said Anna, pressing her hand.

"And do you imagine he realizes all the awfulness of my position?
Dolly resumed. "Not in the slightest! He's happy and contented."

"Oh, no!" Anna interposed quickly. "He's to be pitied, he's
weighed down by remorse..."

"Is he capable of remorse?" Dolly interrupted, gazing intently
into her sister-in-law's face.

"Yes. I know him. I could not look at him without feeling sorry
for him. We both know him. He's good-natured, but he's proud, and
now he's so humiliated. What touched me most..." (And here Anna
guessed what would touch Dolly most.) "He's tortured by two things:
that he's ashamed for the children's sake, and that, loving you-
yes, yes, loving you beyond everything on earth," she hurriedly
interrupted Dolly, who would have rejoined- "he has hurt you,
pierced you to the heart. 'No, no, she cannot forgive me,' he keeps on
saying."

Dolly looked pensively past her sister-in-law as she listened to her
words.

"Yes, I can see that his position is awful; it's worse for the
guilty than the innocent," she said, "if he feels that all the
misery comes from his fault. But how am I to forgive him, how am I
to be his wife again after her? For me to live with him now would be
torture, just because I love my past love for him..."

And sobs cut short her words.

But as though of set design, each time she was softened she began to
speak again of what exasperated her.

"She's young, you see, she's pretty," she went on. "Do you know,
Anna, my youth and my beauty are gone, taken by whom? By him and his
children. I have worked for him, and all I had has gone in his
service, and now of course any fresh, vulgar creature has more charm
for him. No doubt they talked of me together, or, worse still, they
were silent about me.... Do you understand?"

Again her eyes glowed with hatred.

"And after that he will tell me... What! Am I to believe him? Never!
No, everything is over, everything that once constituted my comfort,
the reward of my work and of my sufferings... Would you believe it?
I was teaching Grisha just now: once this was a joy to me, now it is a
torture. What have I to strive and toil for? Why to have children?
What's so awful is that all at once my heart's turned, and instead
of love and tenderness, I have nothing but hatred for him; yes,
hatred. I could kill him and..."

"Darling Dolly, I understand, but don't torture yourself You are
so insulted, so excited, that you look at many things mistakenly."

Dolly grew calmer, and for two minutes both were silent.

"What's to be done? Think for me, Anna, help me. I have thought over
everything, and I see nothing."

Anna could not find anything, but her heart echoed instantly to each
word, to each change of expression on her sister-in-law's face.

"One thing I would say," began Anna. "I am his sister, I know his
character, that faculty of forgetting everything, everything" (she
waved her hand before her forehead), "that faculty for being
completely carried away, but for completely repenting, too. He
cannot believe it, he cannot comprehend now, how he could have acted
as he did."

"No; he understands, and understood!" Dolly broke in. "But I...
You are forgetting me... Does that make it easier for me?"

"Wait a minute. When he told me, I will own I did not realize all
the horror of your position. I saw nothing but him, and that the
family was broken up. I felt sorry for him, but after talking to
you, I see it, as a woman, quite differently. I see your agony, and
I can't tell you how sorry I am for you! But, Dolly, darling, while
I fully realize your sufferings, there is one thing I don't know; I
don't know... I don't know how much love there is still in your
heart for him. That you know- whether there is enough for you to be
able to forgive him. If there is- forgive him!"

"No," Dolly was beginning, but Anna cut her short, kissing her
hand once more.

"I know more of the world than you do," she said. I know how men
like Stiva look at it. You speak of his talking of you with her.
That never happened. Such men are unfaithful, but their own home and
wife are sacred to them. Somehow or other these women are still looked
on with contempt by them, and do not touch on their feeling for
their family. They draw a sort of line 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 of
what a poetry and loftiness you were for him, 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." have always been a divinity for
him, and you are that still, and this has not been a passion of the
heart...

"But if it be repeated?"

"It cannot be, as I understand it...

"Yes, but could you forgive it?"

"I don't know, I can't judge... No, I can judge," said Anna,
thinking a moment; and grasping the position in her thought and
weighing it in her inner balance, she added: "Yes, I can, I can, I
can. Yes, I could forgive. I could not be the same, no; but I could
forgive, and forgive as though it had never been, never been at
all...."

"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, and on the way she
embraced Anna. "My dear, how glad I am you came. It has made things
better, ever so much better."

                           XX.


The whole of that day Anna spent at home- that is, at the
Oblonskys', and received no one, though some of her acquaintances
had already heard of her arrival, and came to call the same day.
Anna spent the whole morning with Dolly and the children. She merely
sent a brief note to her brother to tell him that he must not fail
to dine at home. "Come, God is merciful," she wrote.

Oblonsky did dine at home: the conversation was general, and his
wife, speaking to him, addressed him as "Stiva," as she had not done
for some time past. In the relations of husband and wife the same
estrangement still remained, but there was no talk of separation,
and Stepan Arkadyevich saw the possibility of explanation and
reconciliation.

Immediately after dinner Kitty came in. She knew Anna Arkadyevna,
but only very slightly, and she came now to her sister's with some
trepidation, at the prospect of meeting this fashionable Peterburg
lady, of whom everyone spoke so highly. But she made a favorable
impression on Anna Arkadyevna- she perceived that at once. Anna was
unmistakably admiring her loveliness and her youth: before Kitty
knew where she was she found herself not merely under Anna's sway, but
in love with her, as young girls do fall in love with older and
married women. Anna did not resemble a fashionable lady, or the mother
of a boy eight years old. In the elasticity of her movements, the
freshness and the animation which persisted in her face and broke
out in her smile and her glance, she would rather have passed for a
girl of twenty, had it not been for a serious and, at times, a
mournful look in her eyes, which struck and attracted Kitty. Kitty
felt that Anna was perfectly simple and was concealing nothing, but
that she had another higher world of interests, complex and poetic,
which were inaccessible to Kitty.

After dinner, when Dolly withdrew to her own room, Anna rose quickly
and went up to her brother, who was just lighting a cigar.

"Stiva," she said to him, winking gaily, making the sign of the
cross over him, and glancing toward the door, "go, and God help you.

He tossed away his cigar, having understood her, and departed
through the doorway.

When Stepan Arkadyevich had disappeared, she went back to the sofa
where she had been sitting, surrounded by the children. Either because
the children saw that their mother was fond of this aunt, or that they
themselves sensed a special charm in her, the two elder ones, and
the younger following their lead, as children so often do, had clung
about their new aunt since before dinner, and would not leave her
side. And it had become a sort of game among them to sit as close as
possible to their aunt, to touch her, hold her little hand, kiss it,
play with her ring, or even touch the flounce of her skirt.

"Come, come, as we were sitting before," said Anna Arkadyevna,
sitting down in her place.

And again Grisha poked his little face under her arm, and nestled
with his head on her gown, beaming with pride and happiness.

"And when is your next ball?" she asked Kitty.

"Next week- and a splendid ball. One of those balls where one always
enjoys oneself."

"Why, are there balls where one always enjoys oneself?" Anna said,
with tender irony.

"It's strange, but there are. At the Bobrishchevs' one always enjoys
oneself, and at the Nikitins' too, while at the Mezhkovs' it's
always dull. Haven't you noticed it?"

"No, my dear, for me there are no balls now where one enjoys
oneself," said Anna, and Kitty detected in her eyes that peculiar
world which was not revealed to her. "For me there are some which
are less dull and tiresome than others."

"How can you be dull at a ball?"

"Why should not I be dull at a ball?" inquired Anna.

Kitty perceived that Anna knew what answer would follow.

"Because you always look the loveliest of all."

Anna had the faculty of blushing. She blushed, and said:

"In the first place it's never so; and secondly, if it were, what
difference would it make to me?"

"Are you coming to this ball? asked Kitty.

"I imagine it won't be possible to avoid going. Here, take it,"
she said to Tania, who was pulling the loosely fitting ring off her
white, slender-tipped finger.

"I shall be so glad if you go. I should so like to see you at a
ball."

"Anyway, if I do go, I shall comfort myself with the thought that
it's a pleasure to you.... Grisha, don't pull my hair. It's untidy
enough without that," she said, putting up a straying lock, which
Grisha had been playing with.

"I imagine you at the ball in lilac."

"And why in lilac, precisely?" asked Anna, smiling. "Now,
children, run along, run along. Do you hear? Miss Hoole is calling you
to tea," she said tearing the children from her, and sending them
off to the dining room.

"I know why you press me to come to the ball. You expect a great
deal of this ball, and you want everyone to be there and take part
in it."

"How do you know? Yes!"

"Oh! What a happy time you are at," pursued Anna. "I remember, and I
know this blue haze, like the mist on the mountains in Switzerland.
This mist, which covers everything in that blissful time when
childhood is just ending, and out of that vast circle, happy and
gay, there is a path growing narrower and narrower, and it is
delightful and alarming to enter the ballroom, bright and splendid
as it is.... Who has not been through it?"

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 unromantic appearance of Alexei Alexandrovich, her husband.

"I know something. Stiva told me, and I congratulate you. I liked
him so much," Anna continued. "I met Vronsky at the railway station."

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

"Stiva blabbed about it all. And I should be so glad. 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 although I know that he's her favorite, one
can still see how chivalrous he is.... Well, for instance, she told me
that he had wanted to give up all his property to his brother; that he
had done something extraordinary when he was quite a child- saved a
woman from the water. He's a hero, in fact," said Anna, smiling and
recollecting the two hundred roubles he had given at the station.

But she did not tell Kitty about the two hundred roubles. For some
reason it was disagreeable to her to think of it. She felt that
there was something that had to do with her in it, and something
that ought not to have been.

"She pressed me very much to go and see her," Anna went on; "and I
shall be glad to go to see her tomorrow. Stiva is staying a long while
in Dolly's room, thank God," Anna added, changing the subject, and
getting up, Kitty fancied, displeased with something.

"No, I'm first! No, I!" screamed the children, who had finished tea,
running up to their Aunt Anna.

"All together," said Anna, and she ran laughing to meet them, and,
embracing them, threw all the children, shrieking with delight, into a
swarming heap.

                           XXI.


Dolly came out of her room to the tea of the grownups. Stepan
Arkadyevich did not come out. He must have left his wife's room by a
back door.

"I am afraid you'll be cold upstairs," observed Dolly, addressing
Anna; "I want to move you downstairs, and we shall be nearer."

"Oh, please, don't trouble about me," answered Anna, looking
intently into Dolly's face, trying to make out whether there had
been a reconciliation or not.

"It will be lighter for you here," answered her sister-in-law.

"I assure you that I can sleep like a marmot anywhere and any time."

"What's all this?" inquired Stepan Arkadyevich, coming out of his
room and addressing his wife.

From his tone both Kitty and Anna at once gathered that a
reconciliation had taken place.

"I want to move Anna downstairs, but we must hang up blinds. No
one knows how to do it; I must see to it myself," answered Dolly
addressing him.

"God knows whether they are fully reconciled," thought Anna, hearing
her tone, cold and composed.

"Come, Dolly, why be always making difficulties," answered her
husband. "There, I'll do it all, if you like..."

"I know how you do everything," answered Dolly. "You tell Matvei
to do what can't be done, and go away yourself, leaving him to make
a muddle of everything," and her habitual, mocking smile curved the
corners of Dolly's lips as she spoke.

"Full, full reconciliation- full," thought Anna, "thank God!" and
rejoicing that she was the cause of it, she went up to Dolly and
kissed her.

"Not at all. Why do you always look down on me and Matvei?" said
Stepan Arkadyevich, smiling hardly perceptibly, and addressing his
wife.

The whole evening Dolly was, as always, a little mocking in her tone
to her husband, while Stepan Arkadyevich was happy and cheerful, yet
not so as to seem as if, having been forgiven, he had forgotten his
fault.

At half-past nine o'clock a particularly joyful and pleasant
family conversation over the tea table at the Oblonskys' was broken up
by an apparently simple incident. But this simple incident for some
reason struck everyone as strange. Having begun talking about common
acquaintances in Peterburg, Anna got up quickly.

"She is in my album," she said; "and, by the way, I'll show you my
Seriozha," she added, with a mother's smile of pride.

Toward ten o'clock, when she usually said good night to her son, and
often, before going to a ball put him to bed herself, she felt
depressed at being so far from him; and whatever she was talking
about, she kept coming back in thought to her curly-headed Seriozha.
She longed to look at his photograph and talk of him. Seizing the
first pretext, she got up, and with her light, resolute step went
for her album. The stairs up to her room came out on the landing of
the great warm main staircase.

Just as she was leaving the drawing room, a ring was heard in the
hall.

"Who can that be?" said Dolly.

"It's too early for me to be fetched, and for anyone else it's too
late," observed Kitty.

"It's sure to be someone with papers for me," put in Stepan
Arkadyevich. When Anna was passing the top of the staircase, a servant
was running up to announce the visitor, while the visitor himself
was standing under a lamp. Anna, glancing down, at once recognized
Vronsky, and a strange feeling of pleasure and, at the same time, of
some dread, stirred in her heart. He stood there, without taking off
his coat, and pulling something out of his pocket. At the instant when
she was just halfway up the stairs he raised his eyes, caught sight of
her, and the expression of his face changed to embarrassment and
dismay. With a slight inclination of her head she passed, hearing
behind her Stepan Arkadyevich's loud voice calling him to come up, and
the quiet, soft, and calm voice of Vronsky refusing.

When Anna returned with the album he was already gone, and Stepan
Arkadyevich was telling them that he had called to inquire about the
dinner they were giving next day to a foreign celebrity.

"And nothing would induce him to come up. What a queer fellow he
is!" added Stepan Arkadyevich.

Kitty blushed. She thought that she was the only person who knew why
he had come, and why he would not come up. "He has been at home,"
she thought, "and didn't find me, and thought I should be here, but he
did not come up because he thought it late, and Anna's here."

All of them looked at each other, saying nothing, and began to
look at Anna's album.

There was nothing either exceptional or strange in a man's calling
at half-past nine on a friend to inquire details of a proposed
dinner party and not coming in, yet it seemed strange to all of
them. And to Anna it seemed stranger and more unpleasant than to any
of the others.

                           XXII.


The ball was only just beginning as Kitty and her mother walked up
the great staircase, flooded with light, and lined with flowers and
footmen in powder and red coats. From the rooms came a constant,
steady noise, like that of a hive aswarm; and as they were giving
the final little touches to hair and dresses before a mirror on the
landing between potted trees, they heard, coming from the ballroom,
the gently distinct notes of the fiddles of the orchestra, beginning
the first waltz. A little ancient in civilian dress, arranging his
gray curls before another mirror, and diffusing an odor of scent,
stumbled against them on the stairs, and stood aside, evidently
admiring Kitty, whom he did not know. A beardless youth, one of
those society youths whom the old Prince Shcherbatsky called whelps,
in an exceedingly open waistcoat, straightening his white tie as he
went, bowed to them and after running by, came back to ask Kitty for a
quadrille. As the first quadrille had already been given to Vronsky,
she had to promise this youth the second. An officer, buttoning his
glove, stood aside in the doorway, and, stroking his mustache, admired
the rosy Kitty.

Although her dress, her coiffure, and all the preparations for the
ball had cost Kitty much trouble and planning, at this moment she
walked into the ballroom in the elaborate tulle dress over a pink slip
as unconcernedly and simply as though all the rosettes and lace, all
the minute details of her attire, had not cost her or her family a
moment's attention, as though she had been born in this tulle and
lace, with this towering coiffure, surmounted by a rose and two
small leaves.

When, just before entering the ballroom, the old Princess tried to
adjust a sash ribbon that had become twisted, Kitty had drawn back a
little. She felt that everything must be right of itself, and
graceful, and that nothing could need setting straight.

Kitty had one of her good days. Her dress was not uncomfortable
anywhere; her lace bertha did not droop anywhere; her rosettes were
neither crushed nor torn off; her pink slippers with high, curving
heels did not pinch, but gladdened her tiny feet; and the thick
bandeaux of fair hair kept up on her head. All the three buttons
buttoned up without tearing on the long glove that covered her hand
without concealing its lines. The black velvet ribbon of her locket
nestled with special tenderness round her neck. This velvet ribbon was
a darling; at home, regarding her neck in the looking glass, Kitty had
felt that that velvet was speaking. About all the rest there might
be a doubt, but the velvet ribbon was a darling. Kitty smiled here
too, at the ball, when she glanced at it in the glass. Her bare
shoulders and arms gave Kitty a sensation of chill marble- a sensation
she particularly liked. Her eyes sparkled, and her rosy 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."

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!"

"Where shall I take you?"

"Madame Karenina's here, I think.... Take me to her."

"Wherever you command."

And Korsunsky began waltzing with measured steps straight toward the
group in the left corner, continually saying, "Pardon, mesdames,
pardon, pardon, mesdames," and steering his course through the sea
of lace, tulle and ribbon, and not disarranging a feather, he turned
his partner sharply round, so that her slim ankles, in light,
transparent stockings, were exposed to view, and her train floated out
in fan shape and covered Krivin's knees. Korsunsky bowed, set straight
his open shirt front, and gave her his arm to conduct her to Anna
Arkadyevna. Kitty, flushed, took her train from Krivin's knees, and, a
little giddy, looked round, seeking Anna. Anna was not in lilac, as
Kitty had so urgently wished, but in a black, low-cut, velvet gown,
showing her full shoulders and bosom, that looked as though carved
in old ivory, and her rounded arms, with tiny, slender hands. The
whole gown was trimmed with Venetian guipure. On her head, among her
black hair- her own, with no false additions- was a little wreath of
pansies, and a similar one on the black ribbon of her sash, among
white lace. Her coiffure was not striking. All that was noticeable was
the little willful tendrils of her curly hair that persisted in
escaping on the nape of her neck, and on her temples. Encircling her
sculptured, strong neck was a thread of pearls.

Kitty had been seeing Anna every day; she adored her, and had
pictured her invariably in lilac. But now, seeing her in black, she
felt that she had not fully perceived her charm. She saw her now as
someone quite new and surprising to her. Now she understood that
Anna could not have been in lilac, and that her charm was precisely in
that she always stood out against her attire, that her dress could
never be noticeable on her. And her black dress, with its sumptuous
lace, was not noticeable on her; it was only the frame and all that
was seen was she- simple, natural, elegant, and at the same time gay
and animated.

She was standing, as always, very erect, and when Kitty drew near
the group she was speaking to the master of the house, her head
slightly turned toward him.

"No, I won't cast a stone," she was saying, in answer to
something, "though I can't understand it she went on, shrugging her
shoulders, and she turned at once with a soft smile of protection
toward Kitty. With a cursory feminine glance she scanned her attire,
and made a movement of her head, hardly perceptible, but understood by
Kitty, signifying approval of her dress and her looks. "You came
into the room dancing," she added.

"This is one of my most faithful supporters," said Korsunsky, bowing
to Anna Arkadyevna, whom he had not yet seen. "The Princess helps to
make any ball festive and successful. Anna Arkadyevna, a waltz?" he
said, bending down to her.

"Why, have you met?" inquired their host.

"Is there anyone we have not met? My wife and I are like white
wolves- everyone knows us," answered Korsunsky. "A waltz, Anna
Arkadyevna?"

"I don't dance whenever it's possible not to," she said.

"But tonight it's impossible," answered Korsunsky.

During the conversation Vronsky was approaching them.

"Well, since it's impossible tonight, let us start," she said, not
noticing Vronsky's bow, and hastily put her hand on Korsunsky's
shoulder.

"What is she vexed with him about?" thought Kitty, discerning that
Anna had intentionally not responded to Vronsky's bow. Vronsky went up
to Kitty, reminding her of the first quadrille, and expressing his
regret at not having seen her all this time. Kitty gazed in admiration
at Anna waltzing, as she listened to him. She expected him to ask
her for a waltz, but he did not, and she glanced wonderingly at him.
He flushed, and hurriedly asked her to waltz, but he had barely put
his arm round her slender 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 afterward- for several years- this 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.

                           XXIII.


Vronsky and Kitty waltzed several times round the room. After the
waltz Kitty went to her mother, and she had hardly time to say a few
words to Countess Nordstone when Vronsky came up again for the first
quadrille. During the quadrille nothing of any significance was
said: there was disjointed talk between them of the Korsunskys,
husband and wife, whom he described very amusingly, as delightful
children at forty, and of the future popular theater; and only once
did the conversation touch her to the quick- when he asked her whether
Levin were here, and added that he liked him very much. But Kitty
did not expect much from the quadrille. She looked forward with a
sinking heart to the mazurka. She fancied that the mazurka would
decide everything. The fact that he did not during the quadrille ask
her for the mazurka did not trouble her. She felt sure she would dance
it with him, as she had done at former balls, and refused five young
men, saying she was engaged for the mazurka. The whole ball up to
the last quadrille was for Kitty an enchanted vision of delightful
colors, sounds and motions. She only sat down when she felt too
tired and begged for a rest. But as she was dancing the last quadrille
with one of the tiresome young men whom she could not refuse, she
chanced to be vis-a-vis with Vronsky and Anna. She had not been near
Anna since the beginning of the evening, and now she again suddenly
saw her as quite new and surprising. She saw in her the signs of
that excitement of success she knew so well in herself; she saw that
she was intoxicated with the delighted admiration she was exciting.
She knew that feeling and knew its signs, and saw them in Anna; saw
the quivering, flashing light in her eyes, and the smile of
happiness and excitement unconsciously curving her lips, and the
distinct grace, precision and lightness of her movements.

"Who is it?" she asked herself. "All- or one?" And without keeping
up her end of the conversation, the thread of which the harassed young
man she was dancing with lost and could not pick up again, she
obeyed with external liveliness the peremptory shouts of Korsunsky
starting them all into the grand rond, and then into the chaine, and
at the same time she kept watch with a growing pang at her heart. "No,
it's not admiration of the crowd that has intoxicated her, but the
adoration of one. And that one? Can it be he?" Every time he spoke
to Anna the joyous light flashed into her eyes, and the smile of
happiness curved her red lips. She seemed to make an effort to control
herself, in order not to show these signs of delight, but they
appeared on her face of themselves. "But what of him?" Kitty looked at
him and was horrified. What was pictured so clearly to Kitty in the
mirror of Anna's face she saw in him. What had become of his always
calm, firm manner, and the carelessly calm expression of his face? Now
every time he turned to her he bent his head, as though he would
have fallen at her feet, and in his eyes there was nothing but
humble submission and dread. "I would not offend you," his eyes seemed
to be saying each time, "but I want to save myself, and I don't know
how." On his face was a look such as Kitty had never seen before.

They were speaking of common acquaintances, keeping up the
smallest of small talk, but to Kitty it seemed that every word they
said was determining their fate and hers. And strangely enough,
although they were actually talking of how absurd Ivan Ivanovich was
with his French, and how the Eletsky girl might have made a better
match, these words were yet fraught with significance for them, and
they sensed this as much as Kitty did. The whole ball, the whole
world, everything seemed screened by a fog within Kitty's soul.
Nothing but the stern discipline of her bringing-up supported her
and forced her to do what was expected of her- that is, to dance, to
answer questions, to talk, even to smile. But before the mazurka, when
they were beginning to rearrange the chairs and a few couples moved
out of the smaller rooms into the big room, a moment of despair and
horror came for Kitty. She had refused five partners, and now she
was not dancing the mazurka. She had not even a hope of being asked
for it, because she was so successful in society that the idea would
never occur to anyone that she had remained disengaged till now. She
would have to tell her mother she felt ill and go home, yet she had
not the strength to do this. She felt crushed.

She went to the farthest end of the second drawing room and sank
into a low chair. Her light, transparent skirts rose like a cloud
about her slender waist; one bare, thin, soft, girlish arm, hanging
listlessly, was lost in the folds of her pink tunic; in the other
she held her fan and with rapid, short strokes fanned her burning
face. Yet, while she looked like a butterfly clinging to a blade of
grass, and just about to open its rainbow wings for fresh flight,
her heart ached with a horrible despair.

"But perhaps I am wrong- perhaps it was not so?" And again she
recalled all she had seen.

"Kitty, what is it?" said Countess Nordstone, stepping noiselessly
over the carpet toward her. "I don't understand it."

Kitty's lower lip began to quiver; she got up quickly.

"Kitty, you're not dancing the mazurka?"

"No, no," said Kitty in a voice shaking with tears.

"He asked her for the mazurka in my presence," said Countess
Nordstone, knowing Kitty would understand who he and her were. "She
said: 'Why, aren't you going to dance it with Princess
Shcherbatskaia?'"

"Oh, it doesn't matter to me!" answered Kitty.

No one but she herself understood her position; no one knew that she
had refused yesterday the man whom perhaps she loved, and refused
him because she had put her faith in another.

Countess Nordstone found Korsunsky, with whom she was to dance the
mazurka, and told him to ask Kitty.

Kitty danced in the first couple, and luckily for her she had not to
talk because Korsunsky was all the time running about, overseeing
his demesne. Vronsky and Anna were sitting almost opposite her. She
saw them with her farsighted eyes, and saw them, too, close by when
they met in the figures, and the more she saw of them the more
convinced was she that her unhappiness was consummated. She saw that
they felt themselves alone in this crowded room. And on Vronsky's
face, always so firm and independent, she saw the look that had struck
her, of bewilderment and humble submissiveness, like the expression of
an intelligent dog when it has done wrong.

Anna smiled- and her smile was reflected by him. She grew
thoughtful- and he became serious. Some supernatural force drew
Kitty's eyes to Anna's face. She was charming in her simple black
dress; charming were her round arms with their bracelets; charming was
her firm neck with its thread of pearls; charming the straying curls
of her loose hair; charming the graceful, light movements of her
little feet and hands, charming was that lovely face in its animation-
yet there was something terrible and cruel in her charm.

Kitty admired her more than ever, and more and more acute did her
suffering grow. Kitty felt crushed, and her face showed it. When
Vronsky caught sight of her, coming upon her in the mazurka, he did
not at once recognize her, so changed was she.

"Delightful ball!" he said to her, merely for the sake of saying
something.

"Yes," she answered.

In the middle of the mazurka, repeating a complicated figure,
newly invented by Korsunsky, Anna came forward into the center of
the circle, chose two gentlemen, and summoned Kitty and another
lady. Kitty gazed at her in dismay as she went up. Anna looked at
her with drooping eyelids, and smiled, pressing her hand. But,
noticing that Kitty only responded to her smile by a look of despair
and amazement, she turned away from her, and began gaily talking to
the other lady.

"Yes, there is something uncanny, devilish and charming about
her," said Kitty to herself.

Anna did not want to stay for supper, but the master of the house
began urging her.

"Nonsense, Anna Arkadyevna," said Korsunsky placing her bare hand
upon his coat sleeve. "I've such an idea for a cotillon! Un bijou!"

And he moved gradually on, trying to draw her along with him.
Their host smiled approvingly.

"No, I'm not going to stay," answered Anna, smiling, but, in spite
of her smile, both Korsunsky and the master of the house saw from
her resolute tone that she would not stay.

"No; why, as it is, I have danced more at your ball in Moscow than I
have all the winter in Peterburg," said Anna, looking round at
Vronsky, who stood near her. "I must rest a little before my journey."

"Are you definitely going tomorrow then?" asked Vronsky.

"Yes, I suppose so," answered Anna, as though wondering at the
boldness of his question; but the irrepressible, quivering
brilliance of her eyes and her smile set him on fire as she said it.

Anna Arkadyevna did not stay to supper, but went home.

                           XXIV.


"Yes, there must be something disgusting, repulsive about me,"
reflected Levin, as he left the Shcherbatskys', and set out on foot
for his brother's lodgings. "And I don't get on with other people.
Pride, they say. No, I haven't even pride. If I had any pride, I
should not have put myself in such a position." And he pictured to
himself Vronsky, happy, good-natured, clever and calm- certainly never
placed in the awful position in which he had been that evening.
"Yes, she was bound to choose him. It must be so, and I cannot
complain of anyone or anything. I am myself to blame. What right had I
to imagine she would care to join her life to mine? Who am I, and what
am I? A nobody, not wanted by anyone, nor of use to anybody." And he
recalled his brother Nikolai, and dwelt with pleasure on the thought
of him. "Isn't he right in saying that everything in the world is
bad and vile? And are we fair in our judgment, present and past, of
brother Nikolai? Of course, from the point of view of Procophii,
seeing him in a torn cloak and tipsy, he's a despicable person. But
I know him differently. I know his soul, and know that we are alike.
And I, instead of going to seek him out, went out to dinner, and
then came here." Levin walked up to a lamppost, read his brother's
address, which was in his pocketbook, and called a cabby. All the long
way to his brother's Levin vividly recalled all the facts, familiar to
him, of his brother Nikolai's life. He remembered how his brother,
while at the university, and for a year afterward, had, in spite of
the jeers of his companions, lived like a monk, strictly observing all
religious rites, services and fasts, and avoiding every sort of
pleasure- especially women. And now, afterward, he had all at once
broken out: had associated with the most horrible people, and rushed
into the most senseless debauchery. He remembered later the scandal
over a boy, whom he had taken from the country to bring up, and, in
a fit of rage, had so violently beaten that proceedings were brought
against him for personal injury. Then he remembered the scandal with a
sharper, to whom he had lost money, and given a promissory note, and
against whom he had himself lodged a complaint, asserting that he
had cheated him. (This was the money Sergei Ivanovich had paid.)
Then he remembered how he had spent a night in a police station for
disorderly conduct in the street. He remembered the shameful
proceedings he had instituted against his brother Sergei Ivanovich,
accusing him of not having paid him, apparently, his share of his
mother's estate; and the last scandal, when he had gone to a Western
province in an official capacity, and there had got into trouble for
assaulting a village elder.... It was all horribly vile, yet to
Levin it appeared not at all as vile as it inevitably would to those
who did not know Nikolai, did not know all his story, did not know his
heart.

Levin remembered that when Nikolai had been in the devout stage, the
period of fasts and monks and church services, when he was seeking
in religion a support and a curb for his passionate temperament,
everyone, far from encouraging him, had jeered at him- and Levin
had, too, with the others. They had teased him, calling him Noah and
Monk; yet, when he had broken out, no one had helped him, but had
all turned away from him, with horror and loathing.

Levin felt that brother Nikolai, in spite of all the ugliness of his
life, in his soul, in the very depths of his soul, was no more in
the wrong than the people who despised him. He was not to blame for
having been born with his unbridled character and some pressure upon
his intellect. For he had always wanted to be good. "I will tell him
everything, without reserve, and I will make him speak without
reserve, too, and I'll show him that I love him, and therefore
understand him," Levin resolved to himself, as, toward eleven o'clock,
he reached the hotel of which he had the address.

"At the top, twelve and thirteen," the porter answered Levin's
inquiry.

"At home?"

"Probably he is at home."

The door of No. 12 was half open, and, together with a streak of
light, there issued thick fumes of cheap, poor tobacco, and the
sound of a voice, unknown to Levin; but he knew at once that his
brother was there: he recognized his cough.

As he went in at the door, the unknown voice was saying:

"It all depends with how much judgment and knowledge the thing's
done."

Konstantin Levin looked in at the door, and saw that the speaker was
a young man with an immense shock of hair, wearing a Russian coat, and
that a pock-marked young woman in a woolen gown, without collar or
cuffs, was sitting on the sofa. His brother was not to be seen.
Konstantin felt a sharp pang at his heart at the thought of the
strange company in which his brother spent his life. No one had
heard him, and Konstantin, taking off his galoshes, listened to what
the gentleman in the Russian coat was saying. He was speaking of
some enterprise.

"Well, the devil flay them, these privileged classes," his brother's
voice responded, with a cough. "Masha! get us some supper, and serve
up some wine, if there's any left; or else send for some."

The woman rose, came out from behind the partition, and saw
Konstantin.

"There's some gentleman here, Nikolai Dmitrievich," she said.

"Whom do you want?" said the voice of Nikolai Levin, angrily.

"It's I," answered Konstantin Levin, coming forward into the light.

"Who's I?" Nikolai's voice said again, still more angrily. He
could be heard getting up hurriedly, stumbling against something,
and Levin saw, facing him in the doorway, the big scared eyes, and the
huge, gaunt, stooping figure of his brother, so familiar, and yet
astonishing in its oddity and sickliness.

He was even thinner than three years before, when Konstantin Levin
had seen him last. He was wearing a short coat, and his hands and
big bones seemed huger than ever. His hair had grown thinner, the same
straight mustache hid his lips, the same eyes gazed strangely and
naively at his visitor.

"Ah, Kostia!" he exclaimed suddenly, recognizing his brother, and
his eyes lighted up with joy. But the same second he looked round at
the young man, and gave the nervous jerk of his head and neck that
Konstantin knew so well, as if his cravat were choking him; and a
quite different expression- wild, suffering and cruel- rested on his
emaciated face.

"I wrote to you and Sergei Ivanovich both that I don't know you, and
don't want to know you. What is it you want?"

He was not at all the same as Konstantin had been fancying him.
The worst and most oppressive part of his character, which made all
relations with him so difficult, had been forgotten by Konstantin
Levin when he thought of him; and now, when he saw his face, and
especially that nervous twitching of his head, he remembered it all.

"I didn't want to see you for anything," he answered timidly.
"I've simply come to see you."

His brother's timidity obviously softened Nikolai. His lips
twitched.

"Oh, so that's it?" he said. "Well, come in; sit down. Like some
supper? Masha, bring supper for three. No, stop a minute. Do you
know who this is?" he said, addressing his brother, and indicating the
gentleman in the Russian coat: "This is Mr. Kritsky, a friend of my
Kiev days- a very remarkable man. He's persecuted by the police, of
course, since he's not a scoundrel."

And he surveyed, as it was a habit of his, everyone in the room.
Seeing that the woman standing in the doorway was starting to go, he
shouted to her. "Wait a minute, I said." And with that inability to
express himself, the incoherence that Konstantin knew so well, he
began, with another look round at everyone, to tell Kritsky's story to
his brother: how he had been expelled from the university for starting
a benevolent society for the poor students, and classes on Sunday, and
how he had afterward been a teacher in a rural school, and had been
driven out of that, too; and had afterward been on trial for something
or other.

"You're of the Kiev University?" said Konstantin Levin to Kritsky,
to break the awkward silence that followed.

"Yes- I was in Kiev," Kritsky replied angrily, his face darkening.

"And this woman," Nikolai Levin interrupted him, pointing to her,
"is my lifemate, Marya Nikolaevna. I took her out of a dive, and he
jerked his neck as he said it. "But I love her and respect her, and
anyone who wants to know me," he added, raising his voice and knitting
his brows, "is requested to love her and respect her. She's
precisely the same as a wife to me- precisely. So now you know whom
you've got to do with. And if you think you're lowering yourself-
well, there's the door, and God speed thee!"

And again his eyes traveled inquiringly over all of them.

"But how will I lower myself? I don't understand."

"Then, Masha, tell them to bring supper; three portions, and vodka
and wine... No, wait a minute... No, it doesn't matter... Go ahead."