Chapter 3
Kitty was particularly glad of a chance of being alone
with her husband, for she had noticed the shade of
mortification that had passed over his face—always so
quick to reflect every feeling—at the moment when he
had come onto the terrace and asked what they were
talking of, and had got no answer.
When they had set off on foot ahead of the others, and
had come out of sight of the house onto the beaten dusty
road, marked with rusty wheels and sprinkled with grains
of corn, she clung faster to his arm and pressed it closer to
her. He had quite forgotten the momentary unpleasant
impression, and alone with her he felt, now that the
thought of her approaching motherhood was never for a
moment absent from his mind, a new and delicious bliss,
quite pure from all alloy of sense, in the being near to the
woman he loved. There was no need of speech, yet he
longed to hear the sound of her voice, which like her eyes
had changed since she had been with child. In her voice,
as in her eyes, there was that softness and gravity which is
found in people continually concentrated on some
cherished pursuit.
‘So you’re not tired? Lean more on me,’ said he.
‘No, I’m so glad of a chance of being alone with you,
and I must own, though I’m happy with them, I do regret
our winter evenings alone.’
‘That was good, but this is even better. Both are
better,’ he said, squeezing her hand.
‘Do you know what we were talking about when you
came in?’
‘About jam?’
‘Oh, yes, about jam too; but afterwards, about how
men make offers.’
‘Ah!’ said Levin, listening more to the sound of her
voice than to the words she was saying, and all the while
paying attention to the road, which passed now through
the forest, and avoiding places where she might make a
false step.
‘And about Sergey Ivanovitch and Varenka. You’ve
noticed?... I’m very anxious for it,’ she went on. ‘What do
you think about it?’ And she peeped into his face.
‘I don’t know what to think,’ Levin answered, smiling.
‘Sergey seems very strange to me in that way. I told you,
you know..’
‘Yes, that he was in love with that girl who died...’

‘That was when I was a child; I know about it from
hearsay and tradition. I remember him then. He was
wonderfully sweet. But I’ve watched him since with
women; he is friendly, some of them he likes, but one
feels that to him they’re simply people, not women.’
‘Yes, but now with Varenka...I fancy there’s
something..’
‘Perhaps there is.... But one has to know him.... He’s a
peculiar, wonderful person. He lives a spiritual life only.
He’s too pure, too exalted a nature.’
‘Why? Would this lower him, then?’
‘No, but he’s so used to a spiritual life that he can’t
reconcile himself with actual fact, and Varenka is after all
fact.’
Levin had grown used by now to uttering his thought
boldly, without taking the trouble of clothing it in exact
language. He knew that his wife, in such moments of
loving tenderness as now, would understand what he
meant to say from a hint, and she did understand him.
‘Yes, but there’s not so much of that actual fact about
her as about me. I can see that he would never have cared
for me. She is altogether spiritual.’
‘Oh, no, he is so fond of you, and I am always so glad
when my people like you...’
‘Yes, he’s very nice to me; but..’
‘It’s not as it was with poor Nikolay...you really cared
for each other,’ Levin finished. ‘Why not speak of him?’
he added. ‘I sometimes blame myself for not; it ends in
one’s forgetting. Ah, how terrible and dear he was!... Yes,
what were we talking about?’ Levin said, after a pause.
‘You think he can’t fall in love,’ said Kitty, translating
into her own language.
‘It’s not so much that he can’t fall in love,’ Levin said,
smiling, ‘but he has not the weakness necessary.... I’ve
always envied him, and even now, when I’m so happy, I
still envy him.’
‘You envy him for not being able to fall in love?’
‘I envy him for being better than I,’ said Levin. ‘He
does not live for himself. His whole life is subordinated to
his duty. And that’s why he can be calm and contented.’
‘And you?’ Kitty asked, with an ironical and loving
smile.
She could never have explained the chain of thought
that made her smile; but the last link in it was that her
husband, in exalting his brother and abasing himself, was
not quite sincere. Kitty knew that this insincerity came
from his love for his brother, from his sense of shame at
being too happy, and above all from his unflagging craving
to be better—she loved it in him, and so she smiled.
‘And you? What are you dissatisfied with?’ she asked,
with the same smile.
Her disbelief in his self-dissatisfaction delighted him,
and unconsciously he tried to draw her into giving
utterance to the grounds of her disbelief.
‘I am happy, but dissatisfied with myself...’ he said.
‘Why, how can you be dissatisfied with yourself if you
are happy?’
‘Well, how shall I say?... In my heart I really care for
nothing whatever but that you should not stumble—see?
Oh, but really you mustn’t skip about like that!’ he cried,
breaking off to scold her for too agile a movement in
stepping over a branch that lay in the path. ‘But when I
think about myself, and compare myself with others,
especially with my brother, I feel I’m a poor creature.’
‘But in what way?’ Kitty pursued with the same smile.
‘Don’t you too work for others? What about your cooperative
settlement, and your work on the estate, and
your book?..’
‘Oh, but I feel, and particularly just now—it’s your
fault,’ he said, pressing her hand—‘that all that doesn’t
count. I do it in a way halfheartedly. If I could care for all
that as I care for you!... Instead of that, I do it in these days
like a task that is set me.’
‘Well, what would you say about papa?’ asked Kitty. ‘Is
he a poor creature then, as he does nothing for the public
good?’
‘He?—no! But then one must have the simplicity, the
straightforwardness, the goodness of your father: and I
haven’t got that. I do nothing, and I fret about it. It’s all
your doing. Before there was you—and THIS too,’ he
added with a glance towards her waist that she
understood— ‘I put all my energies into work; now I
can’t, and I’m ashamed; I do it just as though it were a task
set me, I’m pretending...’
‘Well, but would you like to change this minute with
Sergey Ivanovitch?’ said Kitty. ‘Would you like to do this
work for the general good, and to love the task set you, as
he does, and nothing else?’
‘Of course not,’ said Levin. ‘But I’m so happy that I
don’t understand anything. So you think he’ll make her an
offer today?’ he added after a brief silence.
‘I think so, and I don’t think so. Only, I’m awfully
anxious for it. Here, wait a minute.’ she stooped down
and picked a wild camomile at the edge of the path.
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‘Come, count: he does propose, he doesn’t,’ she said,
giving him the flower.
‘He does, he doesn’t,’ said Levin, tearing off the white
petals.
‘No, no!’ Kitty, snatching at his hand, stopped him.
She had been watching his fingers with interest. ‘You
picked off two.’
‘Oh, but see, this little one shan’t count to make up,’
said Levin, tearing off a little half-grown petal. ‘Here’s the
wagonette overtaking us.’
‘Aren’t you tired, Kitty?’ called the princess.
‘Not in the least.’
‘If you are you can get in, as the horses are quiet and
walking.’
But it was not worth while to get in, they were quite
near the place, and all walked on together.
Chapter 4
Varenka, with her white kerchief on her black hair,
surrounded by the children, gaily and good-humoredly
looking after them, and at the same time visibly excited at
the possibility of receiving a declaration from the man she
cared for, was very attractive. Sergey Ivanovitch walked
beside her, and never left off admiring her. Looking at her,
he recalled all the delightful things he had heard from her
lips, all the good he knew about her, and became more
and more conscious that the feeling he had for her was
something special that he had felt long, long ago, and only
once, in his early youth. The feeling of happiness in being
near her continually grew, and at last reached such a point
that, as he put a huge, slender-stalked agaric fungus in her
basket, he looked straight into her face, and noticing the
flush of glad and alarmed excitement that overspread her
face, he was confused himself, and smiled to her in silence
a smile that said too much.
‘If so,’ he said to himself, ‘I ought to think it over and
make up my mind, and not give way like a boy to the
impulse of a moment.’
‘I’m going to pick by myself apart from all the rest, or
else my efforts will make no show,’ he said, and he left the
edge of the forest where they were walking on low silky
grass between old birch trees standing far apart, and went
more into the heart of the wood, where between the
white birch trunks there were gray trunks of aspen and
dark bushes of hazel. Walking some forty paces away,
Sergey Ivanovitch, knowing he was out of sight, stood still
behind a bushy spindle-tree in full flower with its rosy red
catkins. It was perfectly still all round him. Only overhead
in the birches under which he stood, the flies, like a
swarm of bees, buzzed unceasingly, and from time to time
the children’s voices were floated across to him. All at
once he heard, not far from the edge of the wood, the
sound of Varenka’s contralto voice, calling Grisha, and a
smile of delight passed over Sergey Ivanovitch’s face.
Conscious of this smile, he shook his head disapprovingly
at his own condition, and taking out a cigar, he began
lighting it. For a long while he could not get a match to
light against the trunk of a birch tree. The soft scales of the
white bark rubbed off the phosphorus, and the light went
out. At last one of the matches burned, and the fragrant
cigar smoke, hovering uncertainly in flat, wide coils,
stretched away forwards and upwards over a bush under
the overhanging branches of a birch tree. Watching the
streak of smoke, Sergey Ivanovitch walked gently on,
deliberating on his position.
‘Why not?’ he thought. ‘If it were only a passing fancy
or a passion, if it were only this attraction—this mutual
attraction (I can call it a MUTUAL attraction), but if I felt
that it was in contradiction with the whole bent of my
life—if I felt that in giving way to this attraction I should
be false to my vocation and my duty...but it’s not so. The
only thing I can say against it is that, when I lost Marie, I
said to myself that I would remain faithful to her memory.
That’s the only thing I can say against my feeling.... That’s
a great thing,’ Sergey Ivanovitch said to himself, feeling at
the same time that this consideration had not the slightest
importance for him personally, but would only perhaps
detract from his romantic character in the eyes of others.
‘But apart from that, however much I searched, I should
never find anything to say against my feeling. If I were
choosing by considerations of suitability alone, I could not
have found anything better.’
However many women and girls he thought of whom
he knew, he could not think of a girl who united to such
a degree all, positively all, the qualities he would wish to
see in his wife. She had all the charm and freshness of
youth, but she was not a child; and if she loved him, she
loved him consciously as a woman ought to love; that was
one thing. Another point: she was not only far from being
worldly, but had an unmistakable distaste for worldly
society, and at the same time she knew the world, and had
all the ways of a woman of the best society, which were
absolutely essential to Sergey Ivanovitch’s conception of
the woman who was to share his life. Thirdly: she was
religious, and not like a child, unconsciously religious and
good, as Kitty, for example, was, but her life was founded
on religious principles. Even in trifling matters, Sergey
Ivanovitch found in her all that he wanted in his wife: she
was poor and alone in the world, so she would not bring
with her a mass of relations and their influence into her
husband’s house, as he saw now in Kitty’s case. She would
owe everything to her husband, which was what he had
always desired too for his future family life. And this girl,
who united all these qualities, loved him. He was a modest
man, but he could not help seeing it. And he loved her.
There was one consideration against it—his age. But he
came of a long-lived family, he had not a single gray hair,
no one would have taken him for forty, and he
remembered Varenka’s saying that it was only in Russia
that men of fifty thought themselves old, and that in
France a man of fifty considers himself dans la force de
l’age, while a man of forty is un jeune homme. But what
did the mere reckoning of years matter when he felt as
young in heart as he had been twenty years ago? Was it
not youth to feel as he felt now, when coming from the
other side to the edge of the wood he saw in the glowing
light of the slanting sunbeams the gracious figure of
Varenka in her yellow gown with her basket, walking
lightly by the trunk of an old birch tree, and when this
impression of the sight of Varenka blended so
harmoniously with the beauty of the view, of the yellow
oatfield lying bathed in the slanting sunshine, and beyond
it the distant ancient forest flecked with yellow and
melting into the blue of the distance? His heart throbbed
joyously. A softened feeling came over him. He felt that
he had made up his mind. Varenka, who had just
crouched down to pick a mushroom, rose with a supple
movement and looked round. Flinging away the cigar,
Sergey Ivanovitch advanced with resolute steps towards
her.

Chapter 5
‘Varvara Andreevna, when I was very young, I set
before myself the ideal of the women I loved and should
be happy to call my wife. I have lived through a long life,
and now for the first time I have met what I sought—in
you. I love you, and offer you my hand.’
Sergey Ivanovitch was saying this to himself while he
was ten paces from Varvara. Kneeling down, with her
hands over the mushrooms to guard them from Grisha,
she was calling little Masha.
‘Come here, little ones! There are so many!’ she was
saying in her sweet, deep voice.
Seeing Sergey Ivanovitch approaching, she did not get
up and did not change her position, but everything told
him that she felt his presence and was glad of it.
‘Well, did you find some?’ she asked from under the
white kerchief, turning her handsome, gently smiling face
to him.
‘Not one,’ said Sergey Ivanovitch. ‘Did you?’
She did not answer, busy with the children who
thronged about her.
‘That one too, near the twig,’ she pointed out to little
Masha a little fungus, split in half across its rosy cap by the
dry grass from under which it thrust itself. Varenka got up
while Masha picked the fungus, breaking it into two white
halves. ‘This brings back my childhood,’ she added,
moving apart from the children beside Sergey Ivanovitch.
They walked on for some steps in silence. Varenka saw
that he wanted to speak; she guessed of what, and felt faint
with joy and panic. They had walked so far away that no
one could hear them now, but still he did not begin to
speak. It would have been better for Varenka to be silent.
After a silence it would have been easier for them to say
what they wanted to say than after talking about
mushrooms. But against her own will, as it were
accidentally, Varenka said:
‘So you found nothing? In the middle of the wood
there are always fewer, though.’ Sergey Ivanovitch sighed
and made no answer. He was annoyed that she had spoken
about the mushrooms. He wanted to bring her back to the
first words she had uttered about her childhood; but after a
pause of some length, as though against his own will, he
made an observation in response to her last words.
‘I have heard that the white edible funguses are found
principally at the edge of the wood, though I can’t tell
them apart.’
Some minutes more passed, they moved still further
away from the children, and were quite alone. Varenka’s
heart throbbed so that she heard it beating, and felt that
she was turning red and pale and red again.
To be the wife of a man like Koznishev, after her
position with Madame Stahl, was to her imagination the
height of happiness. Besides, she was almost certain that
she was in love with him. And this moment it would have
to be decided. She felt frightened. She dreaded both his
speaking and his not speaking.
Now or never it must be said—that Sergey Ivanovitch
felt too. Everything in the expression, the flushed cheeks
and the downcast eyes of Varenka betrayed a painful
suspense. Sergey Ivanovitch saw it and felt sorry for her.
He felt even that to say nothing now would be a slight to
her. Rapidly in his own mind he ran over all the
arguments in support of his decision. He even said over to
himself the words in which he meant to put his offer, but
instead of those words, some utterly unexpected reflection
that occurred to him made him ask:
‘What is the difference between the ‘birch’ mushroom
and the ‘white’ mushroom?’
Varenka’s lips quivered with emotion as she answered:
‘In the top part there is scarcely any difference, it’s in
the stalk.’
And as soon as these words were uttered, both he and
she felt that it was over, that what was to have been said
would not be said; and their emotion, which had up to
then been continually growing more intense, began to
subside.
‘The birch mushroom’s stalk suggests a dark man’s chin
after two days without shaving,’ said Sergey Ivanovitch,
speaking quite calmly now.
‘Yes, that’s true,’ answered Varenka smiling, and
unconsciously the direction of their walk changed. They
began to turn towards the children. Varenka felt both sore
and ashamed; at the same time she had a sense of relief.
When he had got home again and went over the whole
subject, Sergey Ivanovitch thought his previous decision
had been a mistaken one. He could not be false to the
memory of Marie.
‘Gently, children, gently!’ Levin shouted quite angrily
to the children, standing before his wife to protect her
when the crowd of children flew with shrieks of delight to
meet them.
Behind the children Sergey Ivanovitch and Varenka
walked out of the wood. Kitty had no need to ask
Varenka; she saw from the calm and somewhat crestfallen
faces of both that her plans had not come off.
‘Well?’ her husband questioned her as they were going
home again.
‘It doesn’t bite,’ said Kitty, her smile and manner of
speaking recalling her father, a likeness Levin often noticed
with pleasure.
‘How doesn’t bite?’
‘I’ll show you,’ she said, taking her husband’s hand,
lifting it to her mouth, and just faintly brushing it with
closed lips. ‘Like a kiss on a priest’s hand.’
‘Which didn’t it bite with?’ he said, laughing.
‘Both. But it should have been like this..’
‘There are some peasants coming..’
‘Oh, they didn’t see.’
Chapter 6
During the time of the children’s tea the grown-up
people sat in the balcony and talked as though nothing had
happened, though they all, especially Sergey Ivanovitch
and Varenka, were very well aware that there had
happened an event which, though negative, was of very
great importance. They both had the same feeling, rather
like that of a schoolboy after an examination, which has
left him in the same class or shut him out of the school
forever. Everyone present, feeling too that something had
happened, talked eagerly about extraneous subjects. Levin
and Kitty were particularly happy and conscious of their
love that evening. And their happiness in their love
seemed to imply a disagreeable slur on those who would
have liked to feel the same and could not—and they felt a
prick of conscience.
‘Mark my words, Alexander will not come,’ said the
old princess.
That evening they were expecting Stepan Arkadyevitch
to come down by train, and the old prince had written
that possibly he might come too.
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‘And I know why,’ the princess went on; ‘he says that
young people ought to be left alone for a while at first.’
‘But papa has left us alone. We’ve never seen him,’ said
Kitty. ‘Besides, we’re not young people!—we’re old,
married people by now.’
‘Only if he doesn’t come, I shall say good-bye to you
children,’ said the princess, sighing mournfully.
‘What nonsense, mamma!’ both the daughters fell upon
her at once.
‘How do you suppose he is feeling? Why, now..’
And suddenly there was an unexpected quiver in the
princess’s voice. Her daughters were silent, and looked at
one another. ‘Maman always finds something to be
miserable about,’ they said in that glance. They did not
know that happy as the princess was in her daughter’s
house, and useful as she felt herself to be there, she had
been extremely miserable, both on her own account and
her husband’s, ever since they had married their last and
favorite daughter, and the old home had been left empty.
‘What is it, Agafea Mihalovna?’ Kitty asked suddenly of
Agafea Mihalovna, who was standing with a mysterious
air, and a face full of meaning.
‘About supper.’
‘Well, that’s right,’ said Dolly; ‘you go and arrange
about it, and I’ll go and hear Grisha repeat his lesson, or
else he will have nothing done all day.’
‘That’s my lesson! No, Dolly, I’m going,’ said Levin,
jumping up.
Grisha, who was by now at a high school, had to go
over the lessons of the term in the summer holidays. Darya
Alexandrovna, who had been studying Latin with her son
in Moscow before, had made it a rule on coming to the
Levins’ to go over with him, at least once a day, the most
difficult lessons of Latin and arithmetic. Levin had offered
to take her place, but the mother, having once overheard
Levin’s lesson, and noticing that it was not given exactly as
the teacher in Moscow had given it, said resolutely,
though with much embarrassment and anxiety not to
mortify Levin, that they must keep strictly to the book as
the teacher had done, and that she had better undertake it
again herself. Levin was amazed both at Stepan
Arkadyevitch, who, by neglecting his duty, threw upon
the mother the supervision of studies of which she had no
comprehension, and at the teachers for teaching the
children so badly. But he promised his sister-in-law to
give the lessons exactly as she wished. And he went on
teaching Grisha, not in his own way, but by the book, and
so took little interest in it, and often forgot the hour of the
lesson. So it had been today.
‘No, I’m going, Dolly, you sit still,’ he said. ‘We’ll do it
all properly, like the book. Only when Stiva comes, and
we go out shooting, then we shall have to miss it.’
And Levin went to Grisha.
Varenka was saying the same thing to Kitty. Even in
the happy, well-ordered household of the Levins Varenka
had succeeded in making herself useful.
‘I’ll see to the supper, you sit still,’ she said, and got up
to go to Agafea Mihalovna.
‘Yes, yes, most likely they’ve not been able to get
chickens. If so, ours..’
‘Agafea Mihalovna and I will see about it,’ and Varenka
vanished with her.
‘What a nice girl!’ said the princess.
‘Not nice, maman; she’s an exquisite girl; there’s no
one else like her.’
‘So you are expecting Stepan Arkadyevitch today?’ said
Sergey Ivanovitch, evidently not disposed to pursue the
conversation about Varenka. ‘It would be difficult to find
two sons-in-law more unlike than yours,’ he said with a
subtle smile. ‘One all movement, only living in society,
like a fish in water; the other our Kostya, lively, alert,
quick in everything, but as soon as he is in society, he
either sinks into apathy, or struggles helplessly like a fish
on land.’
‘Yes, he’s very heedless,’ said the princess, addressing
Sergey Ivanovitch. ‘I’ve been meaning, indeed, to ask you
to tell him that it’s out of the question for her’ (she
indicated Kitty) ‘to stay here; that she positively must
come to Moscow. He talks of getting a doctor down..’
‘Maman, he’ll do everything; he has agreed to
everything,’ Kitty said, angry with her mother for
appealing to Sergey Ivanovitch to judge in such a matter.
In the middle of their conversation they heard the
snorting of horses and the sound of wheels on the gravel.
Dolly had not time to get up to go and meet her husband,
when from the window of the room below, where Grisha
was having his lesson, Levin leaped out and helped Grisha
out after him.
‘It’s Stiva!’ Levin shouted from under the balcony.
‘We’ve finished, Dolly, don’t be afraid!’ he added, and
started running like a boy to meet the carriage.
‘Is ea id, ejus, ejus, ejus!’ shouted Grisha, skipping along
the avenue.
‘And some one else too! Papa, of course!’ cried Levin,
stopping at the entrance of the avenue. ‘Kitty, don’t come
down the steep staircase, go round.’
But Levin had been mistaken in taking the person
sitting in the carriage for the old prince. As he got nearer
to the carriage he saw beside Stepan Arkadyevitch not the
prince but a handsome, stout young man in a Scotch cap,
with long ends of ribbon behind. This was Vassenka
Veslovsky, a distant cousin of the Shtcherbatskys, a
brilliant young gentleman in Petersburg and Moscow
society. ‘A capital fellow, and a keen sportsman,’ as Stepan
Arkadyevitch said, introducing him.
Not a whit abashed by the disappointment caused by
his having come in place of the old prince, Veslovsky
greeted Levin gaily, claiming acquaintance with him in the
past, and snatching up Grisha into the carriage, lifted him
over the pointer that Stepan Arkadyevitch had brought
with him.
Levin did not get into the carriage, but walked behind.
He was rather vexed at the non-arrival of the old prince,
whom he liked more and more the more he saw of him,
and also at the arrival of this Vassenka Veslovsky, a quite
uncongenial and superfluous person. He seemed to him
still more uncongenial and superfluous when, on
approaching the steps where the whole party, children and
grown-up, were gathered together in much excitement,
Levin saw Vassenka Veslovsky, with a particularly warm
and gallant air, kissing Kitty’s hand.
‘Your wife arid I are cousins and very old friends,’ said
Vassenka Veslovsky, once more shaking Levin’s hand with
great warmth.
‘Well, are there plenty of birds?’ Stepan Arkadyevitch
said to Levin, hardly leaving time for everyone to utter
their greetings. ‘We’ve come with the most savage
intentions. Why, maman, they’ve not been in Moscow
since! Look, Tanya, here’s something for you! Get it,
please, it’s in the carriage, behind!’ he talked in all
directions. ‘How pretty you’ve grown, Dolly,’ he said to
his wife, once more kissing her hand, holding it in one of
his, and patting it with the other.
Levin, who a minute before had been in the happiest
frame of mind, now looked darkly at everyone, and
everything displeased him.
‘Who was it he kissed yesterday with those lips?’ he
thought, looking at Stepan Arkadyevitch’s tender
demonstrations to his wife. He looked at Dolly, and he did
not like her either.
‘She doesn’t believe in his love. So what is she so
pleased about? Revolting!’ thought Levin.
He looked at the princess, who had been so dear to
him a minute before, and he did not like the manner in
which she welcomed this Vassenka, with his ribbons, just
as though she were in her own house.
Even Sergey Ivanovitch, who had come out too onto
the steps, seemed to him unpleasant with the show of
cordiality with which he met Stepan Arkadyevitch,
though Levin knew that his brother neither liked nor
respected Oblonsky.
And Varenka, even she seemed hateful, with her air
sainte nitouche making the acquaintance of this
gentleman, while all the while she was thinking of nothing
but getting married.
And more hateful than anyone was Kitty for falling in
with the tone of gaiety with which this gentleman
regarded his visit in the country, as though it were a
holiday for himself and everyone else. And, above all,
unpleasant was that particular smile with which she
responded to his smile.
Noisily talking, they all went into the house; but as
soon as they were all seated, Levin turned and went out.
Kitty saw something was wrong with her husband. She
tried to seize a moment to speak to him alone, but he
made haste to get away from her, saying he was wanted at
the counting-house. It was long since his own work on
the estate had seemed to him so important as at that
moment. ‘It’s all holiday for them,’ he thought; ‘but these
are no holiday matters, they won’t wait, and there’s no
living without them.’
Chapter 7
Levin came back to the house only when they sent to
summon him to supper. On the stairs were standing Kitty
and Agafea Mihalovna, consulting about wines for supper.
‘But why are you making all this fuss? Have what we
usually do.’
‘No, Stiva doesn’t drink...Kostya, stop, what’s the
matter?’ Kitty began, hurrying after him, but he strode
ruthlessly away to the dining room without waiting for
her, and at once joined in the lively general conversation
which was being maintained there by Vassenka Veslovsky
and Stepan Arkadyevitch.
‘Well, what do you say, are we going shooting
tomorrow?’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch.
‘Please, do let’s go,’ said Veslovsky, moving to another
chair, where he sat down sideways, with one fat leg
crossed under him.
‘I shall be delighted, we will go. And have you had any
shooting yet this year?’ said Levin to Veslovsky, looking
intently at his leg, but speaking with that forced amiability
that Kitty knew so well in him, and that was so out of
keeping with him. ‘I can’t answer for our finding grouse,
but there are plenty of snipe. Only we ought to start early.
You’re not tired? Aren’t you tired, Stiva?’
‘Me tired? I’ve never been tired yet. Suppose we stay
up all night. Let’s go for a walk!’
‘Yes, really, let’s not go to bed at all! Capital!’
Veslovsky chimed in.
‘Oh, we all know you can do without sleep, and keep
other people up too,’ Dolly said to her husband, with that
faint note of irony in her voice which she almost always
had now with her husband. ‘But to my thinking, it’s time
for bed now.... I’m going, I don’t want supper.’
‘No, do stay a little, Dolly,’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch,
going round to her side behind the table where they were
having supper. ‘I’ve so much still to tell you.’
‘Nothing really, I suppose.’
‘Do you know Veslovsky has been at Anna’s, and he’s
going to them again? You know they’re hardly fifty miles
from you, and I too must certainly go over there.
Veslovsky, come here!’
Vassenka crossed over to the ladies, and sat down
beside Kitty.
‘Ah, do tell me, please; you have stayed with her? How
was she?’ Darya Alexandrovna appealed to him.
Levin was left at the other end of the table, and though
never pausing in his conversation with the princess and
Varenka, he saw that there was an eager and mysterious
conversation going on between Stepan Arkadyevitch,
Dolly, Kitty, and Veslovsky. And that was not all. He saw
on his wife’s face an expression of real feeling as she gazed
with fixed eyes on the handsome face of Vassenka, who
was telling them something with great animation.
‘It’s exceedingly nice at their place,’ Veslovsky was
telling them about Vronsky and Anna. ‘I can’t, of course,
take it upon myself to judge, but in their house you feel
the real feeling of home.’
‘What do they intend doing?’
‘I believe they think of going to Moscow.’
‘How jolly it would be for us all to go over to them
together’ When are you going there?’ Stepan
Arkadyevitch asked Vassenka.
‘I’m spending July there.’
‘Will you go?’ Stepan Arkadyevitch said to his wife.
‘I’ve been wanting to a long while; I shall certainly go,’
said Dolly. ‘I am sorry for her, and I know her. She’s a
splendid woman. I will go alone, when you go back, and
then I shall be in no one’s way. And it will be better
indeed without you.’