Part I   
Chapter IX   
     
AT four o’clock, conscious of his throbbing heart, Levin stepped out of a hired sledge 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 Shtcherbatskys’ carriage at the entrance.      1   
  It was a bright, frosty day. Rows of carriages, sledges, drivers, and policemen 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 little 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.      2   
  He walked along the path towards 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 quiet, stupid,’ 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 name, but Levin did not even recognise him. He went towards the mounds, whence came the clank of the chains of sledges as they slipped down or were dragged up, the rumble of the sliding sledges, and the sounds of merry voices. He walked on a few steps, and the skating-ground lay open before his eyes, and at once, amidst all the skaters, he knew her.      3   
  He knew she was there by the rapture and the terror that seized on 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, go up to 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 come there to skate. He walked down, for a long while avoiding looking at her as at the sun, but seeing her, as one does the sun, without looking.      4   
  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 crack skaters there, showing off their skill, and learners clinging to chairs with timid, awkward movements, 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 towards her, skated by her, even spoke to her, and were happy, quite apart from her, enjoying the capital ice and the fine weather.      5   
  Nikolay Shtcherbatsky, Kitty’s cousin, in a short jacket and tight trousers, was sitting on a garden seat with his skates on. Seeing Levin, he shouted to him—      6   
  ‘Ah, the first skater in Russia! Been here long? First-rate ice—do put your skates on.’      7   
  ‘I haven’t got my skates,’ Levin answered, marvelling 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 with obvious timidity, she skated towards him. A boy in Russian dress, desperately waving his arms and bowed 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 towards Levin, whom she had recognised, she smiled at him and at her own fears. When she had got round the turn, she gave herself a push off with one foot, and skated straight up to Shtcherbatsky. Clutching at his arm, she nodded smiling to Levin. She was more splendid than he had imagined her.      8   
  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 good-humour. The childishness of her expression, together with the delicate beauty of her figure, made up her special charm, and that he fully realised. 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 himself softened and tender, as he remembered himself in some days of his early childhood.      9   
  ‘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.     10   
  ‘I? I’ve not long … yesterday … I mean to-day … I arrived,’ answered Levin, in his emotion not at once understanding her question. ‘I was meaning to come and see you,’ he said; and then, recollecting with what intention he was trying to see her, he was promptly overcome with confusion and blushed.     11   
  ‘I didn’t know you could skate, and skate so well.’     12   
  She looked at him earnestly, as though wishing to make out the cause of his confusion.     13   
  ‘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 a grain of hoar-frost off her muff.     14   
  ‘Yes, I used once to skate with passion; I wanted to reach perfection.’     15   
  ‘You do everything with passion, I think,’ she said, smiling. ‘I should so like to see how you skate. Put on skates, and let us skate together.’     16   
  ‘Skate together! Can that be possible?’ thought Levin, gazing at her.     17   
  ‘I’ll put them on directly,’ he said.     18   
  And he went off to get skates.     19   
  ‘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.     20   
  ‘Oh, yes, yes; make haste, please,’ answered Levin, with difficulty restraining the smile of rapture which would overspread his face. ‘Yes,’ he thought, ‘this now 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 in hope, any way.… And then? … But I must! I must! I must! Away with weakness!’     21   
  Levin rose to his feet, took off his overcoat, and scurrying over the rough ice round the hut, 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 with timidity, but again her smile reassured him.     22   
  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.     23   
  ‘With you I should soon learn; I somehow feel confidence in you,’ she said to him.     24   
  ‘And I have confidence in myself when you are leaning on me,’ he said, but was at once panic-stricken at what he had said, and blushed. And indeed, no sooner had he uttered these words, when all at once, like the sun going behind a cloud, her face lost all its friendliness, and Levin detected the familiar change in her expression that denoted the working of thought; a crease showed on her smooth brow.     25   
  ‘Is there anything troubling you?—though I’ve no right to ask such a question,’ he said hurriedly.     26   
  ‘Oh, why so? … No, I have nothing to trouble me,’ she responded coldly; and she added immediately: ‘You haven’t seen Mlle. Linon, have you?’     27   
  ‘Not yet.’     28   
  ‘Go and speak to her, she likes you so much.’     29   
  ‘What’s wrong? I have offended her. Lord help me!’ thought Levin, and he flew towards the old Frenchwoman with the grey ringlets, who was sitting on a bench. Smiling and showing her false teeth, she greeted him as an old friend.     30   
  ‘Yes, you see we’re growing up,’ she said to him, glancing towards 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?’     31   
  He remembered absolutely nothing, but she had been laughing at the joke for ten years now, and was fond of it.     32   
  ‘Now, go and skate, go and skate. Our Kitty has learned to skate nicely, hasn’t she?’     33   
  When Levin darted up to Kitty her face was no longer stern; her eyes looked at him with the same sincerity and friendliness, but Levin fancied that in her friendliness 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.     34   
  ‘Surely you must be dull in the country in the winter, aren’t you?’ she said.     35   
  ‘No, I’m not dull, I am very busy,’ he said, feeling that she was holding him in check by her composed tone, which he would not have the force to break through, just as it had been at the beginning of the winter.     36   
  ‘Are you going to stay in town long?’ Kitty questioned him.     37   
  ‘I don’t know,’ he answered, not thinking of what he was saying. The thought that if he were held in check by her tone of quiet friendliness he would end by going back again without deciding anything came into his mind, and he resolved to make a struggle against it.     38   
  ‘How is it you don’t know?’     39   
  ‘I don’t know. It depends upon you,’ he said, and was immediately horror-stricken at his own words.     40   
  Whether it was that she had heard 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 towards the pavilion where the ladies took off their skates.     41   
  ‘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 inner and outer circles.     42   
  At that moment one of the young men, the best of the skaters of the day, came out of the coffee-house in his skates, with a cigarette in his mouth. Taking a run, he dashed down the steps in his skates, crashing and bounding up and down. He flew down, and without even changing the position of his hands, skated away over the ice.     43   
  ‘Ah! that’s a new trick!’ said Levin, and he promptly ran up to the top to do this new trick.     44   
  ‘Don’t break your neck! it needs practice!’ Nikolay Shtcherbatsky shouted after him.     45   
  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.     46   
  ‘How splendid, how nice he is!’ Kitty was thinking at that time, as she came out of the pavilion with Mlle. Linon, and looked towards him with a smile of quiet affection, as though he were a favourite brother. ‘And can it be my fault, can I have done anything wrong? They talk of flirtation. I know it’s not he that I love; but still I am happy with him, and he’s so jolly. Only, why did he say that?…’ she mused.     47   
  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.     48   
  ‘Delighted to see you,’ said Princess Shtcherbatsky. ‘On Thursday we are at home, as always.’     49   
  ‘To-day, then?’     50   
  ‘We shall be pleased to see you,’ the princess said stiffly.     51   
  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—     52   
  ‘Good-bye till this evening.’     53   
  At that moment Stepan Arkadyevitch, his hat cocked on one side, with beaming face and eyes, strode into the garden like a conquering hero. But as he approached his mother-in- law, he responded in a mournful and crestfallen tone to her inquiries about Dolly’s health. After a little subdued and dejected conversation with his mother-in-law, he threw out his chest again, and put his arm in Levin’s.     54   
  ‘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.     55   
  ‘Yes, come along,’ answered Levin in ecstasy, hearing unceasingly the sound of that voice saying ‘Good-bye till this evening,’ and seeing the smile with which it was said.     56   
  ‘To the England or the Hermitage?’     57   
  ‘I don’t mind which.’     58   
  ‘All right, then, the England,’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch, selecting that restaurant because he owed more there than at the Hermitage, and consequently considered it mean to avoid it. ‘Have you got a sledge? That’s first-rate, for I sent my carriage home.’     59   
  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-bye till this evening.’     60   
  Stepan Arkadyevitch was absorbed during the drive in composing the menu of the dinner.     61   
  ‘You like turbot, don’t you?’ he said to Levin as they were arriving.     62   
  ‘Eh?’ responded Levin. ‘Turbot? Yes, I’m awfully fond of turbot.’

Part I   
Chapter 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 Arkadyevitch. 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, bearing napkins. Bowing to right and left to the people he met, and here as everywhere joyously greeting acquaintances, he went up to the sideboard for a preliminary appetiser of fish and vodka, and said to the painted Frenchwoman decked in ribbons, lace, and ringlets, behind the counter, something so amusing that even that Frenchwoman was moved to genuine laughter. Levin for his part refrained from taking any vodka simply because he felt such a loathing of that 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.      1   
  ‘This way, your excellency, please. Your excellency won’t be disturbed here,’ said a particularly pertinacious, white- headed old Tatar with immense hips and coat-tails gaping widely behind. ‘Walk in, your excellency,’ he said to Levin; by way of showing his respect to Stepan Arkadyevitch, being attentive to his guest as well.      2   
  Instantly flinging a fresh cloth over the round table under the bronze chandelier, though it already had a tablecloth on it, he pushed up velvet chairs, and came to a standstill before Stepan Arkadyevitch with a napkin and a bill of fare in his hands, awaiting his commands.      3   
  ‘If you prefer it, your excellency, a private room will be free directly; Prince Golitsin with a lady. Fresh oysters have come in.’      4   
  ‘Ah! oysters.’      5   
  Stepan Arkadyevitch became thoughtful.      6   
  ‘How if we were to change our programme, Levin?’ he said, keeping his finger on the bill of fare. And his face expressed serious hesitation. ‘Are the oysters good? Mind now.’      7   
  ‘They’re Flensburg, your excellency. We’ve no Ostend.’      8   
  ‘Flensburg will do, but are they fresh?’      9   
  ‘Only arrived yesterday.’     10   
  ‘Well, then, how if we were to begin with oysters, and so change the whole programme? Eh?’     11   
  ‘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.’     12   
  ‘Porridge à la Russe, your honour would like?’ said the Tatar, bending down to Levin, like a nurse speaking to a child.     13   
  ‘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 am fond of good things.’     14   
  ‘I should hope so! After all, it’s one of the pleasures of life,’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch. ‘Well, then, my friend, you give us two—or better say three—dozen oysters, clear soup with vegetables.…’     15   
  ‘Printanière,’ prompted the Tatar. But Stepan Arkadyevitch apparently did not care to allow him the satisfaction of giving the French names of the dishes.     16   
  ‘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 sweets.’     17   
  The Tatar, recollecting that it was Stepan Arkadyevitch’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 printanière, turbot, sauce Beaumarchais, poulard à l’estragon, macédoine de fruits … etc.,’ 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 Arkadyevitch.     18   
  ‘What shall we drink?’     19   
  ‘What you like, only not too much. Champagne,’ said Levin.     20   
  ‘What! to start with? You’re right though, I dare say. Do you like the white seal?’     21   
  ‘Cachet blanc,’ prompted the Tatar.     22   
  ‘Very well, then, give us that brand with the oysters, and then we’ll see.’     23   
  ‘Yes, sir. And what table wine?’     24   
  ‘You can give us Nuits. Oh no, better the classic Chablis.’     25   
  ‘Yes, sir. And your cheese, your excellency?’     26   
  ‘Oh, yes, Parmesan. Or would you like another?’     27   
  ‘No, it’s all the same to me,’ said Levin, unable to suppress a smile.     28   
  And the Tatar ran off with flying coat-tails, and in five minutes darted in with a dish of opened oysters on mother-of-pearl shells, and a bottle between his fingers.     29   
  Stepan Arkadyevitch crushed the starchy napkin, tucked it into his waistcoat, and settling his arms comfortably, started on the oysters.     30   
  ‘Not bad,’ he said, stripping the oysters from the pearly shell with a silver fork, and swallowing them one after another. ‘Not bad,’ he repeated, turning his dewy, brilliant eyes from Levin to the Tatar.     31   
  Levin ate the oysters indeed, though white bread and cheese would have pleased him better. But he was admiring Oblonsky. Even the Tatar, uncorking the bottle and pouring the sparkling wine into the delicate glasses, glanced at Stepan Arkadyevitch, and settled his white cravat with a perceptible smile of satisfaction.     32   
  ‘You don’t care much for oysters, do you?’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch, emptying his wine-glass, ‘or you’re worried about something. Eh?’     33   
  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 sore and uncomfortable 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 waiters—all of it was offensive to him. He was afraid of sullying what his soul was brimful of.     34   
  ‘I? Yes, I am; but besides, all this bothers me,’ he said. ‘You can’t conceive how queer it all seems to a country person like me, as queer as that gentleman’s nails I saw at your place.…’     35   
  ‘Yes, I saw how much interested you were in poor Grinevitch’s nails,’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch, laughing.     36   
  ‘It’s too much for me,’ responded Levin. ‘Do try, now, and put yourself in my place, take the point of view of a country person. 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 turn up our sleeves. And here people purposely let their nails grow as long as they will, and link on small saucers by way of studs, so that they can do nothing with their hands.’     37   
  Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled gaily.     38   
  ‘Oh yes, that’s just a sign that he has no need to do coarse work. His work is with the mind.…’     39   
  ‘May be. But still it’s queer to me, just at this moment it seems queer to me that we country folks try to get our meals over as soon as we can, so as to be ready for our work, while here we are trying to drag out our meal as long as possible, and with that object eating oysters.…’     40   
  ‘Why, of course,’ objected Stepan Arkadyevitch. ‘But that’s just the aim of civilisation—to make everything a source of enjoyment.’     41   
  ‘Well, if that’s its aim, I’d rather be a savage.’     42   
  ‘And so you are a savage. All you Levins are savages.’     43   
  Levin sighed. He remembered his brother Nikolay, and felt ashamed and sore, and he scowled; but Oblonsky began speaking of a subject which at once drew his attention.     44   
  ‘Oh, I say, are you going to-night to our people, the Shtcherbatskys’, I mean?’ he said, his eyes sparkling significantly as he pushed away the empty rough shells, and drew the cheese towards him.     45   
  ‘Yes, I shall certainly go,’ replied Levin; ‘though I fancied the princess was not very warm in her invitation.’     46   
  ‘What nonsense! That’s her manner.… Come, boy, the soup!… That’s her manner—grande dame,’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch. ‘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 Shtcherbatskys 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.’     47   
  ‘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…’     48   
  ‘Oh, what a lucky fellow you are!’ broke in Stepan Arkadyevitch, looking into Levin’s eyes.     49   
  ‘Why?’
           ‘“I know a gallant steed by tokens sure,   
  And by his eyes I know a youth in love.”’   
declaimed Stepan Arkadyevitch. ‘Everything is before you.’     50   
  ‘Why, is it over for you already?’     51   
  ‘No; not over exactly, but the future is yours, and the present is mine, and the present—well, it’s not all that it might be.’     52   
  ‘How so?’     53   
  ‘Oh, things go wrong. But I don’t want to talk of myself, and besides I can’t explain it all,’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch. ‘Well, why have you come to Moscow, then? … Hi! take away!’ he called to the Tatar.     54   
  ‘You guess?’ responded Levin, his eyes like deep wells of light fixed on Stepan Arkadyevitch.     55   
  ‘I guess, but I can’t be the first to talk about it. You can see by that whether I guess right or wrong,’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch, gazing at Levin with a subtle smile.     56   
  ‘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 the question?’     57   
  Stepan Arkadyevitch slowly emptied his glass of Chablis, never taking his eyes off Levin.     58   
  ‘I?’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch, ‘there’s nothing I desire so much as that—nothing! It would be the best thing that could be.’     59   
  ‘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?’     60   
  ‘I think it’s possible. Why not possible?’     61   
  ‘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…’     62   
  ‘Why should you think that?’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling at his excitement.     63   
  ‘It seems so to me sometimes. That will be awful for me, and for her too.’     64   
  ‘Oh, well, any way there’s nothing awful in it for a girl. Every girl’s proud of an offer.’     65   
  ‘Yes, every girl, but not she.’     66   
  Stepan Arkadyevitch 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 weaknesses, and very ordinary girls; the other class—she alone, having no weaknesses of any sort and higher than all humanity.     67   
  ‘Stay, take some sauce,’ he said, holding back Levin’s hand as it pushed away the sauce.     68   
  Levin obediently helped himself to sauce, but would not let Stepan Arkadyevitch go on with his dinner.     69   
  ‘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 any one of this. And there’s no one I could speak of it to, except you. You know we’re utterly unlike each other, different 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.’     70   
  ‘I tell you what I think,’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling. ‘But I’ll say more: my wife is a wonderful woman.…’ Stepan Arkadyevitch sighed, remembering his position 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 Shahovskoy would marry Brenteln. No one would believe it, but it came to pass. And she’s on your side.’     71   
  ‘How do you mean?’     72   
  ‘It’s not only that she likes you—she says that Kitty is certain to be your wife.’     73   
  At these words Levin’s face suddenly lighted up with a smile, a smile not far from tears of emotion.     74   
  ‘She says that!’ cried Levin. ‘I always said she was exquisite, your wife. There, that’s enough, enough said about it,’ he said, getting up from his seat.     75   
  ‘All right, but do sit down.’     76   
  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.     77   
  ‘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 has taken possession of me. I went away, you see, because I made up my mind that it could never be, you understand, as a happiness that does not come on earth; but I’ve struggled with myself, I see there’s no living without it. And it must be settled.’     78   
  ‘What did you go away for?’     79   
  ‘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 to-day that my brother Nikolay … you know, he’s here … I had even forgotten 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—old—with 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.’     80   
  ‘Oh, well, you’ve not many sins on your conscience.’     81   
  ‘Alas! all the same,’ said Levin, ‘when with loathing I go over my life, I shudder and curse and bitterly regret it … Yes.’     82   
  ‘What would you have? The world’s made so,’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch.     83   
  ‘The one comfort is like that prayer, which I always liked: “Forgive me not according to my unworthiness, but according to Thy loving kindness.” That’s the only way she can forgive me.’

Part I   
Chapter 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 Arkadyevitch asked Levin.      1   
  ‘No, I don’t. Why do you ask?’      2   
  ‘Give us another bottle,’ Stepan Arkadyevitch directed the Tatar, who was filling up their glasses and fidgeting round them just when he was not wanted.      3   
  ‘Why you ought to know Vronsky is that he’s one of your rivals.’      4   
  ‘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.      5   
  ‘Vronsky is one of the sons of Count Kirill Ivanovitch Vronsky, and one of the finest specimens of the gilded youth of Petersburg. 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 nice, good-natured fellow. But he’s more than simply a good- natured fellow, as I’ve found out here—he’s a cultivated man too, and very intelligent; he’s a man who’ll make his mark.’      6   
  Levin scowled and was dumb.      7   
  ‘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…’      8   
  ‘Excuse me, but I know nothing,’ said Levin, frowning gloomily. And immediately he recollected his brother Nikolay and how hateful he was to have been able to forget him.      9   
  ‘You wait a bit, wait a bit,’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch, 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 favour.’     10   
  Levin dropped back in his chair; his face was pale.     11   
  ‘But I would advise you to settle the thing as soon as may be,’ pursued Oblonsky, filling up his glass.     12   
  ‘No, thanks, I can’t drink any more,’ said Levin, pushing away his glass. I shall be drunk.… Come, tell me how you are getting on?’ he went on, obviously anxious to change the conversation.     13   
  ‘One word more: in any case I advise you to settle the question soon. To-night I don’t advise you to speak,’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch. ‘Go round to-morrow morning, make an offer in due form, and God bless you.…’     14   
  ‘Oh, do you still think of coming to me for some shooting? Come next spring, do,’ said Levin.     15   
  Now his whole soul was full of remorse that he had begun this conversation with Stepan Arkadyevitch. A feeling such as his was profaned by talk of the rivalry of some Petersburg officer, of the suppositions and the counsels of Stepan Arkadyevitch.     16   
  Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled. He knew what was passing in Levin’s soul.     17   
  ‘I’ll come some day,’ he said. ‘But women, my boy, 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.’     18   
  ‘Why, what is it?’     19   
  ‘I’ll tell you. Suppose you’re married, you love your wife, but you’re fascinated by another woman.…’     20   
  ‘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 roll.’     21   
  Stepan Arkadyevitch’s eyes sparkled more than usual.     22   
  ‘Why not? A roll will sometimes smell so good one can’t resist it.
           ‘“Himmlisch ist’s, wenn ich bezwungen   
  Meine irdische Begier;   
Aber doch wenn’s nicht gelungen   
  Hatt’ ich auch recht hübsch Plaisir!”’   
  23   
  As he said this Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled subtly. Levin too could not help smiling.     24   
  ‘Yes; but joking apart,’ resumed Stepan Arkadyevitch, ‘you must understand that the woman is a sweet, gentle, loving creature, poor and lonely, and 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, softening her lot?’     25   
  ‘Well, you must excuse me there. You know to me all women are divided into two classes … at least no … truer to say: there are women and there are … I’ve never seen exquisite 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 the same.’     26   
  ‘But the Magdalen?’     27   
  ‘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.’     28   
  ‘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. But to deny 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, done for!’ Stepan Arkadyevitch said with weary despair.     29   
  Levin half smiled.     30   
  ‘Yes, you’re done for,’ resumed Oblonsky. ‘But what’s to be done?’     31   
  ‘Don’t steal rolls.’     32   
  Stepan Arkadyevitch laughed outright.     33   
  ‘O 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; and 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.’     34   
  ‘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 the sorts of love, which you remember Plato defines in his Banquet, serve as the test of men. Some men only understand one sort, and some only the other. And those who only know the nonplatonic love have no need to talk 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…’     35   
  At that instant Levin recollected his own sins and the inner conflict he had lived through. And he added unexpectedly—     36   
  ‘But perhaps you are right. Very likely.… I don’t know, I don’t know.’     37   
  ‘It’s this, don’t you see,’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch, ‘you’re very much all of a piece. That’s your strong point 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 invariably corresponding all the while 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.’     38   
  Levin sighed and made no reply. He was thinking of his own affairs, and did not hear Oblonsky.     39   
  And suddenly both of them felt that though they were friends, though they had been dining and drinking together, 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.     40   
  ‘Bill!’ he called, and he went into the next room, where he promptly came across an aide-de-camp of his acquaintance and dropped into a conversation with him about an actress and her protector. And at once in the conversation with the aide-de-camp Oblonsky had a sense of relaxation and relief after the conversation with Levin, which always put him to too great a mental and spiritual strain.     41   
  When the Tatar appeared with a bill for twenty-six roubles and odd kopecks, beside a tip for himself, Levin, who would another time have been horrified, like any one from the country, at his share of fourteen roubles, did not notice it, paid, and set off homewards, to dress and go to the Shtcherbatskys’ there to decide his fate.

Part I   
Chapter XII   
     
THE YOUNG Princess Kitty Shtcherbatsky 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 this first winter made their appearance: Levin and, immediately after his departure, Count Vronsky.      1   
  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 other side issues; but she did not state the principal point, which was that she looked for a better match for her daughter, and that Levin was not to her liking, and 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.      2   
  In the mother’s eyes there could be no comparison between Vronsky and Levin. She disliked in Levin his strange and uncompromising opinions and his shyness in society, founded, as she supposed, on his pride 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 honour by making an offer, and did not realise 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.      3   
  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.      4   
  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.      5   
  Princess Shtcherbatsky had herself been married thirty years ago, her aunt arranging the match. Her husband, about whom everything was well known beforehand, had come, looked at his future bride, and been looked at. The matchmaking aunt had ascertained and communicated their mutual impression. That impression had been favourable. Afterwards, on a day fixed beforehand, the expected offer 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 daughter. 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 Natalia! Now, since the youngest had come out, she 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 punctilious on the score of the honour and reputation of his daughters. He was irrationally jealous over his daughters, especially over Kitty, who was his favourite. 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 touchiness. 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 curtsey, 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 how marriages were made now, the princess could not learn from any one. 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 by the offices of intermediate persons was for some reason considered unseemly; it was ridiculed by every one, and by the princess herself. But how girls were to be married, and how parents were to marry them, no one knew. Every one 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 any one to say that who had no daughters, but the princess realised that in the process of getting to know each other, her daughter might fall in love, and fall in love with some one 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, the most suitable play-things for children five years old ought to be loaded pistols. And so the princess was more uneasy over Kitty than she had been over her elder sisters.      6   
  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 honourable man, and would not do this. But at the same time she knew how easy it is, with the freedom of manners of to-day, 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 had with Vronsky during a mazurka. This conversation had partly reassured the princess; but perfectly at ease she could not be. 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 arrival in Petersburg, as peculiarly fortunate,’ he told her.      7   
  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 offer 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. To-day, 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 extreme sense of honour, refuse Vronsky, and that Levin’s arrival might generally complicate and delay the affair so near being concluded.      8   
  ‘Why, has he been here long?’ the princess asked about Levin, as they returned home.      9   
  ‘He came to-day, mamma.’     10   
  ‘There’s one thing I want to say …’began the princess, and from her serious and alert face, Kitty guessed what it would be.     11   
  ‘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.’     12   
  She wished for what her mother wished for, but the motives of her mother’s wishes wounded her.     13   
  ‘I only want to say that to raise hopes…’     14   
  ‘Mamma, darling, for goodness’ sake, don’t talk about it. It’s so horrible to talk about it.’     15   
  ‘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?’     16   
  ‘Never, mamma, none,’ answered Kitty, flushing a little, and looking her mother straight in the face; ‘but there’s no use in my telling you anything, and I … I … if I wanted to, I don’t know what to say or how…. I don’t know…’     17   
  ‘No, she could not tell an untruth with those eyes,’ thought the mother, smiling at her agitation and happiness. The princess smiled that what was taking place just now in her soul seemed to the poor child so immense and so important.

Part I   
Chapter XIII   
     
AFTER dinner, and till the beginning of the evening, Kitty was feeling a sensation akin to the sensation of a young man before a battle. Her heart throbbed violently, and her thoughts would not rest on anything.      1   
  She felt that this evening, when they would both 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 separately, 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 gave 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 pleasant 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 well-bred and at ease, as though there were some false note—not in Vronsky, he was very simple and nice, but in herself, while with Levin she felt 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.      2   
  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.      3   
  At half-past seven she had only just gone down into the drawing-room, when the footman announced, ‘Konstantin Dmitrievitch 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 make her an offer. And then for the first time the whole thing presented itself in a new, different aspect; only then she realised 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. What for? Because he, dear fellow, loved her, was in love with her. But there was no help for it, so it must be, so it would have to be.      4   
  ‘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 some one else? No, that’s impossible. I’m going away, I’m going away.’      5   
  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, shy figure, with his shining eyes fixed on her. She looked straight into his face, as though imploring him to spare her, and gave her hand.      6   
  ‘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 realised, that there was nothing to prevent him from speaking, his face became gloomy.      7   
  ‘Oh no,’ said Kitty, and sat down to the table.      8   
  ‘But this was just what I wanted, to find you alone,’ he began, not sitting down, and not looking at her, so as not to lose courage.      9   
  ‘Mamma will be down directly. She was very much tired … Yesterday…’     10   
  She talked on, not knowing what her lips were uttering, and not taking her supplicating and caressing eyes off him.     11   
  He glanced at her; she blushed, and ceased speaking.     12   
  ‘I told you I did not know whether I should be here long … that it depended on you…’     13   
  She dropped her head lower and lower, not knowing herself what answer she should make to what was coming.     14   
  ‘That it depended on you,’ he repeated. ‘I meant to say … I meant to say … I came for this … to be my wife!’ he brought it out, not knowing what he was saying; but feeling that the most terrible thing was said, he stopped short and looked at her….     15   
  She was breathing heavily, not looking at him. She was feeling ecstasy. Her soul was flooded with happiness. She had never anticipated that the 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 his desperate face, she answered hastily—     16   
  ‘That cannot be … forgive me.’     17   
  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!     18   
  ‘It was bound to be so,’ he said, not looking at her.     19   
  He bowed, and was meaning to retreat.

Part I   
Chapter XIV   
     
BUT at that very moment the princess came in. There was a look of horror on her face when saw them alone, and their disturbed faces. Levin bowed to her, and said nothing. Kitty did not speak nor lift 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 retreat unnoticed.      1   
  Five minutes later there came in a friend of Kitty’s, married the preceding winter, Countess Nordston.      2   
  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.      3   
  Levin she had often met at the Shtcherbatskys’ early in the winter, and she had always disliked him. Her invariable and favourite pursuit, when they met, consisted in making fun of him.      4   
  ‘I do like it when he looks down at me from the height of his grandeur, or breaks off his learned 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.      5   
  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 delicate contempt and indifference for everything coarse and earthly.      6   
  The Countess Nordston and Levin had got into that relation with one another not seldom 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.      7   
  The Countess Nordston Pounced upon Levin at once.      8   
  ‘Ah! Konstantin Dmitrievitch! 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.      9   
  ‘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 Nordston. ‘They must certainly make a great impression on you.’     10   
  ‘Oh, I should think so! I always note it all down. Well, Kitty, have you been skating again?…’     11   
  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.     12   
  ‘Shall you be long in Moscow? You’re busy with the district council, though, aren’t you, and can’t be away for long?’     13   
  ‘No, princess, I’m no longer a member of the council,’ he said. ‘I have come up for a few days.’     14   
  ‘There’s something the matter with him,’ thought Countess Nordston, 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.’     15   
  ‘Konstantin Dmitritch,’ she said to him, ‘do explain to me, please, what’s the meaning of it. You know all about such things. At home 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 peasants so.’     16   
  At that instant another lady came into the room, and Levin got up.     17   
  ‘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.     18   
  ‘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 that man, knew it as surely as if she had told him so in words. But what sort of 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.     19   
  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, on the other hand, who desire above all to find in that lucky rival the qualities by which he has outstripped them, and seek with a throbbing ache at heart only what is good.     20   
  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-humoured, handsome, and exceedingly calm and resolute face. Everything about his face and figure, from his short-cropped black hair and freshly shaven chin down to his loosely fitting, bran-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.     21   
  As he approached her, his beautiful eyes shone with a specially 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.     22   
  Greeting and saying a few words to every one, he sat down without once glancing at Levin, who had never taken his eyes off him.     23   
  ‘Let me introduce you,’ said the princess, indicating Levin. ‘Konstantin Dmitritch Levin, Count Alexey Kirillovitch Vronsky.’     24   
  Vronsky got up and, looking cordially at Levin, shook hands with him.     25   
  ‘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.’     26   
  ‘Konstantin Dmitritch despises and hates town and us townspeople,’ said Countess Nordston.     27   
  ‘My words must make a deep impression on you, since you remember them so well,’ said Levin, and, suddenly conscious that he had said just the same thing before, he reddened.     28   
  Vronsky looked at Levin and Countess Nordston, and smiled.     29   
  ‘Are you always in the country?’ he inquired. ‘I should think it must be dull in the winter.’     30   
  ‘It’s not dull if one has work to do; besides, one’s not dull by oneself,’ Levin replied abruptly.     31   
  ‘I am fond of the country,’ said Vronsky, noticing, and affecting not to notice, Levin’s tone.     32   
  ‘But I hope, count, you would not consent to live in the country always,’ said Countess Nordston.     33   
  ‘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 me most vividly, and especially the country. It’s as though…’     34   
  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.     35   
  Noticing that Countess Nordston wanted to say something, he stopped short without finishing what he had begun, and listened attentively to her.     36   
  The conversation did not flag for an instant, so that the princess, who always kept in reserve, in case a subject should be lacking, two heavy guns—the relative advantages of classical and modern education, and universal military service—had not to move out either of them, while Countess Nordston had not a chance of chaffing Levin.     37   
  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.     38   
  The conversation fell upon table-turning and spirits, and Countess Nordston, who believed in spiritualism, began to describe the marvels she had seen.     39   
  ‘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 look-out for it everywhere,’ said Vronsky, smiling.     40   
  ‘Very well, next Saturday,’ answered Countess Nordston. ‘But you, Konstantin Dmitritch, do you believe in it?’ she asked Levin.     41   
  ‘Why do you ask me? You know what I shall say.’     42   
  ‘But I want to hear your opinion.’     43   
  ‘My opinion,’ answered Levin, ‘is only that this tableturning simply proves that educated society—so called—is no higher than the peasants. They believe in the evil eye, and in witchcraft and omens, while we…’     44   
  ‘Oh, then you don’t believe in it?’     45   
  ‘I can’t believe in it, countess.’     46   
  ‘But if I’ve seen it myself?’     47   
  ‘The peasant women too tell us they have seen goblins.’     48   
  ‘Then you think I tell a lie?’     49   
  And she laughed a mirthless laugh.     50   
  ‘Oh no, Masha, Konstantin Dmitritch said he could not believe in it,’ 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.     51   
  ‘You do not admit the conceivability 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…’     52   
  ‘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 have begun with tables writing for them, and spirits appearing to them, and have only later started saying that it is an unknown force.’     53   
  Vronsky listened attentively to Levin, as he always did listen, obviously interested in his words.     54   
  ‘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 in. No, I don’t see why there should not be a new force, if it…’     55   
  ‘Why, because with electricity,’ Levin interrupted again, ‘every time you rub tar against wool, a recognised phenomenon is manifested, but in this case it does not happen every time, and so it follows it is not a natural phenomenon.’     56   
  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.     57   
  ‘Do let us try at once, countess,’ he said; but Levin would finish what he thought.     58   
  ‘I think’ he went on, ‘that this attempt of the spiritualists to explain their marvels as some sort of new natural force is most futile. They boldly talk of a spiritual force, and then try to subject it to material experiment.’     59   
  Every one was waiting for him to finish, and he felt it.     60   
  ‘And I think you would be a first-rate medium,’ said Countess Nordston; ‘there’s something enthusiastic in you.’     61   
  Levin opened his mouth, was about to say something, reddened, and said nothing.     62   
  ‘Do let us try table-turning at once, please,’ said Vronsky. ‘Princess, will you allow it?’     63   
  And Vronsky stood up, looking about for a little table.     64   
  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 suffering of which she was herself the cause. ‘If you can forgive me, forgive me,’ said her eyes, ‘I am so happy.’     65   
  ‘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.     66   
  ‘Ah!’ he began joyously. ‘Been here long, my boy? I didn’t even know you were in the town. Very glad to see you.’ The old prince embraced Levin, and talking to him did not observe Vronsky, who had risen, and was serenely waiting till the prince should turn to him.     67   
  Kitty felt how distasteful her father’s warmth 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, as though trying and failing to understand how and why any one could be hostilely disposed towards him, and she flushed.     68   
  ‘Prince, let us have Konstantin Dmitritch,’ said Countess Nordston; ‘we want to try an experiment.’     69   
  ‘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.’     70   
  Vronsky looked wonderingly at the prince with his resolute eyes, and, with a faint smile, began immediately talking to Countess Nordston of the great ball that was to come off next week.     71   
  ‘I hope you will be there?’ he said to Kitty. As soon as the old prince turned away from him, Levin went out un noticed, 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.

   
Part I   
Chapter 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 an offer. She had no doubt that she had acted rightly. But after she had gone to bed, for a long while she could not sleep. 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, resolute face, his noble self-possession, and the good-nature conspicuous in everything towards every one. 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.      1   
  ‘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 something else. Whether she felt remorse at having won Levin’s love, or at having refused him, she did not know. But her happiness was poisoned by doubts. ‘Lord, have pity on us; Lord, have pity on us; Lord, have pity on us!’ she repeated to herself, till she fell asleep.      2   
  Meanwhile there took place below, in the prince’s little library, one of the scenes so often repeated between the parent on account of their favourite daughter.      3   
  ‘What? I’ll tell you what!’ shouted the prince, waving 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!’      4   
  ‘But, really, for mercy’s sake, prince, what have I done?’ said the princess, almost crying.      5   
  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 offer and Kitty’s refusal, still she hinted to her husband that she fancied things were practically settled with Vronsky, and that he would declare himself so soon as his mother arrived. And thereupon, at those words, the prince had all at once flown into a passion, and began to use unseemly language.      6   
  ‘What have you done? I’ll tell you what. First of all, you’re trying to catch an eligible gentlemen, and all Moscow will be talking of it, and with good reason. If you have evening parties, invite every one, and don’t pick out the possible suitors. Invite all the young bucks. Engage a pianoplayer and let them dance, and not as you do things nowadays, hunting up good matches. It makes me sick, sick to see it, and you’ve gone on till you’ve turned the poor wench’s head. Levin’s thousand times the better man. As for this little Petersburg 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 any one.’      7   
  ‘But what have I done?’      8   
  ‘Why you’ve…’ The prince was crying wrathfully.      9   
  ‘I know if one were to listen to you,’ interrupted the princess, ‘we should never marry our daughter. If it’s to be so, we’d better go into the country.’     10   
  ‘Well, we had better.’     11   
  ‘But do wait a minute. Do I try and catch them? I don’t try to catch them in the least. A young man, and a very nice one, has fallen in love with her, and she, I fancy…’     12   
  ‘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 curtsey at each word. ‘And this is how we’re preparing wretchedness for Kitty; and she’s really got the notion into her head…’     13   
  ‘But what makes you suppose so?’     14   
  ‘I don’t suppose; I know. We have eyes for such things, though women-folk haven’t. I see a man who has serious intentions, that’s Levin; and I see a peacock, like this featherhead, who’s only amusing himself.’     15   
  ‘Oh, well, when once you get an idea into your head!…’     16   
  ‘Well, you’ll remember my words, but too late, just as with Dolly.’     17   
  ‘Well, well, we won’t talk of it,’ the princess stopped him, recollecting her unlucky Dolly.     18   
  ‘By all means, and good night!’     19   
  And signing each other with the cross, the husband and wife parted with a kiss, feeling that they each remained of their own opinion.     20   
  The princess had at first been quite certain that that evening had settled Kitty’s future, 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!’

Part I   
Chapter 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 afterwards, many love-affairs notorious in the whole fashionable world. His father he scarcely remembered, and he had been educated in the Corps of Pages.      1   
  Leaving the school very young as a brilliant officer, he had at once got into the circle of wealthy Petersburg army men. Although he did go more or less into Petersburg society, his love-affairs had always hitherto been outside it.      2   
  In Moscow he had for the first time felt, after his luxurious and coarse life at Petersburg, 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 their 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 his mode of behaviour 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 action 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.      3   
  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.      4   
  Marriage had never presented itself to him as a possibility. He not only disliked family life, but a family, and especially a husband was, in accordance with the views general in the bachelor world in which he lived, conceived as something alien, repellent, and, above all, ridiculous.      5   
  But though Vronsky had not the least suspicion what the parents were saying, he felt on coming away from the Shtcherbatskys’ 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 ought to be taken he could not imagine.      6   
  ‘What is so exquisite,’ he thought, as he returned from the Shtcherbatskys’, 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, but 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 secretly, 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 … ”      7   
  ‘Well, what then? Oh, nothing. It’s good for me, and good for her.’ And he began wondering where to finish the evening.      8   
  He passed in review the places he might go to. ‘Club? a game of bezique, champagne with Ignatov? No, I’m not going. Château des Fleurs; there I shall find Oblonsky, songs, the cancan. No, I’m sick of it. That’s why I like the Shtcherbatskys’, that I’m growing better. I’ll go home.’ He went straight to his room at Dussots’ Hotel, ordered supper, and then undressed, and as soon as his head touched the pillow, fell into a sound sleep.

Part I   
Chapter XVII   
     
NEXT day at eleven o’clock in the morning Vronsky drove to the station of the Petersburg 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.      1   
  ‘Ah! your excellency!’ cried Oblonsky, ‘whom are you meeting?’      2   
  ‘My mother,’ Vronsky responded, smiling, as every one did who met Oblonsky. He shook hands with him, and together they ascended the steps. ‘She is to be here from Petersburg to-day.’      3   
  ‘I was looking out for you till two o’clock last night. Where did you go after the Shtcherbatskys’?’      4   
  ‘Home,’ answered Vronsky. ‘I must own I felt so well content yesterday after the Shtcherbatskys’ that I didn’t care to go anywhere’
           ‘“I know a gallant steed by tokens sure,   
And by his eyes I know a youth in love.”’   
declaimed Stepan Arkadyevitch, just as he had done before to Levin.      5   
  Vronsky smiled with a look that seemed to say that he did not deny it, but he promptly changed the subject.      6   
  ‘And whom are you meeting?’ he asked.      7   
  ‘I? I’ve come to meet a pretty woman,’ said Oblonsky.      8   
  ‘You don’t say so!’      9   
  ‘Honi soit qui mal y pense! My sister Anna.’     10   
  ‘Ah! that’s Madame Karenin,’ said Vronsky.     11   
  ‘You know her no doubt?’     12   
  ‘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 Karenin.     13   
  ‘But Alexey Alexandrovitch, my celebrated brother-in-law, you surely must know. All the world knows him.’     14   
  ‘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.     15   
  ‘Yes, he’s a very remarkable man; rather a conservative, but a splendid man,’ observed Stepan Arkadyevitch, ‘a splendid man.’     16   
  ‘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.’     17   
  Besides the charm Oblonsky had in general for every one, Vronsky had felt of late specially drawn to him by the fact that in his imagination he was associated with Kitty.     18   
  ‘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.     19   
  ‘Of course. I’m collecting subscriptions. Oh, did you make the acquaintance of my friend Levin?’ asked Stepan Arkadyevitch.     20   
  ‘Yes; but he left rather early.’     21   
  ‘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….’     22   
  ‘Yes, that’s true, it is so,’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch, laughing good-humouredly.     23   
  ‘Will the train soon be in?’ Vronsky asked a railway official.     24   
  ‘The train’s signalled,’ answered the man.     25   
  The approach of the train was more and more evident by the preparatory bustle in the station, the rush of porters, the movement of policemen and attendants, and people meeting the train. Through the frosty vapour 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.     26   
  ‘No,’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch, who felt a great inclination to tell Vronsky of Levin’s intentions in regard to Kitty. ‘No, you’ve not got a true impression of Levin. He’s very nervous man, and is sometimes out of humour, it’s true, but then he is often very nice. He’s such a true, honest nature, and a heart of gold. But yesterday there were special reasons,’ pursued Stepan Arkadyevitch, 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.’     27   
  Vronsky stood still and asked directly: ‘How so? Do you mean he made your belle-sœur an offer yesterday?’     28   
  ‘May be,’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch. ‘I fancied something of the sort yesterday. Yes, if he went away early, and was out of humour too, it must mean it … He’s been so long in love, and I’m very sorry for him.’     29   
  ‘So that’s it!… I should imagine, though, she might reckon on a better match,’ said Vronsky, drawing himself up 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 Klaras. If you don’t succeed with them it only proves that you’ve not enough cash, but in this case one’s dignity’s at stake. But here’s the train.’     30   
  The engine had already whistled in the distance. A few instants later the platform was quivering, and with puffs of steam hanging low in the air from the frost, the engine rolled up, with the lever of the middle wheel rhythmically moving up and down, and the stooping figure of the engine-driver covered with frost. Behind the tender, setting the platform more and more slowly swaying, came the luggage-van with a dog whining in it. At last the passenger carriages rolled in, oscillating before coming to a standstill.     31   
  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 little merchant with a satchel, smiling gaily; a peasant with a sack over his shoulder.     32   
  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 arched his chest, and his eyes flashed. He felt himself a conqueror.     33   
  ‘Countess Vronsky is in that compartment,’ said the smart guard, going up to Vronsky.     34   
  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 education, he could not have conceived of any behaviour to his mother not in the highest degree respectful and obedient, and the more externally obedient and respectful his behaviour, the less in his heart he respected and loved her.

   
Part I   
Chapter 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.      1   
  With the insight 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 that she was very beautiful, not on account of the 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 grey eyes, that looked dark from the thick lashes, rested with friendly attention on his face, as though she were recognising him, and then promptly turned away to the passing crowd, as though seeking some one. In that brief look Vronsky had time to notice the suppressed eagerness 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 the faintly perceptible smile.      2   
  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 bag, she gave her little wrinkled hand to her son to kiss, and lifting his head from her hand, kissed him on the cheek.      3   
  ‘You got my telegram? Quite well? Thank God.’      4   
  ‘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.      5   
  ‘All the same I don’t agree with you,’ said the lady’s voice.      6   
  ‘It’s the Petersburg view, madame.’      7   
  ‘Not Petersburg, but simply feminine,’ she responded.      8   
  ‘Well, well, allow me to kiss your hand.’      9   
  ‘Good-bye, Ivan Petrovitch. 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.     10   
  ‘Well, have you found your brother?’ said Countess Vronsky, addressing the lady.     11   
  Vronsky understood now that this was Madame Karenin.     12   
  ‘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.’     13   
  ‘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 eagerness that would insist on coming out show itself in her smile. ‘And still no sign of my brother.’     14   
  ‘Do call him, Alexy,’ said the old countess. Vronsky stepped out on to the platform and shouted.     15   
  ‘Oblonsky! Here!’     16   
  Madame Karenin, 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 round his neck, drew him rapidly to her, and kissed him warmly. Vronsky gazed, 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.     17   
  ‘She’s very sweet, isn’t she?’ said the countess of Madame Karenin. ‘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, moncher, tant mieux.’     18   
  ‘I don’t know what you are referring to, maman, he answered coldly. ‘Come, maman, let us go.’     19   
  Madame Karenin entered the carriage again to say good-bye to the countess.     20   
  ‘Well, countess, you have met your son, and I my brother,’ she said. ‘And all my gossip is exhausted. I should have nothing more to tell you.’     21   
  ‘Oh no,’ said the countess, taking her hand. ‘I could go all round the world with you and never be dull. You are one of those delightful women in whose company it’s sweet to be silent as well as to talk. Now please don’t fret over your son; you can’t expect never to be parted.’     22   
  Madame Karenin stood quite still, holding herself very erect, and her eyes were smiling.     23   
  ‘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.’     24   
  ‘Yes, the countess and I have been talking all the time, I of my son and she of hers,’ said Madame Karenin, and again a smile lighted up her face, a caressing smile intended for him.     25   
  ‘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.     26   
  ‘Thank you so much. The time has passed so quickly. Good-bye, countess.’     27   
  ‘Good-bye, my love,’ answered the countess. ‘Let me have a kiss of your pretty face. I speak plainly, at my age, and I tell you simply that I’ve lost my heart to you.’     28   
  Stereotyped as the phrase was, Madame Karenin 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.     29   
  ‘Very charming,’ said the countess.     30   
  That was just 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 window how she went up to her brother, put her arm in his, and began telling him something eagerly, obviously something that had nothing to do with him, Vronsky, and at that he felt annoyed.     31   
  ‘Well, maman, are you perfectly well?’ he repeated, turning to his mother.     32   
  ‘Everything has been delightful. Alexandre has been very good, and Marie has grown very pretty. She’s very interesting.’     33   
  And she began telling him again of what interested her most—the christening of her grandson, for which she had been staying in Petersburg, and the special favour shown her elder son by the Tsar.     34   
  ‘Here’s Lavrenty,’ said Vronsky, looking out of window; ‘now we can go, if you like.’     35   
  The old butler, who had travelled with the countess, came to the carriage to announce that everything was ready, and the countess got up to go.     36   
  ‘Come; there’s not such a crowd now,’ said Vronsky.     37   
  The maid took a handbag and the lapdog, 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 extraordinary coloured cap. Obviously something unusual had happened. The crowd who had left the train were running back again.     38   
  ‘What? … What? … Where? … Flung himself!… Crushed!…’ was heard among the crowd. Stepan Arkadyevitch, with his sister on his arm turned back. They too looked scared, and stopped at the carriage door to avoid the crowd.     39   
  The ladies got in, while Vronsky and Stepan Arkadyevitch followed the crowd to find out details of the disaster.     40   
  A guard, either drunk or too much muffled up in the bitter frost, had not heard the train moving back, and had been crushed.     41   
  Before Vronsky and Oblonsky came back the ladies heard the facts from the butler.     42   
  Oblonsky and Vronsky had both seen the mutilated corpse. Oblonsky was evidently upset. He frowned and seemed ready to cry.     43   
  ‘Ah, how awful! Ah, Anna, if you had seen it! Ah, how awful!’ he said.     44   
  Vronsky did not speak; his handsome face was serious, but perfectly composed.     45   
  ‘Oh, if you had seen it, countess,’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch. ‘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!’     46   
  ‘Couldn’t one do anything for her?’ said Madame Karenin in an agitated whisper.     47   
  Vronsky glanced at her, and immediately got out of the carriage.     48   
  ‘I’ll be back directly, maman,’ he remarked, turning round in the doorway.     49   
  When he came back a few minutes later Stepan Arkadyevitch was already in conversation with the countess about the new singer, while the countess was impatiently looking towards the door, waiting for her son.     50   
  ‘Now let us be off,’ said Vronsky coming in. They went out together. Vronsky was in front with his mother. Behind walked Madame Karenin with her brother. Just as they were going out of the station the stationmaster overtook Vronsky.     51   
  ‘You gave my assistant two hundred roubles. Would you kindly explain for whose benefit you intend them?’     52   
  ‘For the widow,’ said Vronsky, shrugging his shoulders. ‘I should have thought there was no need to ask.’     53   
  ‘You gave that?’ cried Oblonsky behind, and, pressing his sister’s hand, he added: ‘Very nice, very nice! Isn’t he a splendid fellow? Good-bye, countess.’     54   
  And he and his sister stood still, looking for her maid.     55   
  When they went out the Vronskys’ carriage had already driven away. People coming in were still talking of what happened.     56   
  ‘What a horrible death!’ said a gentleman, passing by. ‘They say he was cut in two pieces.’     57   
  ‘On the contrary, I think it’s the easiest—instantaneous,’ observed another.     58   
  ‘How is it they don’t take proper precautions?’ said a third.     59   
  Madame Karenin seated herself in the carriage, and Stepan Arkadyevitch saw with surprise that her lips were quivering, and she was with difficulty restraining her tears.     60   
  ‘What is it, Anna?’ he asked, when they had driven a few hundred yards.     61   
  ‘It’s an omen of evil,’ she said.     62   
  ‘What nonsense!’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch. ‘You’ve come, that’s the chief thing. You can’t conceive how I’m resting my hopes on you.’     63   
  ‘Have you known Vronsky long?’ she asked.     64   
  ‘Yes. You know we’re hoping he will marry Kitty.’     65   
  ‘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.’     66   
  ‘Yes, all my hopes are in you,’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch.     67   
  ‘Well, tell me all about it.’     68   
  And Stepan Arkadyevitch began to tell his story.     69   
  On reaching home Oblonsky helped his sister out, sighed, pressed her hand, and set off to his office.