第21章

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

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

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

She was breathing heavily, without looking at him. She was feeling ecstasy. Her soul was flooded with happiness. She had never anticipated that his utterance of love would produce such a powerful effect on her.

But it lasted only an instant. She remembered Vronsky. She lifted her clear, truthful eyes, and, seeing Levin's desperate face, she answered hastily:

`That cannot be... Forgive me.'

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

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

[Next Chapter] [Table of Contents] TOLSTOY: Anna Karenina Part 1, Chapter 14[Previous Chapter] [Table of Contents] Chapter 14 But at that very moment the Princess came in. There was a look of horror on her face when she beheld them alone, and saw their disturbed faces.

Levin bowed to her, and said nothing. Kitty neither spoke nor lifted her eyes. `Thank God, she has refused him,' thought the mother, and her face lighted up with the habitual smile with which she greeted her guests on Thursdays. She sat down and began questioning Levin about his life in the country. He sat down again, waiting for other visitors to arrive, in order to go off unnoticed.

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

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

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

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

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

The Countess Nordstone pounced upon Levin at once.

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

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

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

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

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

`No, Princess, I'm no longer a member of the board,' he said.

`I have come up for a few days.'

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

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

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

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

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

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