Anna Karenina

he Levins had been three months in Moscow. The date had long passed on
which, according to the most trustworthy calculations of people learned
in such matters, Kitty should have been confined. But she was still
about, and there was nothing to show that her time was any nearer than
two months ago. The doctor, the monthly nurse, and Dolly and her
mother, and most of all Levin, who could not think of the approaching
event without terror, began to be impatient and uneasy. Kitty was the
only person who felt perfectly calm and happy.

She was distinctly conscious now of the birth of a new feeling of love
for the future child, for her to some extent actually existing already,
and she brooded blissfully over this feeling. He was not by now
altogether a part of herself, but sometimes lived his own life
independently of her. Often this separate being gave her pain, but at
the same time she wanted to laugh with a strange new joy.

All the people she loved were with her, and all were so good to her, so
attentively caring for her, so entirely pleasant was everything
presented to her, that if she had not known and felt that it must all
soon be over, she could not have wished for a better and pleasanter
life. The only thing that spoiled the charm of this manner of life was
that her husband was not here as she loved him to be, and as he was in
the country.

She liked his serene, friendly, and hospitable manner in the country.
In the town he seemed continually uneasy and on his guard, as though he
were afraid someone would be rude to him, and still more to her. At
home in the country, knowing himself distinctly to be in his right
place, he was never in haste to be off elsewhere. He was never
unoccupied. Here in town he was in a continual hurry, as though afraid
of missing something, and yet he had nothing to do. And she felt sorry
for him. To others, she knew, he did not appear an object of pity. On
the contrary, when Kitty looked at him in society, as one sometimes
looks at those one loves, trying to see him as if he were a stranger,
so as to catch the impression he must make on others, she saw with a
panic even of jealous fear that he was far indeed from being a pitiable
figure, that he was very attractive with his fine breeding, his rather
old-fashioned, reserved courtesy with women, his powerful figure, and
striking, as she thought, and expressive face. But she saw him not from
without, but from within; she saw that here he was not himself; that
was the only way she could define his condition to herself. Sometimes
she inwardly reproached him for his inability to live in the town;
sometimes she recognized that it was really hard for him to order his
life here so that he could be satisfied with it.

What had he to do, indeed? He did not care for cards; he did not go to
a club. Spending the time with jovial gentlemen of Oblonsky’s type—she
knew now what that meant ... it meant drinking and going somewhere
after drinking. She could not think without horror of where men went on
such occasions. Was he to go into society? But she knew he could only
find satisfaction in that if he took pleasure in the society of young
women, and that she could not wish for. Should he stay at home with
her, her mother and her sisters? But much as she liked and enjoyed
their conversations forever on the same subjects—“Aline-Nadine,” as the
old prince called the sisters’ talks—she knew it must bore him. What
was there left for him to do? To go on writing at his book he had
indeed attempted, and at first he used to go to the library and make
extracts and look up references for his book. But, as he told her, the
more he did nothing, the less time he had to do anything. And besides,
he complained that he had talked too much about his book here, and that
consequently all his ideas about it were muddled and had lost their
interest for him.

One advantage in this town life was that quarrels hardly ever happened
between them here in town. Whether it was that their conditions were
different, or that they had both become more careful and sensible in
that respect, they had no quarrels in Moscow from jealousy, which they
had so dreaded when they moved from the country.

One event, an event of great importance to both from that point of
view, did indeed happen—that was Kitty’s meeting with Vronsky.

The old Princess Marya Borissovna, Kitty’s godmother, who had always
been very fond of her, had insisted on seeing her. Kitty, though she
did not go into society at all on account of her condition, went with
her father to see the venerable old lady, and there met Vronsky.

The only thing Kitty could reproach herself for at this meeting was
that at the instant when she recognized in his civilian dress the
features once so familiar to her, her breath failed her, the blood
rushed to her heart, and a vivid blush—she felt it—overspread her face.
But this lasted only a few seconds. Before her father, who purposely
began talking in a loud voice to Vronsky, had finished, she was
perfectly ready to look at Vronsky, to speak to him, if necessary,
exactly as she spoke to Princess Marya Borissovna, and more than that,
to do so in such a way that everything to the faintest intonation and
smile would have been approved by her husband, whose unseen presence
she seemed to feel about her at that instant.

She said a few words to him, even smiled serenely at his joke about the
elections, which he called “our parliament.” (She had to smile to show
she saw the joke.) But she turned away immediately to Princess Marya
Borissovna, and did not once glance at him till he got up to go; then
she looked at him, but evidently only because it would be uncivil not
to look at a man when he is saying good-bye.

She was grateful to her father for saying nothing to her about their
meeting Vronsky, but she saw by his special warmth to her after the
visit during their usual walk that he was pleased with her. She was
pleased with herself. She had not expected she would have had the
power, while keeping somewhere in the bottom of her heart all the
memories of her old feeling for Vronsky, not only to seem but to be
perfectly indifferent and composed with him.

Levin flushed a great deal more than she when she told him she had met
Vronsky at Princess Marya Borissovna’s. It was very hard for her to
tell him this, but still harder to go on speaking of the details of the
meeting, as he did not question her, but simply gazed at her with a
frown.

“I am very sorry you weren’t there,” she said. “Not that you weren’t in
the room ... I couldn’t have been so natural in your presence ... I am
blushing now much more, much, much more,” she said, blushing till the
tears came into her eyes. “But that you couldn’t see through a crack.”

The truthful eyes told Levin that she was satisfied with herself, and
in spite of her blushing he was quickly reassured and began questioning
her, which was all she wanted. When he had heard everything, even to
the detail that for the first second she could not help flushing, but
that afterwards she was just as direct and as much at her ease as with
any chance acquaintance, Levin was quite happy again and said he was
glad of it, and would not now behave as stupidly as he had done at the
election, but would try the first time he met Vronsky to be as friendly
as possible.

“It’s so wretched to feel that there’s a man almost an enemy whom it’s
painful to meet,” said Levin. “I’m very, very glad.”