Anna Karenina

“hat a marvelous, sweet and unhappy woman!” he was thinking, as he
stepped out into the frosty air with Stepan Arkadyevitch.

“Well, didn’t I tell you?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, seeing that Levin
had been completely won over.

“Yes,” said Levin dreamily, “an extraordinary woman! It’s not her
cleverness, but she has such wonderful depth of feeling. I’m awfully
sorry for her!”

“Now, please God, everything will soon be settled. Well, well, don’t be
hard on people in future,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, opening the
carriage door. “Good-bye; we don’t go the same way.”

Still thinking of Anna, of everything, even the simplest phrase in
their conversation with her, and recalling the minutest changes in her
expression, entering more and more into her position, and feeling
sympathy for her, Levin reached home.

At home Kouzma told Levin that Katerina Alexandrovna was quite well,
and that her sisters had not long been gone, and he handed him two
letters. Levin read them at once in the hall, that he might not
overlook them later. One was from Sokolov, his bailiff. Sokolov wrote
that the corn could not be sold, that it was fetching only five and a
half roubles, and that more than that could not be got for it. The
other letter was from his sister. She scolded him for her business
being still unsettled.

“Well, we must sell it at five and a half if we can’t get more,” Levin
decided the first question, which had always before seemed such a
weighty one, with extraordinary facility on the spot. “It’s
extraordinary how all one’s time is taken up here,” he thought,
considering the second letter. He felt himself to blame for not having
got done what his sister had asked him to do for her. “Today, again,
I’ve not been to the court, but today I’ve certainly not had time.” And
resolving that he would not fail to do it next day, he went up to his
wife. As he went in, Levin rapidly ran through mentally the day he had
spent. All the events of the day were conversations, conversations he
had heard and taken part in. All the conversations were upon subjects
which, if he had been alone at home, he would never have taken up, but
here they were very interesting. And all these conversations were right
enough, only in two places there was something not quite right. One was
what he had said about the carp, the other was something not “quite the
thing” in the tender sympathy he was feeling for Anna.

Levin found his wife low-spirited and dull. The dinner of the three
sisters had gone off very well, but then they had waited and waited for
him, all of them had felt dull, the sisters had departed, and she had
been left alone.

“Well, and what have you been doing?” she asked him, looking straight
into his eyes, which shone with rather a suspicious brightness. But
that she might not prevent his telling her everything, she concealed
her close scrutiny of him, and with an approving smile listened to his
account of how he had spent the evening.

“Well, I’m very glad I met Vronsky. I felt quite at ease and natural
with him. You understand, I shall try not to see him, but I’m glad that
this awkwardness is all over,” he said, and remembering that by way of
trying not to see him, he had immediately gone to call on Anna, he
blushed. “We talk about the peasants drinking; I don’t know which
drinks most, the peasantry or our own class; the peasants do on
holidays, but....”

But Kitty took not the slightest interest in discussing the drinking
habits of the peasants. She saw that he blushed, and she wanted to know
why.

“Well, and then where did you go?”

“Stiva urged me awfully to go and see Anna Arkadyevna.”

And as he said this, Levin blushed even more, and his doubts as to
whether he had done right in going to see Anna were settled once for
all. He knew now that he ought not to have done so.

Kitty’s eyes opened in a curious way and gleamed at Anna’s name, but
controlling herself with an effort, she concealed her emotion and
deceived him.

“Oh!” was all she said.

“I’m sure you won’t be angry at my going. Stiva begged me to, and Dolly
wished it,” Levin went on.

“Oh, no!” she said, but he saw in her eyes a constraint that boded him
no good.

“She is a very sweet, very, very unhappy, good woman,” he said, telling
her about Anna, her occupations, and what she had told him to say to
her.

“Yes, of course, she is very much to be pitied,” said Kitty, when he
had finished. “Whom was your letter from?”

He told her, and believing in her calm tone, he went to change his
coat.

Coming back, he found Kitty in the same easy chair. When he went up to
her, she glanced at him and broke into sobs.

“What? what is it?” he asked, knowing beforehand what.

“You’re in love with that hateful woman; she has bewitched you! I saw
it in your eyes. Yes, yes! What can it all lead to? You were drinking
at the club, drinking and gambling, and then you went ... to her of all
people! No, we must go away.... I shall go away tomorrow.”

It was a long while before Levin could soothe his wife. At last he
succeeded in calming her, only by confessing that a feeling of pity, in
conjunction with the wine he had drunk, had been too much for him, that
he had succumbed to Anna’s artful influence, and that he would avoid
her. One thing he did with more sincerity confess to was that living so
long in Moscow, a life of nothing but conversation, eating and
drinking, he was degenerating. They talked till three o’clock in the
morning. Only at three o’clock were they sufficiently reconciled to be
able to go to sleep.