Anna Karenina

PART 7
Chapter 32
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Chapter 1
The 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
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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.
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.
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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.
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"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."
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