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Chapter 11
"What 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 over look 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
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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.
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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
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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.
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