Part Seven: Chapter 11

by Leo Tolstoy

　　"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 thatLevin had been completely won over.

　　"Yes," said Levin dreamily, "an extraordinary woman! It's nother cleverness, but she has such wonderful depth of feeling. I'mawfully 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 phrasein their conversation with her, and recalling the minutestchanges in her expression, entering more and more into herposition, and feeling sympathy for her, Levin reached home.

　　At home Kouzma told Levin that Katerina Alexandrovna was quitewell, and that her sisters had not long been gone, and he handedhim two letters. Levin read them at once in the hall, that hemight not over look them later. One was from Sokolov, hisbailiff. Sokolov wrote that the corn could not be sold, that itwas fetching only five and a half roubles, and that more thanthat could not be got for it. The other letter was from hissister. 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 seemedsuch a weighty one, with extraordinary facility on the spot."It's extraordinary how all one's time is taken up here," hethought, considering the second letter. He felt himself to blamefor not having got done what his sister had asked him to do forher. "Today, again, I've not been to the court, but today I'vecertainly not had time." And resolving that he would not fail todo it next day, he went up to his wife. As he went in, Levinrapidly ran through mentally the day he had spent. All theevents of the day were conversations, conversations he had heardand taken part in. All the conversations were upon subjectswhich, if he had been alone at home, he would never have takenup, but here they were very interesting. And all theseconversations were right enough, only in two places there wassomething not quite right. One was what he had said about thecarp, the other was something not "quite the thing" in the tendersympathy he was feeling for Anna.

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

　　"Well, and what have you been doing?" she asked him, lookingstraight into his eyes, which shone with rather a suspiciousbrightness. But that she might not prevent his telling hereverything, she concealed her close scrutiny of him, and with anapproving smile listened to his account of how he had spent theevening.

　　"Well, I'm very glad I met Vronsky. I felt quite at ease andnatural with him. You understand, I shall try not to see him,but I'm glad that this awkwardness is all over," he said, andremembering that by way of trying not to see him, he hadimmediately gone to call on Anna, he blushed. "We talk about thepeasants drinking; I don't know which drinks most, the peasantryor our own class; the peasants do on holidays, but..."

　　But Kitty took not the slightest interest in discussing thedrinking habits of the peasants. She saw that he blushed, andshe 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 asto whether he had done right in going to see Anna were settledonce 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 emotionand 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 thatboded 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 toldhim to say to her.

　　"Yes, of course, she is very much to be pitied," said Kitty, whenhe had finished. "Whom was your letter from?"

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

　　Coming back, he found Kitty in the same easy chair. When he wentup 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? Youwere drinking at the club, drinking and gambling, and then youwent...to her of all people! No, we must go away.... I shall goaway tomorrow."

　　It was a long while before Levin could soothe his wife. At lasthe succeeded in calming her, only by confessing that a feeling ofpity, in conjunction with the wine he had drunk, had been toomuch for him, that he had succumbed to Anna's artful influence,and that he would avoid her. One thing he did with moresincerity confess to was that living so long in Moscow, a life ofnothing but conversation, eating and drinking, he wasdegenerating. They talked till three o'clock in the morning.Only at three o'clock were they sufficiently reconciled to beable to go to sleep.