she said.
And the three women all fell to musing on the same thing. Kitty was the first to break the silence. She remembered all that last winter before her marriage, and her passion for Vronsky.
`There's one thing... that old love affair of Varenka's,' she said, a natural chain of ideas bringing her to this point. `I should have liked to say something to Sergei Ivanovich, to prepare him. They're all - all men, I mean,' - she added, `awfully jealous over our past.'
`Not all,' said Dolly. `You judge by your own husband. It makes him miserable even now to remember Vronsky. Eh? that's true, isn't it?'
`Yes', Kitty answered, a pensive smile in her eyes.
`But I really don't know,' the mother put in in defense of her motherly care of her daughter, `what there was in your past that could worry him? That Vronsky paid you attentions - that happens to every girl.'
`Oh, yes, but we didn't mean that,' Kitty said, flushing a little `No, let me speak,' her mother went on, `why, you yourself would not let me have a talk with Vronsky. Don't you remember?'
`Oh, mamma!' said Kitty, with an expression of suffering.
`There's no keeping you young people in check nowadays.... Your friendship could not have gone beyond what was suitable. I should myself have called upon him to explain himself. But, my darling, it's not right for you to be agitated. Please remember that, and calm yourself.'
`I'm perfectly calm, maman.'
`How happy it was for Kitty that Anna came then,' said Dolly, `and how unhappy for her. It turned out quite the opposite,' she said, struck by her own ideas. `Then Anna was so happy, and Kitty thought herself unhappy. Now it is just the opposite. I often think of her.'
`A fine person to think about! Horrid, repulsive woman - no heart,'
said her mother, who could not forget that Kitty had married not Vronsky, but Levin.
`What do you want to talk of it for?' Kitty said with annoyance.
`I never think about it, and I don't want to think of it.... And I don't want to think of it,' she said, catching the sound of her husband's familiar step on the steps of the terrace.
`What's that you don't want to think about?' inquired Levin, coming onto the terrace.
But no one answered him, and he did not repeat the question.
`I'm sorry I've broken in on your feminine kingdom,' he said, looking round on everyone discontentedly, and perceiving that they had been talking of something which they would not talk about before him.
For a second he felt that he was sharing the feeling of Agathya Mikhailovna, vexation at their ****** jam without water, and, on the whole, at the outside, Shcherbatsky authority. He smiled, however, and went up to Kitty.
`Well, how are you?' he asked her, looking at her with the expression with which everyone looked at her now.
`Oh, very well,' said Kitty, smiling, `and how have things gone with you?'
`The wagon held three times as much as the telega did. Well, are we going for the children? I've ordered the horses to be put in.'
`What! You want to take Kitty in the wide droshky?' her mother said reproachfully.
`Yes - at walking pace, Princess.'
Levin never called the princess `maman' as men often do call their mothers-in-law, and the Princess disliked his not doing so. But though he liked and respected the Princess, Levin could not call her so without a sense of profaning his feeling for his dead mother.
`Come with us, maman,' said Kitty.
`I don't like to see such imprudence.'
`Well, I'll walk then, I'm so well.' Kitty got up and went to her husband and took his hand.
`You may be well, but everything in moderation,' said the Princess.
`Well, Agathya Mikhailovna, is the jam done?' said Levin, smiling to Agathya Mikhailovna, and trying to cheer her up. `Is it all right in the new way?'
`I suppose it's all right. According to our notions it's boiled too long.'
`It'll be all the better, Agathya Mikhailovna, it won't turn sour, even though the ice in our icehouse has begun to melt already, so that we've no cool place to store it,' said Kitty, at once divining her husband's motive, and addressing the old housekeeper with the same feeling; `but your pickles are so good, that mamma says she never tasted any like them,'
she added, smiling, and putting her kerchief straight.
Agathya Mikhailovna looked sulkily at Kitty.
`You needn't try to console me, mistress. I need only to look at you with him, and I feel happy,' she said, and something in the rough familiarity of that with him touched Kitty.
`Come along with us to look for mushrooms, you will show us the best places.'
Agathya Mikhailovna smiled and shook her head, as though to say:
`I would even like to be angry with you, but I can't.'
`Do it, please, according to my recipe,' said the Princess; `put some paper over the jam, and moisten it with a little rum, and, even without ice, it will never grow moldy.'
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TOLSTOY: Anna Karenina Part 6, Chapter 03[Previous Chapter] [Table of Contents] Chapter 3 Kitty was particularly glad of a chance of being alone with her husband, for she had noticed the shade of mortification that had passed over his face - always so quick to reflect every feeling - at the moment when he had come onto the terrace and asked what they were talking of, and had got no answer.
When they had set off on foot ahead of the others, and had gotten out of sight of the house onto the beaten, dusty road, sprinkled with ears of rye and with separate grains, she clung faster to his arm and pressed it closer to her. He had quite forgotten the momentary unpleasant impression, and alone with her he felt, now that the thought of her approaching motherhood was never for a moment absent from his mind, a new and delicious bliss, quite pure from all alloy of sense, in being near to the woman he loved.
There was no need of speech, yet he longed to hear the sound of her voice, which, like her eyes, had changed since she had become pregnant. In her voice, as in her eyes, there was that softness and gravity which is found in people continually concentrated on some cherished pursuit.