Kitty began, hurrying after him, but he strode ruthlessly away to the dining room without waiting for her, and at once joined in the lively general conversation which was being maintained there by Vassenka Veslovsky and Stepan Arkadyevich.
`Well, what do you say, are we going shooting tomorrow?' said Stepan Arkadyevich.
`Please, do let's go,' said Veslovsky, moving to another chair, where he sat down sideways, with one fat leg crossed under him.
`I shall be delighted, we will go. And have you had any shooting yet this year?' said Levin to Veslovsky, looking intently at his leg, but speaking with that forced amiability that Kitty knew so well in him, and that was so out of keeping with him. `I can't answer for our finding double snipe, but there are plenty of jacksnipe. Only we ought to start early.
You're not tired? Aren't you tired, Stiva?'
`Me tired? I've never been tired yet. Suppose we stay up all night.
Let's go for a walk!'
`Yes, really, let's not go to bed at all! Capital!' Veslovsky chimed in.
`Oh, we all know you can do without sleep, and keep other people up too,' Dolly said to her husband, with that faint note of irony in her voice which she almost always had now with her husband. `But to my thinking, it's time for bed now... I'm going, I don't want supper.'
`No, do stay a little, Dollenka,' said Stepan Arkadyevich, going round to her side behind the table where they were having supper. `I've so much still to tell you.'
`Nothing really, I suppose.'
`Do you know Veslovsky has been at Anna's, and he's going to them again? You know they're hardly seventy verstas from you, and I too must certainly go over there. Veslovsky, come here!'
Vassenka crossed over to the ladies, and sat down beside Kitty.
`Ah, do tell me, please; you have visited her? How was she?' Darya Alexandrovna appealed to him.
Levin was left at the other end of the table, and though never pausing in his conversation with the Princess and Varenka, he saw that there was an eager and mysterious conversation going on between Stepan Arkadyevich, Dolly, Kitty, and Veslovsky. And that was not all. He saw on his wife's face an expression of real feeling as she gazed with fixed eyes on the handsome face of Vassenka, who was telling them something with great animation.
`It's exceedingly nice at their place,' Veslovsky was telling them about Vronsky and Anna. `I can't, of course, take it upon myself to judge, but in their house you feel the real feeling of home.'
`What do they intend doing?'
`I believe they think of going to Moscow for the winter.'
`How jolly it would be for us all to go over to them together!
When are you going there?' Stepan Arkadyevich asked Vassenka.
`I'm spending July there.'
`Will you go?' Stepan Arkadyevich said to his wife.
`I've been wanting to a long while; I shall certainly go,' said Dolly. `I am sorry for her, and I know her. She's a splendid woman. I will go alone, when you go back, and then I shall be in no one's way. And it will be better indeed without you.'
`To be sure,' said Stepan Arkadyevich. `And you, Kitty?'
`I? Why should I go?' Kitty said, flushing all over, and she glanced round at her husband.
`Do you know Anna Arkadyevna, then?' Veslovsky asked her. `She's a very fascinating woman?'
`Yes,' she answered Veslovsky, crimsoning still more. She got up and walked across to her husband.
`Are you going shooting, then, tomorrow?' she said.
His jealousy had in these few moments, especially at the flush that had overspread her cheeks while she was talking to Veslovsky, gone far indeed. Now as he heard her words, he construed them in his own fashion.
Strange as it was to him afterward to recall it, it seemed to him at the moment clear that in asking whether he was going shooting, all she cared to know was whether he would give that pleasure to Vassenka Veslovsky, with whom, as he fancied, she was in love.
`Yes, I'm going,' he answered her in an unnatural voice, disagreeable to himself.
`No, better spend the day here tomorrow, or Dolly won't see anything of her husband, and set off the day after,' said Kitty.
The motive of Kitty's words was interpreted by Levin thus: `Don't separate me from him. I don't care about your going, but do let me enjoy the society of this delightful young man.'
`Oh, if you wish, we'll stay here tomorrow,' Levin answered, with peculiar amiability.
Vassenka meanwhile, utterly unsuspecting the misery his presence had occasioned, got up from the table after Kitty, and watching her with smiling and admiring eyes, he followed her.
Levin saw that look. He turned white, and for a minute he could hardly breathe. `How dare he look at my wife like that!' was the feeling that boiled within him.
`Tomorrow, then? Do, please, let us go,' said Vassenka, sitting down on a chair, and again crossing his leg as his habit was.
Levin's jealousy went further still. Already he saw himself a deceived husband, looked upon by his wife and her lover as simply necessary to provide them with the conveniences and pleasures of life.... But in spite of that he made polite and hospitable inquiries of Vassenka about his shooting, his gun, and his boots, and agreed to go shooting next day.
Happily for Levin, the old Princess cut short his agonies by getting up herself and advising Kitty to go to bed. But even at this point Levin could not escape another agony. As he said good night to his hostess, Vassenka would again have kissed her hand, but Kitty, reddening, drew back her hand and said with a naïve bluntness, for which the old Princess scolded her afterward:
`We don't like that fashion.'
In Levin's eyes she was to blame for having allowed such relations to arise, and still more to blame for showing so awkwardly that she did not like them.