`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 who drinks most, the peasantry or our own class; the peasants do it 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.
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, a 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... Where? 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 growing crazy. 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.
[Next Chapter] [Table of Contents] TOLSTOY: Anna Karenina Part 7, Chapter 12[Previous Chapter] [Table of Contents] Chapter 12 After taking leave of her guests, Anna did not sit down, but began walking up and down the room. She had unconsciously the whole evening done her utmost to arouse in Levin a feeling of love - as of late she had fallen into doing with all young men - and she knew she had attained her aim, as far as was possible in one evening, with a married and conscientious man. She liked him very much indeed, and, in spite of the striking difference, from the masculine point of view, between Vronsky and Levin, as a woman she saw something they had in common, which had made Kitty able to love both. Yet as soon as he was out of the room, she ceased to think of him.
One thought, and one only, pursued her in different forms, and refused to be shaken off. `If I have so much effect on others, on this man, who loves his home and his wife, why is it he is so cold to me?...
Not cold exactly - he loves me, I know that! But something new is drawing us apart now. Why wasn't he here all the evening? He told Stiva to say he could not leave Iashvin, and must watch over his play. Is Iashvin a child? But supposing it's true. He never tells a he. But there's something else in it if it's true. He is glad of an opportunity of showing me that he has other duties; I know that, I submit to that. But why prove that to me? He wants to show me that his love for me is not to interfere with his *******. But I need no proofs - I need love. He ought to understand all the bitterness of this life for me here in Moscow. Is this life? Iam not living, but waiting for an event, which is continually put off and put off. No answer again! And Stiva says he cannot go to Alexei Alexandrovich.
And I can't write again. I can do nothing, can begin nothing, can alter nothing; I hold myself in, I wait, inventing amusements for myself - the English family, writing, reading - but it's all nothing but a sham, it's all the same as morphine. He ought to feel for me,' she said, feeling tears of self-pity coming into her eyes.
She heard Vronsky's abrupt ring and hurriedly dried her tears - not only dried her tears, but sat down by a lamp and opened a book, affecting composure. She wanted to show him that she was displeased that he had not come home as he had promised - displeased only, and not on any account to let him see her distress, and, least of all, her self-pity. She might pity herself, but he must not pity her. She did not want strife, she blamed him for wanting to quarrel, but unconsciously put herself into an attitude of antagonism.
`Well, you've not been dull?' he said, eagerly and good-humoredly, going up to her. `What a terrible passion it is - gambling!'
`No, I've not been dull; I've learned long ago not to be dull.
Stiva has been here, and Levin.'
`Yes, they meant to come and see you. Well, how did you like Levin?'
he said, sitting down beside her.
`Very much. They have not been gone long. What was Iashvin doing?'
`He was winning - seventeen thousand. I got him away. He had really started home, but he went back again, and now he's losing.'