Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART TWO CHAPTER 2
As soon as she began to cry the prince too calmed down. He went up to her.
“There, that’s enough, that’s enough! You’re wretched too, I know. It can’t be
helped. There’s no great harm done. God is merciful...thanks...” he said, not knowing
what he was saying, as he responded to the tearful kiss of the princess that he
felt on his hand. And the prince went out of the room.
Before this, as soon as Kitty went out of the room in tears, Dolly, with her motherly,
family instincts, had promptly perceived that here a woman’s work lay before her,
and she prepared to do it. She took off her hat, and, morally speaking, tucked up her
sleeves and prepared for action. While her mother was attacking her father, she tried
to restrain her mother, so far as filial reverence would allow. During the prince’s
outburst she was silent; she felt ashamed for her mother, and tender towards her
father for so quickly being kind again. But when her father left them she made ready
for what was the chief thing needful–to go to Kitty and console her.
“I’d been meaning to tell you something for a long while, mamma: did you know
that Levin meant to make Kitty an offer when he was here the last time? He told
Stiva so.”
“Well, what then? I don’t understand...”
“So did Kitty perhaps refuse him?... She didn’t tell you so?”
“No, she has said nothing to me either of one or the other; she’s too proud. But I
know it’s all on account of the other.”
“Yes, but suppose she has refused Levin, and she wouldn’t have refused him if it
hadn’t been for the other, I know. And then, he has deceived her so horribly.”
It was too terrible for the princess to think how she had sinned against her daughter,
and she broke out angrily.
“Oh, I really don’t understand! Nowadays they will all go their own way, and
mothers haven’t a word to say in anything, and then...”
“Mamma, I’ll go up to her.”
“Well, do. Did I tell you not to?” said her mother.
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