Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART TWO CHAPTER 3
“Yes, I don’t say so either.... Only one thing. Tell me the truth,” said Darya Alexandrovna,
taking her by the hand: “tell me, did Levin speak to you?...”
The mention of Levin’s name seemed to deprive Kitty of the last vestige of selfcontrol.
She leaped up from her chair, and flinging her clasp on the ground, she
gesticulated rapidly with her hands and said:
“Why bring Levin in too? I can’t understand what you want to torment me for.
I’ve told you, and I say it again, that I have some pride, and never, never would I do
as you’re doing–go back to a man who’s deceived you, who has cared for another
woman. I can’t understand it! You may, but I can’t!”
And saying these words she glanced at her sister, and seeing that Dolly sat silent,
her head mournfully bowed, Kitty, instead of running out of the room as she had
meant to do, sat down near the door, and hid her face in her handkerchief.
The silence lasted for two minutes: Dolly was thinking of herself. That humiliation
of which she was always conscious came back to her with a peculiar bitterness when
her sister reminded her of it. She had not looked for such cruelty in her sister, and
she was angry with her. But suddenly she heard the rustle of a skirt, and with it the
sound of heart-rending, smothered sobbing, and felt arms about her neck. Kitty was
on her knees before her.
“Dolinka, I am so, so wretched!” she whispered penitently. And the sweet face
covered with tears hid itself in Darya Alexandrovna’s skirt.
As though tears were the indispensable oil, without which the machinery of mutual
confidence could not run smoothly between the two sisters, the sisters after their
tears talked, not of what was uppermost in their minds, but, though they talked of
outside matters, they understood each other. Kitty knew that the words she had uttered
in anger about her husband’s infidelity and her humiliating position had cut
her poor sister to the heart, but that she had forgiven her. Dolly for her part knew
all she had wanted to find out. She felt certain that her surmises were correct; that
Kitty’s misery, her inconsolable misery, was due precisely to the fact that Levin had
made her an offer and she had refused him, and Vronsky had deceived her, and that
she was fully prepared to love Levin and to detest Vronsky. Kitty said not a word of
that; she talked of nothing but her spiritual condition.
“I have nothing to make me miserable,” she said, getting calmer; “but can you understand
that everything has become hateful, loathsome, coarse to me, and I myself
most of all? You can’t imagine what loathsome thoughts I have about everything.”
“Why, whatever loathsome thoughts can you have?” asked Dolly, smiling.
“The most utterly loathsome and coarse: I can’t tell you. It’s not unhappiness, or
low spirits, but much worse. As though everything that was good in me was all
hidden away, and nothing was left but the most loathsome. Come, how am I to tell
you?” she went on, seeing the puzzled look in her sister’s eyes. “Father began saying
something to me just now.... It seems to me he thinks all I want is to be married.
Mother takes me to a ball: it seems to me she only takes me to get me married off as
soon as may be, and be rid of me. I know it’s not the truth, but I can’t drive away
such thoughts. Eligible suitors, as they call them–I can’t bear to see them. It seems
to me they’re taking stock of me and summing me up. In old days to go anywhere
117