Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART TWO CHAPTER 17
Chapter 17
STEPAN Arkadyevitch went upstairs with his pocket bulging with notes, which the
merchant had paid him for three months in advance. The business of the forest
was over, the money in his pocket; their shooting had been excellent, and Stepan
Arkadyevitch was in the happiest frame of mind, and so he felt specially anxious to
dissipate the ill-humor that had come upon Levin. He wanted to finish the day at
supper as pleasantly as it had been begun.
Levin certainly was out of humor, and in spite of all his desire to be affectionate
and cordial to his charming visitor, he could not control his mood. The intoxication
of the news that Kitty was not married had gradually begun to work upon him.
Kitty was not married, but ill, and ill from love for a man who had slighted her.
This slight, as it were, rebounded upon him. Vronsky had slighted her, and she
had slighted him, Levin. Consequently Vronsky had the right to despise Levin, and
therefore he was his enemy. But all this Levin did not think out. He vaguely felt
that there was something in it insulting to him, and he was not angry now at what
had disturbed him, but he fell foul of everything that presented itself. The stupid
sale of the forest, the fraud practiced upon Oblonsky and concluded in his house,
exasperated him.
“Well, finished?” he said, meeting Stepan Arkadyevitch upstairs. “Would you like
supper?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say no to it. What an appetite I get in the country! Wonderful!
Why didn’t you offer Ryabinin something?”
“Oh, damn him!”
“Still, how you do treat him!” said Oblonsky. “You didn’t even shake hands with
him. Why not shake hands with him?”
“Because I don’t shake hands with a waiter, and a waiter’s a hundred times better
than he is.”
“What a reactionist you are, really! What about the amalgamation of classes?”
said Oblonsky.
“Anyone who likes amalgamating is welcome to it, but it sickens me.”
“You’re a regular reactionist, I see.”
“Really, I have never considered what I am. I am Konstantin Levin, and nothing
else.”
“And Konstantin Levin very much out of temper,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch,
smiling.
“Yes, I am out of temper, and do you know why? Because–excuse me–of your
stupid sale...”
Stepan Arkadyevitch frowned good-humoredly, like one who feels himself teased
and attacked for no fault of his own.
“Come, enough about it!” he said. “When did anybody ever sell anything without
being told immediately after the sale, ‘It was worth much more’? But when one
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