Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART FIVE CHAPTER 16
“I’m going because my brother is dying,” said Levin. “Why should you...”
“Why? For the same reason as you.”
“And, at a moment of such gravity for me, she only thinks of her being dull by
herself,” thought Levin. And this lack of candor in a matter of such gravity infuriated
him.
“It’s out of the question,” he said sternly.
Agafea Mihalovna, seeing that it was coming to a quarrel, gently put down her
cup and withdrew. Kitty did not even notice her. The tone in which her husband
had said the last words wounded her, especially because he evidently did not believe
what she had said.
“I tell you, that if you go, I shall come with you; I shall certainly come,” she said
hastily and wrathfully. “Why out of the question? Why do you say it’s out of the
question?”
“Because it’ll be going God knows where, by all sorts of roads and to all sorts of
hotels. You would be a hindrance to me,” said Levin, trying to be cool.
“Not at all. I don’t want anything. Where you can go, I can....”
“Well, for one thing then, because this woman’s there whom you can’t meet.”
“I don’t know and don’t care to know who’s there and what. I know that my husband’s
brother is dying and my husband is going to him, and I go with my husband
too....”
“Kitty! Don’t get angry. But just think a little: this is a matter of such importance
that I can’t bear to think that you should bring in a feeling of weakness, of dislike to
being left alone. Come, you’ll be dull alone, so go and stay at Moscow a little.”
“There, you always ascribe base, vile motives to me,” she said with tears of
wounded pride and fury. “I didn’t mean, it wasn’t weakness, it wasn’t...I feel that
it’s my duty to be with my husband when he’s in trouble, but you try on purpose to
hurt me, you try on purpose not to understand....”
“No; this is awful! To be such a slave!” cried Levin, getting up, and unable to
restrain his anger any longer. But at the same second he felt that he was beating
himself.
“Then why did you marry? You could have been free. Why did you, if you regret
it?” she said, getting up and running away into the drawing room.
When he went to her, she was sobbing.
He began to speak, trying to find words not to dissuade but simply to soothe her.
But she did not heed him, and would not agree to anything. He bent down to her
and took her hand, which resisted him. He kissed her hand, kissed her hair, kissed
her hand again–still she was silent. But when he took her face in both his hands
and said “Kitty!” she suddenly recovered herself, and began to cry, and they were
reconciled.
It was decided that they should go together the next day. Levin told his wife
that he believed she wanted to go simply in order to be of use, agreed that Marya
Nikolaevna’s being with his brother did not make her going improper, but he set
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