Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART SIX CHAPTER 7
“It’s exceedingly nice at their place,” Veslovsky was telling them about Vronsky
and Anna. “I can’t, of course, take it upon myself to judge, but in their house you
feel the real feeling of home.”
“What do they intend doing?”
“I believe they think of going to Moscow.”
“How jolly it would be for us all to go over to them together! When are you going
there?” Stepan Arkadyevitch asked Vassenka.
“I’m spending July there.”
“Will you go?” Stepan Arkadyevitch said to his wife.
“I’ve been wanting to a long while; I shall certainly go,” said Dolly. “I am sorry
for her, and I know her. She’s a splendid woman. I will go alone, when you go back,
and then I shall be in no one’s way. And it will be better indeed without you.”
“To be sure,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch. “And you, Kitty?”
“I? Why should I go?” Kitty said, flushing all over, and she glanced round at her
husband.
“Do you know Anna Arkadyevna, then?” Veslovsky asked her. “She’s a very
fascinating woman.”
“Yes,” she answered Veslovsky, crimsoning still more. She got up and walked
across to her husband.
“Are you going shooting, then, tomorrow?” she said.
His jealousy had in these few moments, especially at the flush that had overspread
her cheeks while she was talking to Veslovsky, gone far indeed. Now as he heard her
words, he construed them in his own fashion. Strange as it was to him afterwards to
recall it, it seemed to him at the moment clear that in asking whether he was going
shooting, all she cared to know was whether he would give that pleasure to Vassenka
Veslovsky, with whom, as he fancied, she was in love.
“Yes, I’m going,” he answered her in an unnatural voice, disagreeable to himself.
“No, better spend the day here tomorrow, or Dolly won’t see anything of her husband,
and set off the day after,” said Kitty.
The motive of Kitty’s words was interpreted by Levin thus: “Don’t separate me
from him. I don’t care about your going, but do let me enjoy the society of this delightful
young man.”
“Oh, if you wish, we’ll stay here tomorrow,” Levin answered, with peculiar amiability.
Vassenka meanwhile, utterly unsuspecting the misery his presence had occasioned,
got up from the table after Kitty, and watching her with smiling and admiring
eyes, he followed her.
Levin saw that look. He turned white, and for a minute he could hardly breathe.
“How dare he look at my wife like that!” was the feeling that boiled within him.
“Tomorrow, then? Do, please, let us go,” said Vassenka, sitting down on a chair,
and again crossing his leg as his habit was.
528