Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART SEVEN CHAPTER 10
Chapter 10
SHE had risen to meet him, not concealing her pleasure at seeing him; and in the
quiet ease with which she held out her little vigorous hand, introduced him to
Vorkuev and indicated a red-haired, pretty little girl who was sitting at work, calling
her her pupil, Levin recognized and liked the manners of a woman of the great
world, always self-possessed and natural.
“I am delighted, delighted,” she repeated, and on her lips these simple words took
for Levin’s ears a special significance. “I have known you and liked you for a long
while, both from your friendship with Stiva and for your wife’s sake.... I knew her
for a very short time, but she left on me the impression of an exquisite flower, simply
a flower. And to think she will soon be a mother!”
She spoke easily and without haste, looking now and then from Levin to her
brother, and Levin felt that the impression he was making was good, and he felt
immediately at home, simple and happy with her, as though he had known her from
childhood.
“Ivan Petrovitch and I settled in Alexey’s study,” she said in answer to Stepan
Arkadyevitch’s question whether he might smoke, “just so as to be able to smoke“–
and glancing at Levin, instead of asking whether he would smoke, she pulled closer
a tortoise-shell cigar-case and took a cigarette.
“How are you feeling today?” her brother asked her.
“Oh, nothing. Nerves, as usual.”
“Yes, isn’t it extraordinarily fine?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, noticing that Levin
was scrutinizing the picture.
“I have never seen a better portrait.”
“And extraordinarily like, isn’t it?” said Vorkuev.
Levin looked from the portrait to the original. A peculiar brilliance lighted up
Anna’s face when she felt his eyes on her. Levin flushed, and to cover his confusion
would have asked whether she had seen Darya Alexandrovna lately; but at that
moment Anna spoke. “We were just talking, Ivan Petrovitch and I, of Vashtchenkov’s
last pictures. Have you seen them?”
“Yes, I have seen them,” answered Levin.
“But, I beg your pardon, I interrupted you...you were saying?...”
Levin asked if she had seen Dolly lately.
“She was here yesterday. She was very indignant with the high school people on
Grisha’s account. The Latin teacher, it seems, had been unfair to him.”
“Yes, I have seen his pictures. I didn’t care for them very much,” Levin went back
to the subject she had started.
Levin talked now not at all with that purely businesslike attitude to the subject
with which he had been talking all the morning. Every word in his conversation
with her had a special significance. And talking to her was pleasant; still pleasanter
it was to listen to her.
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