Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART SEVEN CHAPTER 10
The children were very nice, but I could not feel drawn to the work. You speak of
energy. Energy rests upon love; and come as it will, there’s no forcing it. I took to
this child–I could not myself say why.”
And she glanced again at Levin. And her smile and her glance– all told him that
it was to him only she was addressing her words, valuing his good opinion, and at
the same time sure beforehand that they understood each other.
“I quite understand that,” Levin answered. “It’s impossible to give one’s heart to
a school or such institutions in general, and I believe that’s just why philanthropic
institutions always give such poor results.”
She was silent for a while, then she smiled.
“Yes, yes,” she agreed; “I never could. Je n’ai pas le coeur assez large to love a whole
asylum of horrid little girls. Cela ne m’a jamais réussi. There are so many women
who have made themselves une position sociale in that way. And now more than
ever,” she said with a mournful, confiding expression, ostensibly addressing her
brother, but unmistakably intending her words only for Levin, “now when I have
such need of some occupation, I cannot.” And suddenly frowning (Levin saw that
she was frowning at herself for talking about herself) she changed the subject. “I
know about you,” she said to Levin; “that you’re not a public-spirited citizen, and I
have defended you to the best of my ability.”
“How have you defended me?”
“Oh, according to the attacks made on you. But won’t you have some tea?” She
rose and took up a book bound in morocco.
“Give it to me, Anna Arkadyevna,” said Vorkuev, indicating the book. “It’s well
worth taking up.”
“Oh, no, it’s all so sketchy.”
“I told him about it,” Stepan Arkadyevitch said to his sister, nodding at Levin.
“You shouldn’t have. My writing is something after the fashion of those little
baskets and carving which Liza Mertsalova used to sell me from the prisons. She
had the direction of the prison department in that society,” she turned to Levin; “and
they were miracles of patience, the work of those poor wretches.”
And Levin saw a new trait in this woman, who attracted him so extraordinarily.
Besides wit, grace, and beauty, she had truth. She had no wish to hide from him all
the bitterness of her position. As she said that she sighed, and her face suddenly
taking a hard expression, looked as it were turned to stone. With that expression
on her face she was more beautiful than ever; but the expression was new; it was
utterly unlike that expression, radiant with happiness and creating happiness, which
had been caught by the painter in her portrait. Levin looked more than once at the
portrait and at her figure, as taking her brother’s arm she walked with him to the
high doors and he felt for her a tenderness and pity at which he wondered himself.
She asked Levin and Vorkuev to go into the drawing room, while she stayed behind
to say a few words to her brother. “About her divorce, about Vronsky, and
what he’s doing at the club, about me?” wondered Levin. And he was so keenly
interested by the question of what she was saying to Stepan Arkadyevitch, that he
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