Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART SEVEN CHAPTER 10
scarcely heard what Vorkuev was telling him of the qualities of the story for children
Anna Arkadyevna had written.
At tea the same pleasant sort of talk, full of interesting matter, continued. There
was not a single instant when a subject for conversation was to seek; on the contrary,
it was felt that one had hardly time to say what one had to say, and eagerly
held back to hear what the others were saying. And all that was said, not only by
her, but by Vorkuev and Stepan Arkadyevitch–all, so it seemed to Levin, gained peculiar
significance from her appreciation and her criticism. While he followed this
interesting conversation, Levin was all the time admiring her– her beauty, her intelligence,
her culture, and at the same time her directness and genuine depth of
feeling. He listened and talked, and all the while he was thinking of her inner life,
trying to divine her feelings. And though he had judged her so severely hitherto,
now by some strange chain of reasoning he was justifying her and was also sorry for
her, and afraid that Vronsky did not fully understand her. At eleven o’clock, when
Stepan Arkadyevitch got up to go (Vorkuev had left earlier), it seemed to Levin that
he had only just come. Regretfully Levin too rose.
“Good-bye,” she said, holding his hand and glancing into his face with a winning
look. “I am very glad que la glace est rompue.”
She dropped his hand, and half closed her eyes.
“Tell your wife that I love her as before, and that if she cannot pardon me my
position, then my wish for her is that she may never pardon it. To pardon it, one
must go through what I have gone through, and may God spare her that.”
“Certainly, yes, I will tell her...” Levin said, blushing.
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