Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART SEVEN CHAPTER 11
gone to call on Anna, he blushed. “We talk about the peasants drinking; I don’t know
which drinks most, the peasantry or our own class; the peasants do on holidays,
but...”
But Kitty took not the slightest interest in discussing the drinking habits of the
peasants. She saw that he blushed, and she wanted to know why.
“Well, and then where did you go?”
“Stiva urged me awfully to go and see Anna Arkadyevna.”
And as he said this, Levin blushed even more, and his doubts as to whether he
had done right in going to see Anna were settled once for all. He knew now that he
ought not to have done so.
Kitty’s eyes opened in a curious way and gleamed at Anna’s name, but controlling
herself with an effort, she concealed her emotion and deceived him.
“Oh!” was all she said.
“I’m sure you won’t be angry at my going. Stiva begged me to, and Dolly wished
it,” Levin went on.
“Oh, no!” she said, but he saw in her eyes a constraint that boded him no good.
“She is a very sweet, very, very unhappy, good woman,” he said, telling her about
Anna, her occupations, and what she had told him to say to her.
“Yes, of course, she is very much to be pitied,” said Kitty, when he had finished.
“Whom was your letter from?”
He told her, and believing in her calm tone, he went to change his coat.
Coming back, he found Kitty in the same easy chair. When he went up to her, she
glanced at him and broke into sobs.
“What? what is it?” he asked, knowing beforehand what.
“You’re in love with that hateful woman; she has bewitched you! I saw it in your
eyes. Yes, yes! What can it all lead to? You were drinking at the club, drinking and
gambling, and then you went...to her of all people! No, we must go away.... I shall
go away tomorrow.”
It was a long while before Levin could soothe his wife. At last he succeeded in
calming her, only by confessing that a feeling of pity, in conjunction with the wine
he had drunk, had been too much for him, that he had succumbed to Anna’s artful
influence, and that he would avoid her. One thing he did with more sincerity confess
to was that living so long in Moscow, a life of nothing but conversation, eating and
drinking, he was degenerating. They talked till three o’clock in the morning. Only
at three o’clock were they sufficiently reconciled to be able to go to sleep.
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