Anna Karenina (Penguin) - Leo Tolstoy [159]
‘Ah, I’m very glad!’ said Levin, and it seemed to Dolly that there was something touching and helpless in his face as he said it and silently looked at her.
‘Listen, Konstantin Dmitrich,’ said Darya Alexandrovna, smiling her kind and slightly mocking smile, ‘why are you angry with Kitty?’
‘I? I’m not angry,’ said Levin.
‘No, you are angry. Why didn’t you come either to see us or to see them when you were in Moscow?’
‘Darya Alexandrovna,’ he said, blushing to the roots of his hair, ‘I’m even astonished that you, with all your kindness, don’t feel it. Aren’t you simply sorry for me, since you know ...’
‘What do I know?’
‘You know that I proposed and was refused,’ said Levin, and all the tenderness he had felt for Kitty a moment before was replaced in his soul by a feeling of anger at the insult.
‘Why do you think I know?’
‘Because everybody knows.’
‘There you’re mistaken; I didn’t know, though I guessed.’
‘Ah! Well, now you know.’
‘I knew only that there was something, but Kitty never told me what it was. I could see that there was something that tormented her terribly, and she asked me never to speak of it. And if she didn’t tell me, she didn’t tell anybody. But what happened between you? Tell me.’
‘I’ve told you what happened.’
‘When was it?’
‘When I last visited you.’
‘And, you know, I shall tell you,’ said Darya Alexandrovna, ‘that I’m terribly, terribly sorry for her. You only suffer from pride ...’
‘Maybe,’ said Levin, ‘but...’
She interrupted him:
‘But for her, poor thing, I’m terribly, terribly sorry. Now I understand everything.’
‘Well, Darya Alexandrovna, you will excuse me,’ he said, getting up. ‘Goodbye! Goodbye, Darya Alexandrovna.’
‘No, wait,’ she said, holding him by the sleeve. ‘Wait, sit down.’
‘Please, please, let’s not talk about it,’ he said, sitting down and at the same time feeling a hope he had thought buried rising and stirring in his heart.
‘If I didn’t love you,’ said Darya Alexandrovna, and tears welled up in her eyes, ‘if I didn’t know you as I do ...’
The feeling that had seemed dead revived more and more, rising and taking possession of Levin’s heart.
‘Yes, I understand everything now,’ Darya Alexandrovna went on. ‘You can’t understand it. For you men, who are free and can choose, it’s always clear whom you love. But a young girl in a state of expectation, with that feminine, maidenly modesty, a girl who sees you men from afar, who takes everything on trust - a girl may and does sometimes feel that she doesn’t know who she loves or what to say.’
‘Yes, if her heart doesn’t speak ...’
‘No, her heart speaks, but consider: you men have your eye on a girl, you visit the house, you make friends, you watch, you wait to see if you’re going to find what you love, and then, once you’re convinced of your love, you propose ...’
‘Well, it’s not quite like that.’
‘Never mind, you propose when your love has ripened or when the scale tips towards one of your two choices. But a girl isn’t asked. She’s expected to choose for herself, but she can’t choose and only answers yes or no.’
‘Yes,’ thought Levin, ‘a choice between me and Vronsky,’ and the dead man reviving in his heart died again and only weighed his heart down painfully.
‘Darya Alexandrovna,’ he said, ‘one chooses a dress that way, or I don’t know what purchase, but not love. The choice has been made and so much the better ... And there can be no repetition.’
‘Ah, pride, pride!’ said Darya Alexandrovna, as if despising him for the meanness of this feeling compared with that other feeling which only women know. ‘At the time you proposed to Kitty, she was precisely in a position where she could not give an answer. She hesitated. Hesitated between you and Vronsky. Him she saw every day, you she had not seen for a long time. Suppose she had been older - for me, for example, there could have been no hesitation in her place. I always found him disgusting, and so he was in the end.’
Levin remembered Kitty’s answer. She had said: ‘No, it cannot be ...’
‘Darya Alexandrovna,’ he said drily, ‘I appreciate your confidence