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By Root 976 0

intelligent people that after enormous efforts, an enormous number of logical subtleties and words, the arguers would finally come to the awareness that what they had spent so long struggling to prove to each other had been known to them long, long before, from the beginning of the argument, but that they loved different things and therefore did not want to name what they loved, so as not to be challenged. He had often felt that sometimes during an argument you would understand what your opponent loves, and suddenly come to love the same thing yourself, and agree all at once, and then all reasonings would fall away as superfluous; and sometimes it was the other way round: you would finally say what you yourself love, for the sake of which you are inventing your reasonings, and if you happened to say it well and sincerely, the opponent would suddenly agree and stop arguing. That was the very thing he wanted to say.

She wrinkled her forehead, trying to understand. But as soon as he began to explain, she understood.

‘I understand: you must find out what he’s arguing for, what he loves, and then you can...’

She had fully divined and expressed his poorly expressed thought. Levin smiled joyfully: so striking did he find the transition from an intricate, verbose argument with his brother and Pestsov to this laconic and clear, almost wordless, communication of the most complex thoughts.

Shcherbatsky left them, and Kitty, going over to an open card table, sat down, took a piece of chalk in her hand and began to trace radiating circles on the new green cloth.

They resumed the conversation that had gone on at dinner about the freedom and occupations of women. Levin agreed with Darya Alexandrovna’s opinion that a girl who did not get married could find feminine work for herself in her family. He supported it by saying that no family can do without a helper, that in every family, poor or rich, there are and must be nannies, hired or from the family.

‘No,’ said Kitty, blushing, but looking at him all the more boldly with her truthful eyes, ‘a girl can be in such a position that she cannot enter a family without humiliation, while she herself...’

He understood from a hint.

‘Oh! yes!’ he said, ‘yes, yes, yes, you’re right, you’re right!’

And he understood all that Pestsov had been maintaining at dinner about women’s freedom, only because he saw the fear of spinsterhood and humiliation in Kitty’s heart, and, loving her, he felt that fear and humiliation and at once renounced his arguments.

Silence ensued. She went on tracing on the table with the chalk. Her eyes shone with a quiet light. Obedient to her mood, he felt in his whole being the ever increasing tension of happiness.

‘Ah! I’ve scribbled all over the table!’ she said and, putting down the chalk, made a movement as if she wanted to get up.

‘How can I stay alone ... without her?’ he thought with horror and he took the chalk. ‘Wait,’ he said, sitting down at the table. ‘There’s one thing I’ve long wanted to ask you.’

He looked straight into her tender though frightened eyes.

‘Please do.’

‘Here,’ he said, and wrote the initial letters: w, y, a, m: t, c, b, d, i, m, n, o, t? These letters meant: ‘When you answered me: “that cannot be”, did it mean never or then?’ There was no likelihood that she would be able to understand this complex phrase, but he watched her with such a look as if his life depended on her understanding these words.

She glanced at him seriously, then leaned her knitted brow on her hand and began to read. Occasionally she glanced at him, asking with her glance: ‘Is this what I think?’

‘I understand,’ she said, blushing.

‘What is this word?’ he said, pointing to the n that signified the word never.

‘That means the word never,’ she said, ‘but it’s not true!’

He quickly erased what was written, gave her the chalk and got up. She wrote: t, I, c, g, n, o, a.

Dolly was completely consoled in her grief, caused by her conversation with Alexei Alexandrovich, when she saw these two figures: Kitty, chalk in hand, looking up at Levin with a timid and happy