Anna Karenina (Penguin) - Leo Tolstoy [38]
Probably feeling that the conversation was acquiring too serious a character for a drawing room, Vronsky did not object, but, trying to change the subject, smiled cheerfully and turned to the ladies.
‘Let’s try it now, Countess,’ he began. But Levin wanted to finish saying what he thought.
‘I think,’ he continued, ‘that this attempt by the spiritualists to explain their wonders by some new force is a most unfortunate one. They speak directly about spiritual force and want to subject it to material experiment.’
They were all waiting for him to finish, and he felt it.
‘And I think that you’d make an excellent medium,’ said Countess Nordston, ‘there’s something ecstatic in you.’
Levin opened his mouth, wanted to say something, turned red, and said nothing.
‘Let’s try the tables now, Princess, if you please,’ said Vronsky. ‘With your permission, Madame?’ He turned to the old princess.
And Vronsky stood up, his eyes searching for a table.
Kitty got up from her little table and, as she passed by, her eyes met Levin’s. She pitied him with all her heart, the more so as she was the cause of his unhappiness. ‘If I can be forgiven, forgive me,’ her eyes said, ‘I’m so happy.’
‘I hate everybody, including you and myself,’ his eyes answered, and he picked up his hat. But he was not fated to leave yet. They were just settling around the little table, and Levin was on the point of leaving, when the old prince came in and, after greeting the ladies, turned to him.
‘Ah!’ he began joyfully. ‘Been here long? And I didn’t know you were here. Very glad to see you, sir.’
The old prince sometimes addressed Levin formally, sometimes informally. He embraced Levin, talking to him and not noticing Vronsky, who rose and waited calmly for the prince to turn to him.
Kitty sensed that, after what had happened, her father’s cordiality would be oppressive for Levin. She also saw how coldly her father finally responded to Vronsky’s bow and how Vronsky looked at her father with friendly perplexity, trying but failing to understand how and why it was possible to have an unfriendly attitude towards him, and she blushed.
‘Prince, give us Konstantin Dmitrich,’ said Countess Nordston. ‘We want to make an experiment.’
‘What experiment? Table-turning? Well, excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, but I think it’s more fun to play the ring game,’ said the old prince, looking at Vronsky and guessing that he had started it. ‘The ring game still has some sense to it.’
Vronsky gave the prince a surprised look with his firm eyes and, smiling slightly, immediately began talking with Countess Nordston about a big ball that was to take place in a week.
‘I hope you’ll be there?’ he turned to Kitty.
As soon as the old prince turned away from him, Levin went out unobserved, and the last impression he took away with him from that evening was the smiling, happy face of Kitty answering Vronsky’s question about the ball.
XV
When the evening was over, Kitty told her mother about her conversation with Levin, and, despite all the pity she felt for Levin, she was glad at the thought that she had been proposed to. She had no doubt that she had acted rightly. But when she went to bed, she could not fall asleep for a long time. One impression pursued her relentlessly. It was Levin’s face with its scowling eyebrows and his kind eyes looking out from under them with gloomy sullenness, as he stood listening to her father and glancing at her and Vronsky. And she felt such pity for him that tears came to her eyes. But she immediately thought of the one she had exchanged him for. She vividly recalled that manly, firm face, the noble calm and the kindness towards all that shone in him; she recalled the love for her of the one she loved, and again she felt joy in her soul, and with a smile of happiness she lay back on the pillow. ‘It’s a pity, a pity, but what to do? It’s not my fault,’ she kept saying to herself; yet her inner voice was saying something else. Whether she repented of having led Levin on, or of having rejected him,