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By Root 1158 0

Besides intelligence, grace, beauty, there was truthfulness in her. She did not want to conceal from him all the difficulty of her situation. Having said this, she sighed, and it was as if her face, acquiring a stern expression, suddenly turned to stone. With this expression she was still more beautiful than before; but this was a new look; it was outside the realm of the expressions, radiant with happiness and giving happiness, which the artist had caught in the portrait. Levin glanced once more at the portrait and then at her figure as she took her brother’s arm and walked with him through the high doorway, and felt a tenderness and pity for her that surprised him.

She asked Levin and Vorkuev to go to the drawing room and stayed behind to talk about something with her brother. ‘About the divorce, about Vronsky, about what he’s doing at the club, about me?’ thought Levin. And he was so excited by the question of what she was talking about with Stepan Arkadyich that he hardly listened to what Vorkuev was telling him about the merits of the children’s novel Anna Arkadyevna had written.

Over tea the same pleasant, meaningful conversation continued. Not only was there not a single moment when it was necessary to search for a subject of conversation but, on the contrary, there was a feeling of having no time to say what one wanted and of willingly restraining oneself in order to hear what the other was saying. And whatever was said, not only by her but by Vorkuev, by Stepan Arkadyich, acquired a special significance, as it seemed to Levin, owing to her attention and observations.

As he followed the interesting conversation, Levin admired her all the while - her beauty, her intelligence, her education, and with that her simplicity and deep feeling. He listened, talked, and all the while thought about her, about her inner life, trying to guess her feelings. And he who had formerly judged her so severely, now, by some strange train of thought, justified her and at the same time pitied her, and feared that Vronsky did not fully understand her. After ten, when Stepan Arkadyich got up to leave (Vorkuev had left earlier), it seemed to Levin as if he had just come. He, too, regretfully got up to leave.

‘Good-bye,’ she said, holding his hand and looking into his eyes with an appealing gaze. ‘I’m very glad que la glace est rompue.’dd

She let go of his hand and narrowed her eyes.

‘Tell your wife that I love her as before, and if she cannot forgive me my situation, I wish her never to forgive me. In order to forgive, one must have lived through what I have lived through, and may God spare her that.’

‘Certainly, yes, I’ll tell her ...’ said Levin, blushing.

XI

‘What an amazing, dear and pitiful woman,’ he thought, going out with Stepan Arkadyich into the frosty air.

‘Well, so? I told you,’ Stepan Arkadyich said to him, seeing that Levin was completely won over.

‘Yes,’ Levin replied pensively, ‘an extraordinary woman! Not just her intelligence, but her heart. I’m terribly sorry for her!’

‘God grant it will all be settled soon now. Well, so don’t go judging beforehand,’ said Stepan Arkadyich, opening the carriage doors. ‘Good bye. We’re not going the same way.’

Never ceasing to think about Anna, about all those most simple conversations he had had with her, and at the same time remembering all the details of her facial expression, entering more and more into her situation and pitying her, Levin arrived at home.

At home Kuzma told Levin that Katerina Alexandrovna was well, that her sisters had left her only recently, and handed him two letters. Levin read them right there in the front hall, so as not to be distracted later. One was from his steward, Sokolov. Sokolov wrote that it was impossible to sell the wheat, that the offer was only five and a half roubles, and there was nowhere else to get money. The other letter was from his sister. She reproached him for still not having taken care of her business.

‘So we’ll sell it for five-fifty, since they won’t pay more.’ Levin resolved the first question at once, with extraordinary