Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/1073

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ANNA KARENINA
391

she smiled timidly from under her hat, which had lost its shape in the rain.

"There now, are n't you ashamed? I can't understand how you could do such a careless thing," he began, in his vexation scolding his wife.

"Goodness,[1] it was not my fault. We were just starting to go when he began to be restless. We had to change him. We were just ...." Kitty said, trying to defend herself.

Mitya was safe, dry, and still soundly sleeping.

"Well! God be thanked! I don't know what I'm saying."

They hastily picked up the wet diapers, the nurse took the baby, and Levin, ashamed of his vexation, gave his arm to his wife, and led her away, pressing her hand gently.


CHAPTER XVIII

In the course of all that day, during the most varied conversations in which Levin took part, as it were, only with the external side of his mind, and notwithstanding his disillusion at finding that the moral regeneration had not taken place in his nature after all, he did not cease to be pleasantly conscious that his heart was full.

After the shower, it was too wet to go out for a walk, and, moreover, other threatening clouds were piling up on the horizon, and here and there reaching up high into the sky, black, and laden with thunder. All the household spent the rest of the day within doors.

Discussions were avoided, and after dinner all were in the gayest frame of mind.

Katavasof at first kept the ladies laughing by his original turns of wit, which always pleased people when they made his acquaintance; then afterward being drawn out by Sergyeï Ivanovitch, he related his very interesting observations on the different characteristics and features of male and female flies, and their habits.

  1. Yeï Bogu.