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ANNA KARENINA
43

and to prevent the cook from carrying dish-water from the kitchen to the cow,—that was clear. But the theories about meal and grass for fodder were not clear, but dubious; but the principal point was, that she wanted to talk about Kitty.


CHAPTER X

"Kitty writes me that she is longing for solitude and repose," began Dolly, after a moment's silence.

"Is her health better?" asked Levin, with emotion.

"Thank the Lord, she is entirely well! I never believed that she had any lung trouble."

"Oh! I am very glad," said Levin; and Dolly thought that, as he said it, and then looked at her in silence, his face had a pathetic, helpless expression.

"Tell me, Konstantin Dmitritch," said Darya Aleksandrovna with a friendly, and at the same time a rather mischievous, smile, "why are you angry with Kitty?"

"I? I am not angry with her," said Levin.

"Yes, you are. Why did n't you come to see any of us the last time you were in Moscow?"

"Darya Aleksandrovna," he exclaimed, blushing to the roots of his hair, "I am astonished that, with your kindness of heart, you can think of such a thing! How can you not pity me when you know ...."

"What do I know?"

"You know that I offered myself, and was rejected." And as he said this, all the tenderness that he had felt for Kitty a moment before changed in his heart into a sense of anger at the memory of this injury.

"How could you suppose that I knew?"

"Because everybody knows it."

"That is where you are mistaken. I suspected it, but I knew nothing positive."

"Ah, well, and so you know now!"

"All that I know is that there was something which keenly tortured her, and that she has besought me never to mention it. If she has not told me, then she