Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/935

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ANNA KARENINA
253

mention of Anna; but she restrained herself, and, concealing her emotion, she misled him.

She merely said, "Ah!"

"You are not going to be vexed because I went? Stiva begged me to go; and Dolly wanted me to."

"Oh, no!" said she; but in her eyes he saw a look which boded little good.

"She is a very charming woman, who is very much to be pitied, a good woman," continued Levin; and he described the life which Anna led, and gave her message of remembrance to Kitty.

"Yes, of course she is to be pitied," said Kitty, when he had finished. "Whom did you get a letter from?"

He told her, and, misled by her apparent calmness, went to undress.

When he came back, he found Kitty in the same armchair. When he approached, she looked at him, and burst into tears.

"What is it? What's the matter?" he asked, with some annoyance; for he understood the cause of her tears.

"You are in love with that horrid woman. She has bewitched you. I saw it in your eyes. Yes, yes! What will be the end of it? You were at the club; you drank too much; you gambled; and then you went—where! No! this shall not go on. We must leave. I am going home to-morrow!"

It was long before Levin could pacify his wife; and when at last he succeeded, it was only by acknowledging that his feeling of pity for Anna, together with the wine, had clouded his brain, and that he had fallen under her seductive influence, and by promising that he would avoid her. What he acknowledged with more sincerity was the ill effect produced on him by this idle life in Moscow, passed in eating, drinking, and gossiping. They talked till three o'clock in the morning. Only when it was three o'clock were they sufficiently reconciled to go to sleep.