so freely set on the shapely girlish shoulders, and so full of
childish brightness and good humor. The childishness of
her expression, together with the delicate beauty of her figure, made up her special charm, and that he fully realized.
But what always struck him in her as something unlooked
for, was the expression of her eyes, soft, serene, and truthful,
and above all, her smile, which always transported Levin
to an enchanted world, where he felt himself softened and
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Anna Karenina
tender, as he remembered himself in some days of his early
childhood.
‘Have you been here long?’ she said, giving him her hand.
‘Thank you,’ she added, as he picked up the handkerchief
that had fallen out of her muff.
‘I? I’ve not long…yesterday…I mean today…I arrived,’ answered Levin, in his emotion not at once understanding
her question. ‘I was meaning to come and see you,’ he said;
and then, recollecting with what intention he was trying
to see her, he was promptly overcome with confusion and
blushed.
‘I didn’t know you could skate, and skate so well.’
She looked at him earnestly, as though wishing to make
out the cause of his confusion.
‘Your praise is worth having. The tradition is kept up
here that you are the best of skaters,’ she said, with her little black-gloved hand brushing a grain of hoarfrost off her
muff.
‘Yes, I used once to skate with passion; I wanted to reach
perfection.’
‘You do everything with passion, I think,’ she said smiling. ‘I should so like to see how you skate. Put on skates, and
let us skate together.’
‘Skate together! Can that be possible?’ thought Levin,
gazing at her.
‘I’ll put them on directly,’ he said.
And he went off to get skates.
‘It’s a long while since we’ve seen you here, sir,’ said the
attendant, supporting his foot, and screwing on the heel of
53
the skate. ‘Except you, there’s none of the gentlemen firstrate skaters. Will that be all right?’ said he, tightening the
strap.
‘Oh, yes, yes; make haste, please,’ answered Levin, with
difficulty restraining the smile of rapture which would
overspread his face. ‘Yes,’ he thought, ‘this now is life, this
is happiness! Together, she said; let us skate together! Speak
to her now? But that’s just why I’m afraid to speak—because
I’m happy now, happy in hope, anyway…. And then?…. But I
must! I must! I must! Away with weakness!’
Levin rose to his feet, took off his overcoat, and scurrying over the rough ice round the hut, came out on the
smooth ice and skated without effort, as it were, by simple
exercise of will, increasing and slackening speed and turning his course. He approached with timidity, but again her
smile reassured him.
She gave him her hand, and they set off side by side, going faster and faster, and the more rapidly they moved the
more tightly she grasped his hand.
‘With you I should soon learn; I somehow feel confidence
in you,’ she said to him.
‘And I have confidence in myself when you are leaning on me,’ he said, but was at once panic-stricken at what
he had said, and blushed. And indeed, no sooner had he
uttered these words, when all at once, like the sun going
behind a cloud, her face lost all its friendliness, and Levin
detected the familiar change in her expression that denoted the working of thought; a crease showed on her smooth
brow.
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Anna Karenina
‘Is there anything troubling you?—though I’ve no right
to ask such a question,’ he added hurriedly.
‘Oh, why so?…. No, I have nothing to trouble me,’ she responded coldly; and she added immediately: ‘You haven’t
seen Mlle. Linon, have you?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Go and speak to her, she likes you so much.’
‘What’s wrong? I have offended her. Lord help me!’
thought Levin, and he flew towards the old Frenchwoman
with the gray ringlets, who was sitting on a bench. Smiling and showing her false teeth, she greeted him as an old
friend.
‘Yes, you see we’re growing up,’ she said to him, glancing towards Kitty, ‘and growing old. Tiny bear has grown
big now!’ pursued the Frenchwoman, laughing, and she reminded him of his joke about the three young ladies whom
he had compared to the three bears in the English nursery
tale. ‘Do you remember that’s what you used to call them?’
He remembered absolutely nothing, but she had been
laughing at the joke for ten years now, and was fond of it.
‘Now, go and skate, go and skate. Our Kitty has learned
to skate nicely, hasn’t she?’
When Levin darted up to Kitty her face was no longer
stern; her eyes looked at him with the same sincerity and
friendliness, but Levin fancied that in her friendliness there
was a certain note of deliberate composure. And he felt depressed. After talking a little of her old governess and her
peculiarities, she questioned him about his life.
‘Surely you must be dull in the country in the winter,
55
aren’t you?’ she said.
‘No, I’m not dull, I am very busy,’ he said, feeling that
she was holding him in check by her composed tone, which
he would not have the force to break through, just as it had
been at the beginning of the winter.
‘Are you going to stay in town long?’ Kitty questioned
him.
‘I don’t know,’ he answered, not thinking of what he was
saying. The thought that if he were held in check by her tone
of quiet friendliness he would end by going back again without deciding anything came into his mind, and he resolved
to make a struggle against it.
‘How is it you don’t know?’
‘I don’t know. It depends upon you,’ he said, and was immediately horror-stricken at his own words.
Whether it was that she had heard his words, or that she
did not want to hear them, she made a sort of stumble, twice
struck out, and hurriedly skated away from him. She skated
up to Mlle. Linon, said something to her, and went towards
the pavilion where the ladies took off their skates.
‘My God! what have I done! Merciful God! help me,
guide me,’ said Levin, praying inwardly, and at the same
time, feeling a need of violent exercise, he skated about describing inner and outer circles.
At that moment one of the young men, the best of the
skaters of the day, came out of the coffee-house in his skates,
with a cigarette in his mouth. Taking a run, he dashed down
the steps in his skates, crashing and bounding up and down.
He flew down, and without even changing the position of
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Anna Karenina
his hands, skated away over the ice.
‘Ah, that’s a new trick!’ said Levin, and he promptly ran
up to the top to do this new trick.
‘Don’t break your neck! it needs practice!’ Nikolay Shtcherbatsky shouted after him.
Levin went to the steps, took a run from above as best
he could, and dashed down, preserving his balance in this
unwonted movement with his hands. On the last step he
stumbled, but barely touching the ice with his hand, with a
violent effort recovered himself, and skated off, laughing.
‘How splendid, how nice he is!’ Kitty was thinking at
that time, as she came out of the pavilion with Mlle. Linon,
and looked towards him with a smile of quiet affection, as
though he were a favorite brother. ‘And can it be my fault,
can I have done anything wrong? They talk of flirtation. I
know it’s not he that I love; but still I am happy with him,
and he’s so jolly. Only, why did he say that?…’ she mused.
Catching sight of Kitty going away, and her mother meeting her at the steps, Levin, flushed from his rapid exercise,
stood still and pondered a minute. He took off his skates,
and overtook the mother and daughter at the entrance of
the gardens.
‘Delighted to see you,’ said Princess Shtcherbatskaya.
‘On Thursdays we are home, as always.’
‘Today, then?’
‘We shall be pleased to see you,’ the princess said stiffly.
This stiffness hurt Kitty, and she could not resist the desire to smooth over her mother’s coldness. She turned her
head, and with a smile said:
57
‘Good-bye till this evening.’
At that moment Stepan Arkadyevitch, his hat cocked on
one side, with beaming face and eyes, strode into the garden
like a conquering hero. But as he approached his motherin-law, he responded in a mournful and crestfallen tone to
her inquiries about Dolly’s health. After a little subdued and
dejected conversation with his mother-in-law, he threw out
his chest again, and put his arm in Levin’s.
‘Well, shall we set off?’ he asked. ‘I’ve been thinking
about you all this time, and I’m very, very glad you’ve come,’
he said, looking him in the face with a significant air.
‘Yes, come along,’ answered Levin in ecstasy, hearing unceasingly the sound of that voice saying, ‘Good-bye till this
evening,’ and seeing the smile with which it was said.
‘To the England or the Hermitage?’
‘I don’t mind which.’
‘All right, then, the England,’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch,
selecting that restaurant because he owed more there than
at the Hermitage, and consequently considered it mean to
avoid it. ‘Have you got a sledge? That’s first-rate, for I sent
my carriage home.’
The friends hardly spoke all the way. Levin was wondering what that change in Kitty’s expression had meant, and
alternately assuring himself that there was hope, and falling
into despair, seeing clearly that his hopes were insane, and
yet all the while he felt himself quite another man, utterly
unlike what he had been before her smile and those words,
‘Good-bye till this evening.’
Stepan Arkadyevitch was absorbed during the drive in
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Anna Karenina
composing the menu of the dinner.
‘You like turbot, don’t you?’ he said to Levin as they were
arriving.
‘Eh?’ responded Levin. ‘Turbot? Yes, I’m awfully fond of
turbot.’
59
Chapter 10
When Levin went into the restaurant with Oblonsky, he
could not help noticing a certain peculiarity of expression,
as it were, a restrained radiance, about the face and whole
figure of Stepan Arkadyevitch. Oblonsky took off his overcoat, and with his hat over one ear walked into the dining
room, giving directions to the Tatar waiters, who were clustered about him in evening coats, bearing napkins. Bowing
to right and left to the people he met, and here as everywhere joyously greeting acquaintances, he went up to the
sideboard
