Anna Karenina (Dole)/Part Four/Chapter 13
CHAPTER XIII
When the company arose from dinner Levin wanted to follow Kitty into the drawing-room, but he was afraid, not that it would be disagreeable to her, but that it would be too obvious a wooing of her. So he remained with the men, and took part in the general conversation. And without looking at Kitty, he was conscious of her motions, of her glances, and of the place where she was in the drawing-room. Without the least effort he immediately began to fulfil the promise that he had made her to love all men, and to think nothing but good of them.
The conversation turned on the commune in Russia, which Pestsof considered as the beginning of what he called a new order of things. Levin agreed as little with him as he did with Sergyeï Ivanovitch, who it seemed to him recognized, and at the same time denied, the value of this institution; but he talked with them, trying only to reconcile them and tone down their excitability. He was not in the least interested in what he himself said and was still less interested in what they said, but his one desire was, to see all of them happy and contented. He now realized what one thing was important. And that one was at first yonder in the drawing-room and afterward moved about and was now near the door. Without turning around he was conscious of a look and a smile fixed on him, and he could not help looking. She was standing there with Shcherbatsky, and looking at him.
"I thought you were going to the piano," said he, approaching her. "Music is what I have to do without in the country."
"No, we merely came to find you; and I thank you for coming to us," she replied, recompensing him with a smile. "What pleasure can there be in discussing? Really, no one ever convinced another."
"Yes; that is true!" said Levin. "It generally happens that you get excited in a discussion simply from the fact that you can never tell exactly what your opponent is trying to show."
Levin had many times noticed that in discussions among clever people, after an immense output of energy, an immense array of logical terms and subtleties, the disputants came at last to an acknowledgment that what they had been so interminably striving to prove to each other, was a matter of common knowledge from the very beginning, but that they liked something different and therefore were not willing to acknowledge what they liked, so as not to be controverted. He had often met with the experience that in the midst of a dispute you find what your opponent likes, and suddenly you find that you yourself like the same thing, and you immediately agree, and then all your arguments fall to the ground as useless. But sometimes he had had the opposite experience: you at last say what you like and evolve your arguments and if perchance you speak well and sincerely, suddenly your opponent assents and ceases to uphold the other side. This is exactly what he meant.
She wrinkled her brows, trying to comprehend. But as soon as he began to explain, her mind grasped his meaning. "I understand: one must make sure why he is disputing, what he likes .... if possible ...."
She had fully grasped and expressed his badly phrased idea.
Levin smiled with rapture; so striking was the transition from the complicated prolix discussion between Pestsof and his brother to this clear, laconic, almost wordless communication of the most abstruse thoughts!
Shcherbatsky stepped away; and Kitty, going to a card-table, sat down, and taking a piece of chalk in her hand began to draw circles on the green cloth.
They took up the topic which was under discussion at dinner: as to the emancipation and occupation of women. Levin was inclined to agree with Darya Aleksandrovna, that a girl who was not going to marry would find feminine occupations in some family. He urged that not a single family can get along without some female help; that every family, however poor or rich, has and must have some one to look after the children.
"No," said Kitty, blushing but looking at him frankly with her honest eyes; "a girl may be so situated that she cannot without humiliation go into a family, but she herself ...."
He understood what she hinted at.
"Oh, yes," he said; "yes, yes, yes, you are right."
And he realized all that Pestsof was trying to prove at dinner about the freedom of women merely by the fact that he saw in Kitty's heart a maiden's dread of humiliation, and, loving her, he experienced this dread and this humiliation, and immediately renounced his former arguments.
A silence ensued. She went on making designs with the chalk on the table. Her eyes shone with a gentle gleam. Submitting to her mood, he felt in his being all the increasing tension of happiness.
"Akh! I have covered the table with my scrawls," said she, laying down the chalk, with a movement as if she were going to rise.
"How can I stay alone without her?" thought Levin, terrified, and picking up the chalk.
"Wait," said he, sitting down at the table. "I have wanted for a long time to ask you something."
He looked straight into her affectionate but nevertheless startled eyes.
"Please, what is it?"
"This is it," said he, taking the chalk, and writing the letters w, y, s, i, i, i, w, i, i, t, o, a? These letters were the initials of the words, "When you said, 'It is impossible,' was it impossible then, or always?"
It was not at all likely that Kitty would be able to make out this complicated question. Levin looked at her, nevertheless, as if his life depended on whether she could guess these words or not.
She looked at him gravely, then rested her forehead on her hand and tried to decipher it. Occasionally she would look up at him, asking him with her eyes: "Is what I think right?""I know what it is," said she, blushing.
"What is this word?" he asked, pointing to the i of the word impossible.
"That letter stands for impossible. The word is not right," she replied.
He quickly rubbed out what he had written, gave the chalk to her, and stood up.
She wrote: t, I, c, n, a, d.
Dolly, seeing her sister with the chalk in her hand, a timid and happy smile on her lips, raising her eyes to Levin, who was leaning over the table, beaming now at her, now at the cloth, felt consoled for the grief caused by her conversation with Alekseï Aleksandrovitch. His face suddenly grew radiant; he had understood the reply: "Then I could not answer differently."
He looked at Kitty timidly and inquiringly.
"Only then?"
"Yes," replied the young girl's smile.
"B, n—but now?" he asked.
"Read this. I will tell you what I wish, what I wish very much;" and she quickly traced the initials, t, y, m, f, a, f, w, t, p.
This meant: "That you might forgive and forget what took place!"
He seized the chalk in turn, with his excited, trembling fingers, and crushing it wrote down the initials of these words: "I have nothing to forgive and forget. I have never ceased to love you."
Kitty looked at him, and her smile died away.
"I understand," she murmured.
He sat down and wrote a long phrase. She comprehended it and without even asking is it thus and so, took the chalk and instantly replied.
It was some time before he made out what she wrote and had to keep looking into her eyes. His wits were dulled by his happiness. He could not supply the words which she intended; but in her lovely eyes, radiant with joy, he understood all that he needed to know. And he wrote three letters. But he had not finished writing them ere she read them under his hand and herself finished the sentence and answered it!
"Yes."
"You are playing secrétaire, are you," said the old prince, coming up to them. "Well, if you are going to the theater it is time to start."
Levin rose and accompanied Kitty to the door.
This conversation decided everything; Kitty had acknowledged her love for him, and had given him permission to come the next morning to speak to her parents.