"Yes, Kostia is an unbeliever;" and, as she did so, she smiled.
"Yes, he is an unbeliever, but I'd far liefer he should always be one than a person like Madame Stahl, or as I wanted to be when I was abroad. At any rate, he will never be hypocritical." And a recent example of his goodness recurred vividly to her memory.
Several weeks before, Stepan Arkadyevitch had written Dolly a letter of repentance. He begged her to save his honor by selling her property to pay his debts.
Dolly was in despair. She hated her husband, despised him; and at first she made up her mind to refuse his request, and apply for a divorce; but afterward she decided to sell a part of her estate. Kitty, with an involuntary smile of emotion, recalled her husband's confusion, his various awkward attempts to find a way of helping Dolly, and how, at last, he came to the conclusion that the only way to accomplish it without wounding her was to make over to Dolly their part of this estate.
"How can he be without faith, when he has such a warm heart, and is afraid to grieve even a child? He never thinks of himself—always of others. Sergyeï Ivanovitch finds it perfectly natural to consider him his business manager; so does his sister. Dolly and her children have no one else but him to lean upon. He is always sacrificing his time to the peasants, who come to consult him every day.
"Yes; you cannot do better than to try to be like your father," she murmured, touching her lips to her son's cheek, before laying him into the nurse's arms.
CHAPTER VIII
Ever since that moment when, as he sat beside his dying brother. Levin had examined the problem of life and death in the light of the new convictions, as he called them, which from the age of twenty to thirty-four years had taken the place of his childhood's beliefs, he
