Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/656

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328
ANNA KARENINA

duty to be with my husband when he is in sorrow, and you want to wound me on purpose. You don't want to take me." ....

"No! this is frightful! to be such a slave!" cried Levin, rising from the table, no longer able to hide his anger; at the same instant he perceived that he was doing himself harm.

"Why, then, did you get married? You might have been free. Why—if you repent already?"—and Kitty fled into the drawing-room.

When he went to find her, she was sobbing.

He began to speak, striving to find words not to persuade her, but to calm her. She would not listen, and did not allow one of his arguments. He bent over her, took one of her recalcitrant hands, kissed it, kissed her hair, and then her hands again; but still she refused to speak. But when, at length, he took her head between his two hands and called her "Kitty," she softly wept, and the reconciliation was complete.

It was decided that they should go together on the next day. Levin told his wife he was satisfied that she wished nothing but to be useful, and agreed that Marya Nikolayevna's presence with his brother would not be an impropriety; but at the bottom of his heart he was dissatisfied with himself and with her. He was dissatisfied with her because she would not let him go alone when it was necessary. And how strange it was for him to think that he who such a short time before had not dared to believe in the possibility of such a joy as her loving him, now felt unhappy because she loved him too well. And he was dissatisfied with himself because he had yielded in such a weak way. In the depths of his heart he was even more dissatisfied to think of the inevitable acquaintance between his wife and his brother's mistress. The thought of seeing his wife, his Kitty, in the same room with this woman, filled him with horror and repulsion.