LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter 14

      BUT just at that moment the Princess came in. An expression of terror appeared in her face on seeing them alone together and noticing their troubled looks. Levin bowed to her and said nothing. Kitty sat with downcast eyes.

      ‘Thank Heaven she has refused him,’ thought the mother, and her face brightened into the usual smile with which she greeted her visitors on Thursday evenings. She sat down and began questioning Levin about his life in the country. He too sat down until the arrival of other guests should enable him to get away unnoticed.

      Five minutes later Kitty’s friend the Countess Nordston, who had married the year before, came in.

      She was a thin, sallow, nervous, ailing woman with shining black eyes. She was fond of Kitty, and her affection showed itself as the affection of a married woman for an unmarried one generally does, in a desire to get Kitty married according to her — the Countess’s — own ideal of conjugal bliss; and she wished to see her married to Vronsky. She always disliked Levin, whom at the beginning of the winter she had often met at the Shcherbatskys’. Her constant and favourite amusement was to make fun of him.

      ‘I love it when he looks down at me from the height of his dignity, or breaks off his clever conversation because I am too stupid, or when he shows his condescension toward me. I do love it. His condescension! I am very glad he hates me,’ she used to say with reference to him.

      She was right, because Levin really could not bear her and despised her for the very thing she was proud of and regarded as a merit, that is, her nervousness and refined contempt and disregard for all the rough and common things of life.

      Between the Countess Nordston and Levin relations had grown up such as are not infrequently met with in Society, when two people outwardly remaining in friendly relations despise each other to such an extent that they cannot treat each other seriously, or even be offended with one another.

      The Countess at once attacked Levin.

      ‘Ah, Mr. Levin! So you have returned to our depraved Babylon!’ she said, holding out her tiny yellow hand and repeating the words he had used early in the winter when he had called Moscow ‘Babylon,’ — ‘Has Babylon improved or have you deteriorated?’ she added, and turned toward Kitty with a sarcastic smile.

      ‘I am much flattered that you remember my words so well, Countess,’ replied Levin who had had time to recover his self-possession, resuming immediately and by force of habit his banteringly hostile relation with her. ‘They evidently produced a strong impression on you.’

      ‘Why, of course, I always write them down. Well, Kitty, have you been skating again?’

      She began to talk with Kitty. Awkward as it would have been for Levin to leave just then, he would have preferred doing so to remaining in the house for the rest of the evening in sight of Kitty, who now and then glanced at him but avoided catching his eye. He was about to rise, when the Princess noticing his silence turned toward him and said:

      ‘Have you come to Moscow for long? But I believe you are on the Zemstvo and cannot stay away long?’

      ‘No, Princess, I am no longer on the Zemstvo,’ he answered, ‘I have come to Moscow for a few days.’

      ‘Something out of the common has happened to him,’ thought the Countess Nordston, scrutinizing his stern and serious face; ‘why does he not start on one of his discourses? But I’ll draw him out, I do love to make a fool of him when Kitty’s about, and I will.’

      ‘Mr. Levin,’ she began, ‘explain to me, please, you who know everything, how it is that at our Kaluga estate the peasant men and women have drunk everything they had, and never pay anything they owe us. What is the explanation? You always praise the peasants so much.’

      At that moment another lady entered the room and Levin rose.

      ‘Excuse me, Countess, but really I know nothing about it, and can’t tell you anything,’ he said, and as he turned he saw an officer who had come into the room behind the lady.

      ‘That must be Vronsky,’ he thought, and looked at Kitty to make sure. She had already glanced at Vronsky and then turned toward Levin. And by the look of her eyes which had involuntarily brightened Levin realized that she loved this man, realized it as surely as if she had told it him in so many words. But what kind of man was he?

      Now, rightly or wrongly, Levin could not but remain. He had to find out what sort of a man it was that she loved.

      There are people who when they meet a rival, no matter in what, at once shut their eyes to everything good in him and see only the bad. There are others who on the contrary try to discern in a lucky rival the qualities which have enabled him to succeed, and with aching hearts seek only the good in him. Levin belonged to the latter sort. But it was not difficult for him to see what was good and attractive in Vronsky. It struck him immediately. Vronsky was a dark sturdily-built man of medium height, with a good-natured, handsome, exceedingly quiet and firm face. Everything about his face and figure — from his black closely-cropped hair and freshly-shaven chin to his wide, brand-new uniform — was simple and at the same time elegant. Having stepped aside to let a lady pass, Vronsky approached first the Princess and then Kitty. When he moved toward her his fine eyes brightened with a special tenderness, and carefully and respectfully bending over her with a scarcely perceptible, happy, and (as it seemed to Levin) modestly-triumphant smile, he held out to her his small broad hand.

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