Anna Karenina - Part 1 - Page 51/119

But at that very moment the princess came in. There was a look

of horror on her face when she saw them alone, and their

disturbed faces. Levin bowed to her, and said nothing. Kitty

did not speak nor lift her eyes. "Thank God, she has refused

him," thought the mother, and her face lighted up with the

habitual smile with which she greeted her guests on Thursdays.

She sat down and began questioning Levin about his life in the

country. He sat down again, waiting for other visitors to

arrive, in order to retreat unnoticed.

Five minutes later there came in a friend of Kitty's, married the

preceding winter, Countess Nordston.

She was a thin, sallow, sickly, and nervous woman, with brilliant

black eyes. She was fond of Kitty, and her affection for her

showed itself, as the affection of married women for girls always

does, in the desire to make a match for Kitty after her own ideal

of married happiness; she wanted her to marry Vronsky. Levin she

had often met at the Shtcherbatskys' early in the winter, and she

had always disliked him. Her invariable and favorite pursuit,

when they met, consisted in making fun of him.

"I do like it when he looks down at me from the height of his

grandeur, or breaks off his learned conversation with me because

I'm a fool, or is condescending to me. I like that so; to see

him condescending! I am so glad he can't bear me," she used to

say of him.

She was right, for Levin actually could not bear her, and

despised her for what she was proud of and regarded as a fine

characteristic--her nervousness, her delicate contempt and

indifference for everything coarse and earthly.

The Countess Nordston and Levin got into that relation with one

another not seldom seen in society, when two persons, who remain

externally on friendly terms, despise each other to such a degree

that they cannot even take each other seriously, and cannot even

be offended by each other.

The Countess Nordston pounced upon Levin at once.

"Ah, Konstantin Dmitrievitch! So you've come back to our corrupt

Babylon," she said, giving him her tiny, yellow hand, and

recalling what he had chanced to say early in the winter, that

Moscow was a Babylon. "Come, is Babylon reformed, or have you

degenerated?" she added, glancing with a simper at Kitty.

"It's very flattering for me, countess, that you remember my

words so well," responded Levin, who had succeeded in recovering

his composure, and at once from habit dropped into his tone of

joking hostility to the Countess Nordston. "They must certainly

make a great impression on you."