"Why are you tormenting me?"
"But I...quite the contrary...I see you're unhappy..."
But Kitty in her fury did not hear her.
"I've nothing to grieve over and be comforted about. I am too
proud ever to allow myself to care for a man who does not love
me."
"Yes, I don't say so either.... Only one thing. Tell me the
truth," said Darya Alexandrovna, taking her by the hand: "tell
me, did Levin speak to you?..."
The mention of Levin's name seemed to deprive Kitty of the last
vestige of self-control. She leaped up from her chair, and
flinging her clasp on the ground, she gesticulated rapidly with
her hands and said: "Why bring Levin in too? I can't understand what you want to
torment me for. I've told you, and I say it again, that I have
some pride, and never, _never_ would I do as you're doing--go back
to a man who's deceived you, who has cared for another woman. I
can't understand it! You may, but I can't!"
And saying these words she glanced at her sister, and seeing that
Dolly sat silent, her head mournfully bowed, Kitty, instead of
running out of the room as she had meant to do, sat down near the
door, and hid her face in her handkerchief.
The silence lasted for two minutes: Dolly was thinking of
herself. That humiliation of which she was always conscious came
back to her with a peculiar bitterness when her sister reminded
her of it. She had not looked for such cruelty in her sister,
and she was angry with her. But suddenly she heard the rustle of
a skirt, and with it the sound of heart-rending, smothered
sobbing, and felt arms about her neck. Kitty was on her knees
before her.
"Dolinka, I am so, so wretched!" she whispered penitently. And
the sweet face covered with tears hid itself in Darya
Alexandrovna's skirt.
As though tears were the indispensable oil, without which the
machinery of mutual confidence could not run smoothly between the
two sisters, the sisters after their tears talked, not of what
was uppermost in their minds, but, though they talked of outside
matters, they understood each other. Kitty knew that the words
she had uttered in anger about her husband's infidelity and her
humiliating position had cut her poor sister to the heart, but
that she had forgiven her. Dolly for her part knew all she had
wanted to find out. She felt certain that her surmises were
correct; that Kitty's misery, her inconsolable misery, was due
precisely to the fact that Levin had made her an offer and she
had refused him, and Vronsky had deceived her, and that she was
fully prepared to love Levin and to detest Vronsky. Kitty said
not a word of that; she talked of nothing but her spiritual
condition.