Levin recalled Kitty's answer. She had said: "_No, that cannot
be_..."
"Darya Alexandrovna," he said dryly, "I appreciate your
confidence in me; I believe you are making a mistake. But
whether I am right or wrong, that pride you so despise makes any
thought of Katerina Alexandrovna out of the question for me,--
you understand, utterly out of the question."
"I will only say one thing more: you know that I am speaking of
my sister, whom I love as I love my own children. I don't say
she cared for you, all I meant to say is that her refusal at that
moment proves nothing."
"I don't know!" said Levin, jumping up. "If you only knew how
you are hurting me. It's just as if a child of yours were dead,
and they were to say to you: He would have been like this and
like that, and he might have lived, and how happy you would have
been in him. But he's dead, dead, dead!..."
"How absurd you are!" said Darya Alexandrovna, looking with
mournful tenderness at Levin's excitement. "Yes, I see it all
more and more clearly," she went on musingly. "So you won't come
to see us, then, when Kitty's here?"
"No, I shan't come. Of course I won't avoid meeting Katerina
Alexandrovna, but as far as I can, I will try to save her the
annoyance of my presence."
"You are very, very absurd," repeated Darya Alexandrovna, looking
with tenderness into his face. "Very well then, let it be as
though we had not spoken of this. What have you come for,
Tanya?" she said in French to the little girl who had come in.
"Where's my spade, mamma?"
"I speak French, and you must too."
The little girl tried to say it in French, but could not remember
the French for spade; the mother prompted her, and then told her
in French where to look for the spade. And this made a
disagreeable impression on Levin.
Everything in Darya Alexandrovna's house and children struck him
now as by no means so charming as a little while before. "And
what does she talk French with the children for?" he thought;
"how unnatural and false it is! And the children feel it so:
Learning French and unlearning sincerity," he thought to himself,
unaware that Darya Alexandrovna had thought all that over twenty
times already, and yet, even at the cost of some loss of
sincerity, believed it necessary to teach her children French in
that way.