Anna Karenina - Part 6 - Page 7/121

"There's no keeping you young people in check nowadays.... Your

friendship could not have gone beyond what was suitable. I

should myself have called upon him to explain himself. But, my

darling, it's not right for you to be agitated. Please remember

that, and calm yourself."

"I'm perfectly calm, maman."

"How happy it was for Kitty that Anna came then," said Dolly,

"and how unhappy for her. It turned out quite the opposite," she

said, struck by her own ideas. "Then Anna was so happy, and

Kitty thought herself unhappy. Now it is just the opposite. I

often think of her."

"A nice person to think about! Horrid, repulsive woman--no

heart," said her mother, who could not forget that Kitty had

married not Vronsky, but Levin.

"What do you want to talk of it for?" Kitty said with annoyance.

"I never think about it, and I don't want to think of it....

And I don't want to think of it," she said, catching the sound of

her husband's well-known step on the steps of the terrace.

"What's that you don't want to think about?" inquired Levin,

coming onto the terrace.

But no one answered him, and he did not repeat the question.

"I'm sorry I've broken in on your feminine parliament," he said,

looking round on every one discontentedly, and perceiving that

they had been talking of something which they would not talk

about before him.

For a second he felt that he was sharing the feeling of Agafea

Mihalovna, vexation at their making jam without water, and

altogether at the outside Shtcherbatsky element. He smiled,

however, and went up to Kitty.

"Well, how are you?" he asked her, looking at her with the

expression with which everyone looked at her now.

"Oh, very well," said Kitty, smiling, "and how have things gone

with you?"

"The wagons held three times as much as the old carts did. Well,

are we going for the children? I've ordered the horses to be put

in."

"What! you want to take Kitty in the wagonette?" her mother said

reproachfully.

"Yes, at a walking pace, princess."

Levin never called the princess "maman" as men often do call

their mothers-in-law, and the princess disliked his not doing so.

But though he liked and respected the princess, Levin could not

call her so without a sense of profaning his feeling for his dead

mother.

"Come with us, maman," said Kitty.