The Levins had been three months in Moscow. The date had long
passed on which, according to the most trustworthy calculations
of people learned in such matters, Kitty should have been
confined. But she was still about, and there was nothing to show
that her time was any nearer than two months ago. The doctor,
the monthly nurse, and Dolly and her mother, and most of all
Levin, who could not think of the approaching event without
terror, began to be impatient and uneasy. Kitty was the only
person who felt perfectly calm and happy.
She was distinctly conscious now of the birth of a new feeling of
love for the future child, for her to some extent actually
existing already, and she brooded blissfully over this feeling.
He was not by now altogether a part of herself, but sometimes
lived his own life independently of her. Often this separate
being gave her pain, but at the same time she wanted to laugh
with a strange new joy.
All the people she loved were with her, and all were so good to
her, so attentively caring for her, so entirely pleasant was
everything presented to her, that if she had not known and felt
that it must all soon be over, she could not have wished for a
better and pleasanter life. The only thing that spoiled the
charm of this manner of life was that her husband was not here as
she loved him to be, and as he was in the country.
She liked his serene, friendly, and hospitable manner in the
country. In the town he seemed continually uneasy and on his
guard, as though he were afraid someone would be rude to him, and
still more to her. At home in the country, knowing himself
distinctly to be in his right place, he was never in haste to be
off elsewhere. He was never unoccupied. Here in town he was in
a continual hurry, as though afraid of missing something, and yet
he had nothing to do. And she felt sorry for him. To others,
she knew, he did not appear an object of pity. On the contrary,
when Kitty looked at him in society, as one sometimes looks at
those one loves, trying to see him as if he were a stranger, so
as to catch the impression he must make on others, she saw with a
panic even of jealous fear that he was far indeed from being a
pitiable figure, that he was very attractive with his fine
breeding, his rather old-fashioned, reserved courtesy with women,
his powerful figure, and striking, as she thought, and expressive
face. But she saw him not from without, but from within; she saw
that here he was not himself; that was the only way she could
define his condition to herself. Sometimes she inwardly
reproached him for his inability to live in the town; sometimes
she recognized that it was really hard for him to order his life
here so that he could be satisfied with it.