She was grateful to her father for saying nothing to her about their meeting Vronsky, but she saw by his special warmth to her after the visit, during their usual walk, that he was pleased with her. She was pleased with herself. She had not expected she would have had the power, while keeping somewhere in the bottom of her heart all the memories of her old feeling for Vronsky, not only to seem, but to be, perfectly indifferent and composed with him.
Levin flushed a great deal more than she when she told him she had met Vronsky at Princess Marya Borissovna's. It was very hard for her to tell him this, but still harder to go on speaking of the details of the meeting, as he did not question her, but simply gazed at her with a frown.
`I am very sorry you weren't there,' she said. `It wasn't so much the fact that you weren't in the room... I couldn't have been so natural in your presence... I am blushing now much more - much, much more,' she said, blushing till the tears came into her eyes. `But it's a pity you couldn't have looked through a peephole.'
The truthful eyes told Levin that she was satisfied with herself, and, in spite of her blushing he was quickly reassured and began questioning her, which was all she wanted. When he had heard everything, even to the detail that for the first second she could not help flushing, but that afterward she was just as direct and as much at her ease as with any chance acquaintance, Levin was quite happy again and said he was glad of it, and would not now behave as stupidly as he had done at the election, but would try the first time he met Vronsky to be as friendly as possible.
`It's so wretched to feel that there's any man who is almost your enemy, and whom it's painful to meet,' said Levin. `I'm very, very glad.'
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TOLSTOY: Anna Karenina Part 7, Chapter 02[Previous Chapter] [Table of Contents] Chapter 2 `Do go then, please, and call on the Bols,' Kitty said to her husband, when he came in to see her at eleven o'clock before going out. `I know you are dining at the club; papa put down your name. But what are you going to do in the morning?'
`I am only going to Katavassov,' answered Levin.
`Why so early?'
`He promised to introduce me to Metrov. I wanted to talk to him about my work. He's a distinguished savant from Peterburg,' said Levin.
`Yes; wasn't it his article you were praising so? Well, and after that?' said Kitty.
`I shall go to the court, perhaps, about my sister's business.'
`And the concert?' she queried.
`I shan't go there all alone.'
`No? Do go; there are going to be some new things.... That used to interest you so. I should certainly go.'
`Well, anyway, I shall come home before dinner,' he said, looking at his watch.
`Put on your frock coat, so that you can go straight to call on Countess Bol.'
`But is it absolutely necessary?'
`Oh, absolutely! He has been to see us. Come, what is it? You go in, sit down, talk for five minutes of the weather, get up, and go away.'
`Oh, you wouldn't believe it! I've got so out of the way of all this that it makes me feel positively ashamed. It's such a horrible thing to do! A complete outsider walks in, sits down, stays on with nothing to do, wastes their time and upsets himself, and then goes away!'
Kitty laughed.
`Why, I suppose you used to pay calls before you were married, didn't you?'
`Yes, I did, but I always felt ashamed, and now I'm so unaccustomed to it that, by God, I'd sooner go two days running without my dinner than pay this call! One's so ashamed! I feel all the while that they're annoyed, that they're saying: What has he come for?'
`No, they won't. I'll answer for that,' said Kitty, looking into his face with a laugh. She took his hand. `Well, good-by.... Do go, please.'
He was just going out after kissing his wife's hand, when she stopped him.
`Kostia, do you know I've only fifty roubles left?'
`Oh, all right, I'll go to the bank and get some. How much?' he said, with the expression of dissatisfaction she knew so well.
`No, wait a minute.' She held his hand. `Let's talk about it, it worries me. I seem to spend nothing unnecessarily, but money seems simply to fly away. We don't manage well, somehow.'
`Not at all,' he said with a little cough, looking at her from under his brows.
That cough she knew well. It was a sign of intense dissatisfaction, not with her, but with himself. He certainly was displeased, not at so much money being spent, but at being reminded of what he, knowing something was unsatisfactory, wanted to forget.
`I have told Sokolov to sell the wheat, and to borrow an advance on the mill. We shall have money enough in any case.'
`Yes, but I'm afraid that altogether it's too much....'
`Not at all, not at all,' he repeated. `Well, good-by, darling.'
`No, I'm really sorry sometimes that I listened to mamma. How nice it would have been in the country! As it is, I'm worrying you all, and we're wasting our money.'
`Not at all, not at all. Not once since I've been married have I said that things could have been better than they are....'
`Truly?' she said, looking into his eyes.
He had said it without thinking, simply to console her. But when he glanced at her and saw those sweet truthful eyes fastened questioningly on him, he repeated it with his whole heart. `I was positively forgetting her,' he thought. And he remembered what was before them, so soon to come.
`Will it be soon? How do you feel?' he whispered, taking her two hands.
`I have so often thought so, that now I don't think about it, or know anything about it.'
`And you're not frightened?'
She smiled contemptuously.
`Not the least little bit,' she said.
`Well, if anything happens, I shall be at Katavassov's.'
`No, nothing will happen, and don't think about it. I'm going for a walk on the boulevard with papa. We're going to see Dolly. I shall expect you before dinner. Oh, yes! Do you know that Dolly's position is becoming utterly impossible? She's in debt all round; she hasn't a penny.
