Emma Watson Pussy
Books:
Anna Karenina
War And Peace
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it--only two white streaks. Yes, and so
imperceptibly too my views of life changed!"
He went out of the meadow and walked along the highroad towards
the village. A slight wind arose, and the sky looked gray and
sullen. The gloomy moment had come that usually precedes the
dawn, the full triumph of light over darkness.
Shrinking from the cold, Levin walked rapidly, looking at the
ground. "Whats that? Someone coming," he thought, catching the
tinkle of bells, and lifting his head. Forty paces from him a
carriage with four horses harnessed abreast was driving towards
him along the grassy road on which he was walking. The
shaft-horses were tilted against the shafts by the ruts, but the
dexterous driver sitting on the box held the shaft over the ruts,
so that the wheels ran on the smooth part of the road.
This was all Levin noticed, and without wondering who it could
be, he gazed absently at the coach.
In the coach was an old lady dozing in one corner, and at the
window, evidently only just awake, sat a young girl holding in
both hands the ribbons of a white cap. With a face full of light
and thought, full of a subtle, complex inner life, that was
remote from Levin, she was gazing beyond him at the glow of the
sunrise.
At the very instant when this apparition was vanishing, the
truthful eyes glanced at him. She recognized him, and her face
lighted up with wondering delight.
He could not be mistaken. There were no other eyes like those in
the world. There was only one creature in the world that could
concentrate for him all the brightness and meaning of life. It
was she. It was Kitty. He understood that she was driving to
Ergushovo from the railway station. And everything that had been
stirring Levin during that sleepless night, all the resolutions
he had made, all vanished at once. He recalled with horror his
dreams of marrying a peasant girl. There only, in the carriage
that had crossed over to the other side of the road, and was
rapidly disappearing, there only could he find the solution of
the riddle of his life, which had weighed so agonizingly upon him
of late.
She did not look out again. The sound of the carriage-springs
was no longer audible, the bells could scarcely be heard. The
barking of dogs showed the carriage had reached the village, and
all that was left was the empty fields all round, the village in
front, and he himself isolated and apart from it all, wandering
lonely along the deserted highroad.
He glanced at the sky, expecting to find there the cloud shell he
had been admiring and taking as the symbol of the ideas and
feelings of that night. There was nothing in the sky in the
least like a shell. There, in the remote heights above, a
mysterious change had been accomplished. There was no trace of
shell, and there was stretched over fully half the sky an even
cover of tiny and ever tinier cloudlets. The sky had grown blue
and bright; and with the same softness, but with the same
remoteness, it met his questioning gaze.
"No," he said to himself, "however good that life of simplicity
and toil may be, I cannot go back to it. I love _her_."
Chapter 13
None but those who were most intimate with Alexey Alexandrovitch
knew that, while on the surface the coldest and most reasonable
of men, he had one weakness quite opposed to the general trend of
his character. Alexey Alexandrovitch could not hear or see a
child or woman crying without being moved. The sight of tears
threw him into a state of nervous agitation, and he utterly lost
all power of reflection. The chief secretary of his department
and his private secretary were aware of this, and used to warn
women who came with petitions on no account to give way to tears,
if they did not want to ruin their chances. "He will get angry,
and will not listen to you," they used to say. And as a fact, in
such cases the emotional disturbance set up in Alexey
Alexandrovitch by the sight of tears found expression in hasty
anger. "I can do nothing. Kindly leave the room!" he would
commonly cry in such cases.
When returning from the races Anna had informed him of
Anna Karenina page 158 Anna Karenina page 160
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