Emma Watson Pussy
Books:
Anna Karenina
War And Peace
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I suppose
the ladies are down? A walk now would be capital. You show me
your horses."
After walking about the garden, visiting the stable, and even
doing some gymnastic exercises together on the parallel bars,
Levin returned to the house with his guest, and went with him
into the drawing room.
"We had splendid shooting, and so many delightful experiences!"
said Veslovsky, going up to Kitty, who was sitting at the
samovar. "What a pity ladies are cut off from these delights!"
"Well, I suppose he must say something to the lady of the house,"
Levin said to himself. Again he fancied something in the smile,
in the all-conquering air with which their guest addressed
Kitty....
The princess, sitting on the other side of the table with Marya
Vlasyevna and Stepan Arkadyevitch, called Levin to her side, and
began to talk to him about moving to Moscow for Kittys
confinement, and getting ready rooms for them. Just as Levin
had disliked all the trivial preparations for his wedding, as
derogatory to the grandeur of the event, now he felt still more
offensive the preparations for the approaching birth, the date of
which they reckoned, it seemed, on their fingers. He tried to
turn a deaf ear to these discussions of the best patterns of long
clothes for the coming baby; tried to turn away and avoid seeing
the mysterious, endless strips of knitting, the triangles of
linen, and so on, to which Dolly attached special importance.
The birth of a son (he was certain it would be a son) which was
promised him, but which he still could not believe in--so
marvelous it seemed--presented itself to his mind, on one hand,
as a happiness so immense, and therefore so incredible; on the
other, as an event so mysterious, that this assumption of a
definite knowledge of what would be, and consequent preparation
for it, as for something ordinary that did happen to people,
jarred on him as confusing and humiliating.
But the princess did not understand his feelings, and put down
his reluctance to think and talk about it to carelessness and
indifference, and so she gave him no peace. She had commissioned
Stepan Arkadyevitch to look at a flat, and now she called Levin
up.
"I know nothing about it, princess. Do as you think fit," he
said.
"You must decide when you will move."
"I really dont know. I know millions of children are born away
from Moscow, and doctors...why..."
"But if so..."
"Oh, no, as Kitty wishes."
"We cant talk to Kitty about it! Do you want me to frighten
her? Why, this spring Natalia Golitzina died from having an
ignorant doctor."
"I will do just what you say," he said gloomily.
The princess began talking to him, but he did not hear her.
Though the conversation with the princess had indeed jarred upon
him, he was gloomy, not on account of that conversation, but from
what he saw at the samovar.
"No, its impossible," he thought, glancing now and then at
Vassenka bending over Kitty, telling her something with his
charming smile, and at her, flushed and disturbed.
There was something not nice in Vassenkas attitude, in his eyes,
in his smile. Levin even saw something not nice in Kittys
attitude and look. And again the light died away in his eyes.
Again, as before, all of a sudden, without the slightest
transition, he felt cast down from a pinnacle of happiness,
peace, and dignity, into an abyss of despair, rage, and
humiliation. Again everything and everyone had become hateful to
him.
"You do just as you think best, princess," he said again, looking
round.
"Heavy is the cap of Monomach," Stepan Arkadyevitch said
playfully, hinting, evidently, not simply at the princesss
conversation, but at the cause of Levins agitation, which he had
noticed.
"How late you are today, Dolly!"
Everyone got up to greet Darya Alexandrovna. Vassenka only rose
for an instant, and with the lack of courtesy to ladies
characteristic of the modern young man, he scarcely bowed, and
resumed his conversation again, laughing at something.
"Ive been worried about Masha. She did not sleep well, and is
dreadfully tiresome today," said Dolly.
The conversation Vassenka had started with Kitty was running on
the same lines as on the previous evening, discussing Anna, and
whether love is to be put higher than worldly considerations.
Kitty disliked the conversation, and she was disturbed both by
the subject and the tone in which it was conducted, and also by
the knowledge of the effect it would have on her husband.
Anna Karenina page 342 Anna Karenina page 344
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