‘No, her heart speaks, but consider: you men have your eye on a girl, you visit the house, you make friends, you watch, you wait to see if you’re going to find what you love, and then, once you’re convinced of your love, you propose ...’
‘Well, it’s not quite like that.’
‘Never mind, you propose when your love has ripened or when the scale tips towards one of your two choices. But a girl isn’t asked. She’s expected to choose for herself, but she can’t choose and only answers yes or no.’
‘Yes,’ thought Levin, ‘a choice between me and Vronsky,’ and the dead man reviving in his heart died again and only weighed his heart down painfully.
‘Darya Alexandrovna,’ he said, ‘one chooses a dress that way, or I don’t know what purchase, but not love. The choice has been made and so much the better ... And there can be no repetition.’
‘Ah, pride, pride!’ said Darya Alexandrovna, as if despising him for the meanness of this feeling compared with that other feeling which only women know. ‘At the time you proposed to Kitty, she was precisely in a position where she could not give an answer. She hesitated. Hesitated between you and Vronsky. Him she saw every day, you she had not seen for a long time. Suppose she had been older - for me, for example, there could have been no hesitation in her place. I always found him disgusting, and so he was in the end.’
Levin remembered Kitty’s answer. She had said: ‘No, it cannot be ...’
‘Darya Alexandrovna,’ he said drily, ‘I appreciate your confidence in me, but I think you’re mistaken. I may be right or wrong, but this pride that you so despise makes any thought of Katerina Alexandrovna impossible for me - you understand, completely impossible.’
‘I’ll say only one more thing. You understand that I’m speaking of a sister whom I love like my own children. I’m not saying that she loves you, but I only want to say that her refusal at that moment proves nothing.’
‘I don’t know!’ said Levin, jumping up. ‘If you realized what pain you’re causing me! It’s the same as if your child were dead, and you were told he would have been like this and that, and he might have lived, and you would have rejoiced over him. And he’s dead, dead, dead...’
‘How funny you are,’ Darya Alexandrovna said with a sad smile, despite Levin’s agitation. ‘Yes, I understand it all now,’ she went on pensively. ‘So, you won’t come to see us when Kitty’s here?’
‘No, I won’t. Naturally, I’m not going to avoid Katerina Alexandrovna but, wherever possible, I’ll try to spare her the unpleasantness of my presence.’
‘You’re very, very funny,’ Darya Alexandrovna repeated, studying his face tenderly. ‘Well, all right, it will be as if we never spoke of it. What is it, Tanya?’ she said in French to the girl who had just come in.
‘Where’s my shovel, mama?’
‘I am speaking French, and you should do the same.’
The girl wanted to do the same, but forgot what a shovel is called in French; her mother told her and then proceeded to tell her in French where to find the shovel. And Levin found this disagreeable.
Now everything in Darya Alexandrovna’s house and in her children seemed less nice to him than before.
‘And why does she speak French with the children?’ he thought. ‘How unnatural and false it is! And the children can feel it. Teaching French and unteaching sincerity,’he thought to himself, not knowing that Darya Alexandrovna had already thought it all over twenty times and, to the detriment of sincerity, had found it necessary to teach her children in this way.
‘But where are you going? Stay a little.’
Levin stayed till tea, but all his merriment had vanished and he felt awkward.
After tea he went to the front hall to order the horses to be readied and, on returning, found Darya Alexandrovna looking agitated and upset, with tears in her eyes. While Levin was out of the room, an event had occurred which had suddenly destroyed for Darya Alexandrovna all that day’s happiness and pride in her children. Grisha and Tanya had fought over a ball. Darya Alexandrovna, hearing shouts in the nursery, had run there and found a terrible sight. Tanya was holding Grisha by the hair, while he, his face disfigured by anger, was hitting her with his fists wherever he could reach. Something snapped in Darya Alexandrovna’s heart when she saw this. It was as if darkness came over her life: she understood that her children, of whom she was so proud, were not only most ordinary, but even bad, poorly brought up children, wicked children, with coarse, beastly inclinations.
She could neither speak nor think of anything else and could not help telling Levin of her unhappiness.
Levin saw that she was unhappy and tried to comfort her, saying that this did not prove anything bad, that all children fought; but, as he said it, Levin thought in his heart: ‘No, I will not be affected and speak French with my children, but my children will not be like that: one need only not harm, not disfigure children, and they will be lovely. Yes, my children will not be like that.’
