‘You have a lot of people? Who’s here?’ Levin asked, blushing, as he knocked the snow off his hat with his glove.
‘All our own. Kitty’s here. Let’s go, I’ll introduce you to Karenin.’
Despite his liberalism, Stepan Arkadyich knew that acquaintance with Karenin could not but be flattering and therefore treated his best friends to it. But just then Konstantin Levin was unable to feel all the pleasure of this acquaintance. He had not seen Kitty since that evening, so memorable for him, on which he had met Vronsky, unless he were to count the moment when he had seen her on the high road. In the depths of his soul he had known that he would see her here tonight. But, maintaining his inner freedom of thought, he tried to assure himself that he had not known it. Yet now, when he heard that she was there, he suddenly felt such joy, and at the same time such fear, that his breath was taken away and he could not bring out what he wanted to say.
‘How is she? How? The way she was before, or the way she was in the carriage? And what if what Darya Alexandrovna said is true? Why shouldn’t it be true?’ he thought.
‘Ah, do please introduce me to Karenin,’ he barely uttered, and with a desperately determined step he went into the drawing room and saw her.
She was neither the way she had been before, nor the way she had been in the carriage; she was quite different.
She was frightened, timid, shamefaced, and all the more lovely because of it. She saw him the instant he came into the room. She had been waiting for him. She was joyful and so embarrassed by her joy that there was a moment - as he went up to the hostess and glanced at her again - when it seemed to her, and to him, and to Dolly, who saw it all, that she would not be able to stand it and would start to cry. She blushed, paled, blushed again and froze, her lips quivering a little, waiting for him. He came up to her, bowed and silently gave her his hand. Had it not been for the slight trembling of her lips and the moisture that came to her eyes, giving them an added brilliance, her smile would have been almost calm as she said:
‘It’s so long since we’ve seen each other!’ and with desperate resolution pressed his hand with her cold hand.
‘You haven’t seen me, but I saw you,’ said Levin, radiant with a smile of happiness. ‘I saw you when you were driving to Yergushovo from the station.’
‘When?’ she asked with surprise.
‘You were going to Yergushovo,’ said Levin, feeling himself choking with the happiness that flooded his soul. And he thought to himself, ‘How could I connect this touching being with the thought of anything not innocent! And, yes, it seems that what Darya Alexandrovna said is true.’
Stepan Arkadyich took him by the arm and brought him to Karenin.
‘Allow me to introduce you.’ He gave their names.
‘Very pleased to meet you again,’ Alexei Alexandrovich said coldly, shaking Levin’s hand.
‘You’re acquainted?’ Stepan Arkadyich asked in surprise.
‘We spent three hours together on the train,’ Levin said, smiling, ‘but came away intrigued, as from a masked ball, or at least I did.’
‘Really! This way, please,’ Stepan Arkadyich said, pointing in the direction of the dining room.
The men went to the dining room and approached the table of hors d‘oeuvres, set with six kinds of vodka and as many kinds of cheese with silver spreaders or without, with caviars, herring, various tinned delicacies and platters of sliced French bread.
The men stood by the fragrant vodkas and hors d‘oeuvres, and the conversation between Koznyshev, Karenin and Pestsov about the russification of Poland began to die down in anticipation of dinner.
Sergei Ivanovich, who knew like no one else how to add some Attic salt8 to the end of a most abstract and serious discussion and thereby change the mood of his interlocutors, did so now.
Alexei Alexandrovich maintained that the russification of Poland could be accomplished only as a result of higher principles, which ought to be introduced by the Russian administration.
Pestsov insisted that one nation could assimilate another only if it had a denser population.
Koznyshev acknowledged the one and the other, but with limitations. To conclude the conversation, he said with a smile as they were leaving the drawing room:
‘Therefore there is only one way of russifying the racial minorities - by breeding as many children as possible. There’s where my brother and I are at our worst. And you married gentlemen, especially you, Stepan Arkadyich, are quite patriotic. How many do you have?’ He turned with a gentle smile to his host and held out his tiny glass to him.
Everybody laughed, Stepan Arkadyich with particular gaiety.
‘Yes, that’s the best way!’ he said, chewing some cheese and pouring some special sort of vodka into the held-out glass. The conversation indeed ceased on that joke.
