‘How can I stay alone ... without her?’ he thought with horror and he took the chalk. ‘Wait,’ he said, sitting down at the table. ‘There’s one thing I’ve long wanted to ask you.’
He looked straight into her tender though frightened eyes.
‘Please do.’
‘Here,’ he said, and wrote the initial letters: w, y, a, m: t, c, b, d, i, m, n, o, t? These letters meant: ‘When you answered me: “that cannot be”, did it mean never or then?’ There was no likelihood that she would be able to understand this complex phrase, but he watched her with such a look as if his life depended on her understanding these words.
She glanced at him seriously, then leaned her knitted brow on her hand and began to read. Occasionally she glanced at him, asking with her glance: ‘Is this what I think?’
‘I understand,’ she said, blushing.
‘What is this word?’ he said, pointing to the n that signified the word
‘That means the word
He quickly erased what was written, gave her the chalk and got up. She wrote: t, I, c, g, n, o, a.
Dolly was completely consoled in her grief, caused by her conversation with Alexei Alexandrovich, when she saw these two figures: Kitty, chalk in hand, looking up at Levin with a timid and happy smile, and his handsome figure bent over the table, his burning eyes directed now at the table, now at her. He suddenly beamed: he had understood. It meant: ‘Then I could give no other answer.’
He glanced at her questioningly, timidly.
‘Only then?’
‘Yes,’ her smile replied.
‘And n... And now?’ he asked.
‘Well, here, read this. I’ll tell you what I would wish. Would wish very much!’ She wrote the initial letters: t, y, c, f, a, f, w, h. It meant: ‘that you could forgive and forget what happened’.
He seized the chalk with his tense, trembling fingers and, breaking it, wrote the initial letters of the following: ‘I have nothing to forgive and forget, I have never stopped loving you.’
She glanced at him, the smile staying on her lips.
‘I understand,’ she said in a whisper.
He sat down and wrote a long phrase. She understood everything and, without asking him if she was right, took the chalk and replied at once.
For a long time he could not understand what she had written and kept glancing in her eyes. A darkening came over him from happiness. He simply could not pick out the words she had in mind; but in her lovely eyes shining with happiness he understood everything he needed to know! And he wrote three letters. But she was reading after his hand, and before he finished writing, she finished it herself and wrote the answer: ‘Yes.’
‘Playing
Levin stood up and saw Kitty to the door.
In their conversation everything had been said - that she loved him, that she would tell her father and mother, that he would come tomorrow in the morning.
XIV
When Kitty had gone and Levin was left alone, he felt such anxiety without her and such an impatient desire to live quickly, the more quickly, till tomorrow morning, when he would see her again and be united with her for ever, that he became afraid, as of death, of those fourteen hours that he had to spend without her. He absolutely had to be with and talk to someone, so as not to remain alone, so as to cheat time. Stepan Arkadyich would have been the most agreeable company for him, but he was going, as he said, to an evening party, though actually to the ballet. Levin only had time to tell him that he was happy, that he loved him and would never, never forget what he had done for him. Stepan Arkadyich’s eyes and smile showed Levin that he had understood this feeling in the right way.
‘So it’s no longer time to die?’ said Stepan Arkadyich, pressing Levin’s hand affectionately.
‘No-o-o!’ said Levin.
Darya Alexandrovna, saying good-bye to him, also said, as if con gratulating him:
‘How glad I am that you met Kitty again. One must cherish old friendships.’
But Levin found these words of Darya Alexandrovna unpleasant. She could not understand how lofty and inaccessible to her it all was, and she should not have dared to mention it.
Levin took leave of them, but, so as not to be left alone, latched on to his brother.
‘Where are you going?’
‘To a meeting.’
‘Well, I’ll go with you. May I?’
‘Why not? Come along,’ said Sergei Ivanovich, smiling. ‘What’s got into you tonight?’
‘Into me? Happiness has got into me!’ said Levin, letting down the window of the coach they were riding in. ‘You don’t mind? It’s stuffy. Happiness has got into me! Why have you never married?’
Sergei Ivanovich smiled.
‘I’m very glad, she seems to be a nice gi...’ Sergei Ivanovich began.
‘Don’t speak, don’t speak, don’t speak!’ Levin cried, seizing him by the collar of his fur coat with both hands and wrapping him up. ‘She’s a nice girl’ was such a simple, such a low phrase, so out of harmony with his feeling.
Sergei Ivanovich laughed a merry laugh, which happened to him rarely.
