‘But do I know her thoughts, her desires, her feelings?’ some voice suddenly whispered to him. The smile vanished from his face and he fell to thinking. And suddenly a strange sensation came over him. He was possessed by fear and doubt, doubt of everything.
‘What if she doesn’t love me? What if she’s marrying me only so as to get married? What if she herself doesn’t know what she’s doing?’ he asked himself. ‘She may come to her senses and understand only after marrying that she does not and cannot love me.’ And strange thoughts about her, of the very worst sort, began coming into his head. He was jealous of Vronsky, as he had been a year ago, as if that evening when he had seen her with Vronsky were yesterday. He suspected that she had not told him everything.
He quickly jumped up. ‘No, it’s impossible like this!’ he said to himself in despair. ‘I’ll go to her, ask her, tell her for the last time: we’re free, hadn’t we better stop? Anything’s better than eternal unhappiness, disgrace, infidelity!!’ With despair in his heart and with anger at all people, at himself, at her, he left the hotel and drove to see her.
He found her in the back rooms. She was sitting on a trunk, making arrangements about something with a maid, with whom she was sorting out piles of many-coloured dresses laid over the backs of chairs and on the floor.
‘Oh!’ she cried when she saw him and lit up with joy. ‘Why? What is it? How unexpected! And I’m here sorting out my girlhood dresses, which goes to whom ...’
‘Ah! that’s very nice!’ he said, looking gloomily at the maid.
‘Run along, Dunyasha, I’ll call you later,’ said Kitty. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ she asked, resolutely addressing him informally, as soon as the maid had left. She noticed his strange face, agitated and gloomy, and fear came over her.
‘Kitty, I’m suffering! I can’t suffer alone,’ he said with despair in his voice, standing before her and looking at her imploringly. He already saw by her loving, truthful face that nothing could come of what he intended to say, but all the same he needed her reassurance. ‘I’ve come to say that we still have time. It can all be cancelled and corrected.’
‘What? I don’t understand anything. What’s the matter with you?’
‘What I’ve told you a thousand times and can’t help thinking ... that I’m not worthy of you. You couldn’t have agreed to marry me. Think. You’ve made a mistake. Think well. You can’t love me ... If ... it’s better to say it.’ He talked without looking at her. ‘I’ll be unhappy. They can all say whatever they like - anything’s better than unhappiness ... Anything’s better now, while there’s time ...’
‘I don’t understand,’ she replied fearfully. ‘You mean that you want to take back ... that we shouldn’t?’
‘Yes, if you don’t love me.’
‘You’re out of your mind!’ she cried, flushing with vexation.
But his face was so pathetic that she held back her vexation and, throwing the dresses off a chair, sat closer to him.
‘What are you thinking? Tell me everything.’
‘I think that you cannot love me. What could you love me for?’
‘My God! what can I ... ?’ she said, and burst into tears.
‘Ah, what have I done!’ he cried and, kneeling before her, he began kissing her hands.
When the princess came in five minutes later, she found them perfectly reconciled. Kitty had not only assured him that she loved him, but in answering his question about what she could love him for, had even explained to him what for. She had told him that she loved him because she thoroughly understood him, that she knew what he must love and that all that he loved, all of it, was good. And that seemed perfectly clear to him. When the princess came in, they were sitting side by side on the trunk, sorting out dresses and arguing over Kitty’s wanting to give Dunyasha the brown dress she had been wearing when Levin proposed to her, while he insisted that that dress should not be given to anyone and that Dunyasha should get the light blue one.
‘How can you not understand? She’s a brunette and it won’t suit her ... I have it all worked out.’
On learning why he had come, the princess became angry half jokingly, half seriously, and sent him home to get dressed and not interfere with Kitty’s having her hair done, because Charles would be coming presently.
‘She’s eaten nothing all these days and doesn’t look well as it is, and here you come and upset her with your silliness,’ she said to him. ‘On your way, on your way, my dear man!’
