He did not know that feeling of change she was experiencing after living at home, where she would sometimes want cabbage with kvass or sweets, and could not have either, while now she could order whatever she liked, buy heaps of sweets, spend any amount of money and order any pastry she wanted.
She now dreamed joyfully of Dolly’s coming with the children, especially because she was going to order each child’s favourite pastry, and Dolly would appreciate all her new arrangements. She did not know why or what for, but housekeeping attracted her irresistibly. Instinctively sensing the approach of spring and knowing there would also be bad weather, she was building her nest as best she could, hastening both to build it and to learn how it was done.
This trifling preoccupation of Kitty‘s, so opposite to Levin’s ideal of the exalted happiness of the initial period, was one of his disenchant ments; yet this sweet preoccupation, the meaning of which he did not understand but which he could not help loving, was one of his new enchantments.
Their quarrels were another disenchantment and enchantment. Levin never imagined that there could be any other relations between himself and his wife than tender, respectful, loving ones, and suddenly, in the very first days, they quarrelled, and she told him he did not love her, loved only himself, wept and waved her hands.
This first quarrel occurred because Levin went to a new farmstead and came back half an hour late, having lost his way trying to take a shortcut. He was returning home thinking only of her, of her love, of his happiness, and the closer he came to home the more ardent his tenderness for her grew. He rushed into the room with the same feeling and even stronger than when he had gone to the Shcherbatskys’ to propose. And suddenly he was met with a sullen expression he had never seen in her. He wanted to kiss her, but she pushed him away.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘You’re having fun...’ she began, trying to be calmly venomous.
But she no sooner opened her mouth than reproachful words of senseless jealousy, all that had tortured her during the half hour she had spent sitting motionless at the window, burst from her. Only then did he understand clearly for the first time what he had not understood when he had led her out of the church after the wedding. He understood not only that she was close to him, but that he no longer knew where she ended and he began. He understood it by the painful feeling of being split which he experienced at that moment. He was offended at first, but in that same instant he felt that he could not be offended by her, that she was him. In the first moment he felt like a man who, having suddenly received a violent blow from behind, turns with vexation and a desire for revenge to find out who did it, and realizes that he has accidentally struck himself, that there is no one to be angry with and he must endure and ease the pain.
Never afterwards did he feel it so strongly, but this first time it took him long to recover. Natural feeling demanded that he vindicate himself, prove to her that she was wrong; but to prove that she was wrong would mean to upset her still more and make the breach that had caused all the trouble still wider. One habitual feeling urged him to shift the blame from himself to her; another, stronger one urged him quickly, as quickly as possible, to smooth over the breach and keep it from growing bigger. To remain under so unjust an accusation was tormenting, but to hurt her by vindicating himself was still worse. Like a man suffering from pain while half asleep, he wanted to tear off, to throw away the sore spot and, coming to his senses, found that the sore spot was himself. He could only try to help the sore spot to suffer through it, and that he did.
They made peace. Realizing that she was wrong, but not saying so, she became more tender towards him, and they experienced a new, redoubled happiness in their love. But that did not keep such confrontations from being repeated and even quite frequently, for the most unexpected and insignificant causes. These confrontations also often took place because they did not yet know what was important for the other and because during this initial time they were both often in bad spirits. When one was in good and the other in bad spirits, the peace was not broken, but when both happened to be in bad spirits, confrontations occurred for such incomprehensibly insignificant reasons that afterwards they were simply unable to remember what they had quarrelled over. True, when both were in good spirits, their joy of life was doubled. But all the same this initial period was a difficult time for them.
