‘What?’ he asked, smiling and getting up.
‘He turned,’ she thought.
‘Nothing, I just wanted you to turn to me,’ she said, looking at him and trying to see whether he was annoyed that she had distracted him.
‘How good it is for us here together! For me, that is,’ he said, going to her and beaming with a smile of happiness.
‘It’s so good for me! I won’t go anywhere, especially not to Moscow!’
‘And what have you been thinking?’
‘Me? I was thinking... No, no, go and write, don’t get distracted,’ she said, puckering her lips. ‘And I’ve got to cut out these little holes now, see?’
She took the scissors and began to cut.
‘No, tell me what,’ he said, sitting down beside her and watching the circular movement of the small scissors.
‘Ah, what was I thinking? I was thinking about Moscow, about the nape of your neck.’
‘Precisely why have I been given such happiness? It’s unnatural. Too good,’ he said, kissing her hand.
‘For me, on the contrary, the better it is, the more natural it seems.’
‘And you’ve got a little strand here,’ he said, carefully turning her head. ‘A little strand. See, right here. No, no, we’re busy with our work.’
But the work no longer went on, and they guiltily jumped away from each other when Kuzma came to announce that tea was served.
‘Have they come from the city?’ Levin asked Kuzma.
‘They’ve just arrived; they’re unpacking.’
‘Come quickly,’ she said as she left the study, ‘or I’ll read the letters without you. And then let’s play four hands.’
Left alone, he put his notebooks into the new briefcase she had bought and began washing his hands at the new washstand with its elegant new accessories that had also appeared with her. Levin smiled at his thoughts and shook his head at them disapprovingly; he suffered from a feeling akin to remorse. There was something shameful, pampered, Capuan,28 as he called it to himself, in his present life. ‘It’s not good to live like this,’ he thought. ‘It will soon be three months and I’m not doing anything. Today is almost the first time I seriously got down to work - and what? I no sooner started than I dropped it. Even my usual occupations - I’ve all but abandoned them, too. My farming - I almost don’t go to look after it. I either feel sorry to leave her or see that she’s bored. And here I used to think that life before marriage was just so, anyhow, didn’t count, and that real life started after marriage. And it will soon be three months, and I’ve never spent my time so idly and uselessly. No, it’s impossible. I must get started. Of course, it’s not her fault. There’s nothing to reproach her for. I must be firmer myself, must fence off my male independence. Or else I may get into the habit and teach it to her ... Of course, it’s not her fault,’ he said to himself.
But it is hard for a discontented man not to reproach someone else, especially the very one who is closest to him, for his discontent. And it vaguely occurred to Levin, not that she was at fault (she could not be at fault for anything), but that her upbringing was at fault, was too superficial and frivolous (‘that fool Charsky: I know she’d have liked to stop him, but she didn’t know how’). ‘Yes, besides an interest in the house (that she does have), besides her clothes and her broderie anglaise, she has no serious interests. No interest in my work, in farming, in the muzhiks, nor in music, which she’s quite good at, nor in reading. She’s not doing anything and is quite content.’ In his soul Levin disapproved of that and did not yet understand that she was preparing for the period of activity which was to come for her, when she would be at one and the same time the wife of her husband, the mistress of the house, and would bear, nurse and raise her children. He did not understand that she knew it intuitively and, while preparing for this awesome task, did not reproach herself for the moments of insouciance and the happiness of love that she enjoyed now, while cheerfully building her future nest.
XVI
When Levin came upstairs, his wife was sitting at the new silver samovar by the new tea set and, having seated old Agafya Mikhailovna before a full cup of tea, was reading a letter from Dolly, with whom she was in constant and frequent correspondence.
‘See, your lady seated me, she told me to sit with her,’ Agafya Mikhailovna said, smiling amiably at Kitty.
In these words of Agafya Mikhailovna Levin read the denouement of the drama that had been going on lately between Agafya Mikhailovna and Kitty. He saw that despite all the grief caused Agafya Mikhailovna by the new mistress, who had taken the reins of government from her, Kitty had still prevailed and made the old woman love her.
‘See, I also read your letter,’ said Kitty, handing him an illiterate letter. ‘It’s from that woman, I think, your brother’s...’ she said. ‘I didn’t really read it. And this is from my family and from Dolly. Imagine! Dolly took Grisha and Tanya to a children’s ball at the Sarmatskys’. Tanya was a marquise.’
