Noticing that her box remained empty during the next act, Vronsky, provoking a hissing in the audience, which was hushed to the sounds of the cavatina, left the stalls and drove home.
Anna was already there. When Vronsky came in, she was alone, still wearing the same dress she had worn to the theatre. She was sitting in the first chair by the wall, staring straight ahead of her. She glanced at him and at once resumed her former position.
‘Anna,’ he said.
‘You, you’re to blame for it all!’ she cried, getting up, with tears of despair and anger in her voice.
‘I asked you, I implored you not to go. I knew it would be unpleasant ...’
‘Unpleasant!’ she cried. ‘Terrible! I won’t forget it as long as I live. She said it was a disgrace to sit next to me.’
‘A foolish woman’s words,’ he said. ‘But why risk, why provoke ...’
‘I hate your calmness. You shouldn’t have driven me to that. If you loved me ...’
‘Anna! What does the question of my love have to do ...’
‘Yes, if you loved as I do, if you suffered as I do ...’ she said, looking at him with an expression of fear.
He felt sorry for her, and still he was vexed. He assured her of his love, because he saw that that alone could calm her now, and he did not reproach her in words, but in his soul he did reproach her.
And those assurances of love, which seemed so banal to him that he was ashamed to utter them, she drank in and gradually grew calm. The next day, completely reconciled, they left for the country.
Part Six
I
Darya Alexandrovna was spending the summer with her children in Pokrovskoe at her sister Kitty Levin’s. On her own estate the house had completely fallen apart, and Levin and his wife had persuaded her to spend the summer with them. Stepan Arkadyich highly approved of this arrangement. He said he was very sorry that his duties prevented him from spending the summer in the country with his family, which would have been the greatest happiness for him, and he remained in Moscow, occasionally going to the country for a day or two. Besides the Oblonskys, with all the children and the governess, the old princess also stayed with the Levins that summer, considering it her duty to look after her inexperienced daughter, who was in a ‘certain condition’. Besides that, Varenka, Kitty’s friend from abroad, had kept her promise to visit Kitty when she was married and was now her friend’s guest. These were all relations and friends of Levin’s wife. And though he loved them all, he slightly regretted his Levin world and order, which was smothered under this influx of the ‘Shcherbatsky element’, as he kept saying to himself. Of his own relations only Sergei Ivanovich stayed with him that summer, but even he was a man not of the Levin but of the Koznyshev stamp, so that the Levin spirit was completely annihilated.
In Levin’s long-deserted house there were now so many people that almost all the rooms were occupied, and almost every day the old princess had to count them as they sat down at the table and seat the thirteenth granddaughter or grandson at a separate table. And for Kitty, who diligently occupied herself with the household, there was no little bother over procuring chickens, turkeys and ducks, of which, considering the summer appetites of guests and children, a great many were needed.
The whole family was sitting at dinner. Dolly’s children were making plans with the governess and Varenka about where to go mushrooming. Sergei Ivanovich, whose intellect and learning enjoyed a respect among all the guests amounting almost to veneration, surprised them all by mixing into the conversation about mushrooms.
‘Take me with you. I like mushrooming very much,’ he said, looking at Varenka. ‘I find it a very good occupation.’
‘Why, we’d be very glad to,’ Varenka said, blushing. Kitty exchanged meaningful glances with Dolly. The suggestion of the learned and intelligent Sergei Ivanovich that he go mushrooming with Varenka confirmed some of Kitty’s surmises, which had occupied her very much of late. She hastened to address her mother, so that her glances would not be noticed. After dinner Sergei Ivanovich sat with his cup of coffee at the drawing-room window, continuing a conversation he and his brother had begun and glancing towards the door through which the children who were going mushrooming were supposed to come. Levin sat on the window-seat beside his brother.
Kitty stood near her husband, obviously waiting for the end of the conversation, which did not interest her, so that she could tell him something.
‘You’ve changed in many ways since you got married, and for the better,’ said Sergei Ivanovich, smiling at Kitty and obviously not much interested in the conversation they had begun, ‘but you’ve remained loyal to your passion for defending the most paradoxical themes.’
‘Katia, it’s not good for you to stand,’ her husband said to her, moving a chair over for her and giving her a meaningful look.
