‘Well, it seems to be ready now,’ said Dolly, pouring the syrup off the spoon.
‘When it leaves a tail, it’s ready. Cook it a little longer, Agafya Mikhailovna.’
‘These flies!’ Agafya Mikhailovna said crossly. ‘It’ll be all the same,’ she added.
‘Ah, how sweet he is, don’t frighten him!’ Kitty said suddenly, looking at a sparrow that had alighted on the railing and, turning over a raspberry stem, began pecking at it.
‘Yes, but you keep away from the brazier,’ said her mother.
‘What an expert matchmaker, though!’ said Dolly. ‘How carefully and skilfully she brings them together ...’
‘No, tell me,
‘What is there to think? He’ (‘he’ meaning Sergei Ivanovich) ‘could always make the foremost match in Russia; he’s not so young any more, but I know that many would marry him even now ... She’s very kind, but he could ...’
‘No, mama, you must understand why one couldn’t think of anything better for him or for her. First, she’s lovely!’ Kitty said, counting off one finger.
‘He likes her very much, it’s true,’ Dolly confirmed.
‘Then, he occupies such a position in society that he has absolutely no need for a wife with a fortune or social position. He needs one thing - a good and sweet wife, a peaceful one.’
‘Yes, with her he can be peaceful,’ Dolly confirmed.
‘Third, that she should love him. And that’s there ... I mean, it would be so good! ... I’m just waiting for them to come back from the forest and everything will be decided. I’ll see at once from their eyes. I’d be so glad! What do you think, Dolly?’
‘Don’t get excited. You must never get excited,’ said her mother.
‘But I’m not excited, mama. I think he’ll propose today.’
‘Ah, it’s so strange, when and how a man proposes ... There’s some obstacle, and suddenly it’s broken through,’ said Dolly, smiling pensively and recalling her past with Stepan Arkadyich.
‘Mama, how did papa propose to you?’ Kitty asked suddenly.
‘There was nothing extraordinary, it was quite simple,’ replied the princess, but her face became all bright at the memory.
‘No, but how? Anyway, you loved him before you were allowed to talk?’
Kitty felt a special charm in being able to talk with her mother as an equal about these most important things in a woman’s life.
‘Of course I loved him. He used to visit us in the country.’
‘But how did it get decided? Mama?’
‘You probably think you invented something new? It was all the same: it got decided by looks, by smiles ...’
‘How well you put it, mama! Precisely by looks and smiles,’ Dolly confirmed.
‘But what words did he say?’
‘What did Kostya say to you?’
‘He wrote with chalk. It was amazing ... It seems so long ago!’ she said.
And the three women fell to thinking about the same thing. Kitty was the first to break the silence. She recalled that whole last winter before her marriage and her infatuation with Vronsky.
‘One thing ... that former passion of Varenka’s,’ she said, recalling it by a natural train of thought. ‘I wanted somehow to tell Sergei Ivanovich, to prepare him. They - all men,’ she added, ‘are terribly jealous of our past.’
‘Not all,’ said Dolly. ‘You’re judging by your husband. He still suffers from the memory of Vronsky. Yes? It’s true?’
‘It is,’ Kitty replied, smiling pensively with her eyes.
‘Only I don’t know,’ the princess-mother defended her motherly supervision of her daughter, ‘what past of yours could bother him? That Vronsky courted you? That happens to every girl.’
‘Well, that’s not what we mean,’ Kitty said, blushing.
‘No, excuse me,’ her mother went on, ‘and then you yourself didn’t want to let me have a talk with Vronsky. Remember?’
‘Oh, mama!’ Kitty said with a suffering look.
‘Nowadays there’s no holding you back ... Your relations couldn’t go further than was proper: I myself would have called him out. However, it won’t do for you to get excited, my dear. Please remember that and calm yourself.’
‘I’m perfectly calm,
‘How happily it turned out for Kitty that Anna came then,’ said Dolly, ‘and how unhappily for her. Precisely the opposite,’ she added, struck by the thought. ‘Anna was so happy then, and Kitty considered herself unhappy. How completely opposite! I often think about her.’
‘A fine one to think about! A vile, disgusting woman, quite heartless,’ said the mother, unable to forget that Kitty had married not Vronsky but Levin.
‘Who wants to talk about that,’ Kitty said in vexation. ‘I don’t think about it and I don’t want to think ... And I don’t want to think,’ she repeated, hearing her husband’s familiar footsteps on the terrace stairs.
‘And I don’t want to think - about what?’ asked Levin, coming out on the terrace.
But no one answered him, and he did not repeat the question.
