‘I’m sorry I’ve disturbed your women’s kingdom,’ he said, looking around at them all with displeasure, realizing that they had been talking about something that they would not have talked about in his presence.
For a second he felt that he shared Agafya Mikhailovna’s feeling - displeasure that the raspberry jam had been made without water, and in general with the alien Shcherbatsky influence. He smiled, however, and went over to Kitty.
‘Well, how are you?’ he asked, looking at her with the same expression with which everyone now addressed her.
‘Oh, fine,’ said Kitty, smiling, ‘and you?’
‘They hold three times more than a cart. So, shall we go for the children? I told them to harness up.’
‘What, you want to take Kitty in the wagonette?’ her mother said reproachfully.
‘But at a walk, Princess.’
Levin never called the princess
‘Come with us,
‘I don’t want to witness this folly.’
‘I’ll go on foot, then. It’s good for me.’ Kitty got up, went over to her husband and took him by the hand.
‘Good, but everything in moderation,’ said the princess.
‘Well, Agafya Mikhailovna, is the jam done?’ said Levin, smiling at Agafya Mikhailovna and wishing to cheer her up. ‘Is it good the new way?’
‘Must be good. We’d say it’s overcooked.’
‘So much the better, Agafya Mikhailovna, it won’t get mouldy. Our ice has all melted by now and there’s nowhere to keep it,’ said Kitty, understanding her husband’s intention at once and addressing the old woman with the same feeling. ‘Besides, your pickling is so good, my mama says she’s never tasted the like anywhere,’ she added, smiling and straightening the old woman’s kerchief.
Agafya Mikhailovna looked crossly at Kitty.
‘Don’t comfort me, mistress. I just look at you and him and I feel cheered,’ she said, and this crude expression ‘him’ instead of ‘the master’ touched Kitty.
‘Come mushrooming with us, you can show us the places.’ Agafya Mikhailovna smiled and shook her head, as if to say: ‘I’d gladly be angry with you, but it’s impossible.’
‘Please do as I advise you,’ said the old princess, ‘cover the jam with a piece of paper and wet it with rum: it will never get mouldy, even without ice.’
III
Kitty was especially glad of the chance to be alone with her husband, because she had noticed a shadow of chagrin cross his face, which reflected everything so vividly, when he had come out on the terrace, asked what they were talking about and received no answer.
When they went on foot ahead of the others and were out of sight of the house on the hard-packed, dusty road strewn with ears and grains of rye, she leaned more heavily on his arm and pressed it to her. He had already forgotten the momentary, unpleasant impression, and alone with her now, when the thought of her pregnancy never left him for a moment, he experienced what was for him a new and joyful delight, completely free of sensuality, in the closeness of a loved woman. There was nothing to say, but he wanted to hear the sound of her voice, which had changed now with her pregnancy, as had her look. In her voice, as in her look, there was a softness and seriousness such as occurs in people who are constantly focused on one beloved task.
‘So you won’t get tired? Lean more on me,’ he said.
‘No, I’m so glad of the chance to be alone with you, and I confess, good as it is for me to be with them, I miss our winter evenings together.’
‘That was good, and this is still better. Both are better,’ he said, pressing her arm to him.
‘Do you know what we were talking about when you came?’
‘Jam?’
‘Yes, about jam, too. But also about how men propose.’
‘Ah!’ said Levin, listening more to the sound of her voice than to what she was saying, and thinking all the while about the road, which now took them through the woods, and avoiding places where she might stumble.
‘And about Sergei Ivanych and Varenka. Have you noticed? ... I wish it very much,’ she went on. ‘What do you think about it?’ And she looked into his face.
‘I don’t know what to think,’ Levin replied, smiling. ‘I find Sergei very strange in that respect. I did tell you ...’
‘Yes, that he was in love with that girl who died ...’
‘That was when I was a child; I know it by hearsay. I remember him then. He was amazingly nice. But since then I’ve been observing him with women: he’s courteous, he likes some of them, but you feel that they’re simply people for him, not women.’
‘Yes, but now with Varenka ... It seems there’s something ...’
‘Maybe there is ... But you have to know him ... He’s a special, astonishing man. He lives only a spiritual life. He’s an exceedingly pure and high-minded man.’
‘How do you mean? Will it lower him?’
‘No, but he’s so used to living only a spiritual life that he can’t reconcile himself with actuality, and Varenka is after all an actuality.’
