At home Kuzma told Levin that Katerina Alexandrovna was well, that her sisters had left her only recently, and handed him two letters. Levin read them right there in the front hall, so as not to be distracted later. One was from his steward, Sokolov. Sokolov wrote that it was impossible to sell the wheat, that the offer was only five and a half roubles, and there was nowhere else to get money. The other letter was from his sister. She reproached him for still not having taken care of her business.
‘So we’ll sell it for five-fifty, since they won’t pay more.’ Levin resolved the first question at once, with extraordinary ease, though it had seemed so difficult to him before. ‘It’s amazing how all one’s time is taken up here,’ he thought about the second letter. He felt guilty before his sister for still not having done what she had asked him to do. ‘Again today I didn’t go to court, but today I really had no time.’ And, having decided that he would do it the next day without fail, he went to his wife. On his way, Levin quickly ran through the whole day in his memory. The day’s events were all conversations: conversations he had listened to and taken part in. They had all been about subjects which he, had he been alone and in the country, would never have bothered with, but here they were very interesting. And all the conversations had been nice; only in two places had they not been so nice. One was what he had said about the pike, the other that there was something
Levin found his wife sad and bored. The dinner of the three sisters had gone very cheerfully, but afterwards they had waited and waited for him, they had all became bored, the sisters had gone home, and she had been left alone.
‘Well, and what did you do?’ she asked, looking into his eyes, which somehow had a peculiarly suspicious shine. But, so as not to hinder his telling her everything, she hid her attentiveness and listened with an approving smile as he told her how he had spent his evening.
‘Well, I was very glad that I met Vronsky. I felt very easy and simple with him. You see, now I shall try never to meet him again, but since that awkwardness is over ...’ he said and, recalling that,
But Kitty was not interested in his thoughts about the people drinking. She had seen him blush and wished to know why.
‘Well, and where did you go after that?’
‘Stiva was terribly insistent on going to see Anna Arkadyevna.’
Having said that, Levin blushed still more, and his doubts about whether he had done a good or a bad thing by going to see Anna were finally resolved. He now knew that he should not have done it.
Kitty’s eyes opened especially wide and flashed at the name of Anna, but with effort she concealed her agitation and deceived him.
‘Ah!’ was all she said.
‘You surely won’t be angry that I went. Stiva asked me to, and Dolly also wanted it,’ Levin continued.
‘Oh, no,’ she said, but he saw the effort in her eyes, which boded him no good.
‘She’s a very nice, a very, very pitiful and good woman,’ he said, telling her about Anna, her occupations, and what she had asked him to tell her.
‘Yes, to be sure, she’s very pitiful,’ said Kitty, when he had finished. ‘Who was your letter from?’
He told her and, believing in her calm tone, went to undress.
Coming back, he found Kitty in the same armchair. When he went up to her, she looked at him and burst into tears.
‘What is it? What is it?’ he asked, already knowing what.
‘You’ve fallen in love with that nasty woman. She’s bewitched you. I saw it in your eyes. Yes, yes! What can come of it? You drank at the club, drank, gambled, and then went ... to whom? No, let’s go away ... Tomorrow I’m going away.’
It took Levin a long time to calm his wife down. When he finally did, it was only by confessing that the feeling of pity, along with the wine, had thrown him off guard and made him yield to Anna’s cunning influence, and that he was going to avoid her. The one thing he confessed most sincerely of all was that, living so long in Moscow, just talking, eating and drinking, he had got befuddled. They talked till three o‘clock in the morning. Only at three o’clock were they reconciled enough to be able to fall asleep.
XII
