“Well, what then? I don’t understand….”
“So did Kitty perhaps refuse him?… She didn’t tell you so?”
“No, she has said nothing to me either of one or the other; she’s too
proud. But I know it’s all on account of the other.”
“Yes, but suppose she has refused Levin, and she wouldn’t have refused
him if it hadn’t been for the other, I know. And then, he has deceived her so
horribly.”
It was too terrible for the princess to think how she had sinned against
her daughter, and she broke out angrily.
“Oh, I really don’t understand! Nowadays they will all go their own way,
and mothers haven’t a word to say in anything, and then….”
“Mamma, I’ll go up to her.”
“Well, do. Did I tell you not to?” said her mother.
Chapter 3
When she went into Kitty’s little room, a pretty, pink little room, full of
knick-knacks in vieux saxe, as fresh, and pink, and white, and gay as Kitty
herself had been two months ago, Dolly remembered how they had
decorated the room the year before together, with what love and gaiety. Her
heart turned cold when she saw Kitty sitting on a low chair near the door,
her eyes fixed immovably on a corner of the rug. Kitty glanced at her sister,
and the cold, rather ill-tempered expression of her face did not change.
“I’m just going now, and I shall have to keep in and you won’t be able to
come to see me,” said Dolly, sitting down beside her. “I want to talk to
you.”
“What about?” Kitty asked swiftly, lifting her head in dismay.
“What should it be, but your trouble?”
“I have no trouble.”
“Nonsense, Kitty. Do you suppose I could help knowing? I know all
about it. And believe me, it’s of so little consequence…. We’ve all been
through it.”
Kitty did not speak, and her face had a stern expression.
“He’s not worth your grieving over him,” pursued Darya Alexandrovna,
coming straight to the point.
“No, because he has treated me with contempt,” said Kitty, in a breaking
voice. “Don’t talk of it! Please, don’t talk of it!”
“But who can have told you so? No one has said that. I’m certain he was
in love with you, and would still be in love with you, if it hadn’t….”
“Oh, the most awful thing of all for me is this sympathizing!” shrieked
Kitty, suddenly flying into a passion. She turned round on her chair, flushed
crimson, and rapidly moving her fingers, pinched the clasp of her belt first
with one hand and then with the other. Dolly knew this trick her sister had
of clenching her hands when she was much excited; she knew, too, that in
moments of excitement Kitty was capable of forgetting herself and saying a
great deal too much, and Dolly would have soothed her, but it was too late.
“What, what is it you want to make me feel, eh?” said Kitty quickly.
“That I’ve been in love with a man who didn’t care a straw for me, and that
I’m dying of love for him? And this is said to me by my own sister, who
imagines that … that … that she’s sympathizing with me!… I don’t want
these condolences and humbug!”
“Kitty, you’re unjust.”
“Why are you tormenting me?”
“But I … quite the contrary … I see you’re unhappy….”
But Kitty in her fury did not hear her.
“I’ve nothing to grieve over and be comforted about. I am too proud ever
to allow myself to care for a man who does not love me.”
“Yes, I don’t say so either…. Only one thing. Tell me the truth,” said
Darya Alexandrovna, taking her by the hand: “tell me, did Levin speak to
you?…”
The mention of Levin’s name seemed to deprive Kitty of the last vestige
of self-control. She leaped up from her chair, and flinging her clasp on the
ground, she gesticulated rapidly with her hands and said:
“Why bring Levin in too? I can’t understand what you want to torment
me for. I’ve told you, and I say it again, that I have some pride, and never,
never would I do as you’re doing—go back to a man who’s deceived you,
who has cared for another woman. I can’t understand it! You may, but I
can’t!”
And saying these words she glanced at her sister, and seeing that Dolly
sat silent, her head mournfully bowed, Kitty, instead of running out of the
room as she had meant to do, sat down near the door, and hid her face in her
handkerchief.
The silence lasted for two minutes: Dolly was thinking of herself. That
humiliation of which she was always conscious came back to her with a
peculiar bitterness when her sister reminded her of it. She had not looked
for such cruelty in her sister, and she was angry with her. But suddenly she
heard the rustle of a skirt, and with it the sound of heart-rending, smothered
sobbing, and felt arms about her neck. Kitty was on her knees before her.
“Dolinka, I am so, so wretched!” she whispered penitently. And the sweet
face covered with tears hid itself in Darya Alexandrovna’s skirt.
As though tears were the indispensable oil, without which the machinery
of mutual confidence could not run smoothly between the two sisters, the
sisters after their tears talked, not of what was uppermost in their minds,
but, though they talked of outside matters, they understood each other. Kitty
knew that the words she had uttered in anger about her husband’s infidelity
and her humiliating position had cut her poor sister to the heart, but that she
had forgiven her. Dolly for her part knew all she had wanted to find out.
She felt certain that her surmises were correct; that Kitty’s misery, her
inconsolable misery, was due precisely to the fact that Levin had made her
an offer and she had refused him, and Vronsky had deceived her, and that
she was fully prepared to love Levin and to detest Vronsky. Kitty said not a
word of that; she talked of nothing but her spiritual condition.
“I have nothing to make me miserable,” she said, getting calmer; “but
can you understand that everything has become hateful, loathsome, coarse
to me, and I myself most of all? You can’t imagine what loathsome thoughts
I have about everything.”
“Why, whatever loathsome thoughts can you have?” asked Dolly,
smiling.
“The most utterly loathsome and coarse: I can’t tell you. It’s not
unhappiness, or low spirits, but much worse. As though everything that was
good in me was all hidden away, and nothing was left but the most
loathsome. Come, how am I to tell you?” she went on, seeing the puzzled
