“Where are they?”
“In the study.”
Passing through the dining-room, a room not very large, with dark,
paneled walls, Stepan Arkadyevitch and Levin walked over the soft carpet
to the half-dark study, lighted up by a single lamp with a big dark shade.
Another lamp with a reflector was hanging on the wall, lighting up a big
full-length portrait of a woman, which Levin could not help looking at. It
was the portrait of Anna, painted in Italy by Mihailov. While Stepan
Arkadyevitch went behind the treillage, and the man’s voice which had
been speaking paused, Levin gazed at the portrait, which stood out from the
frame in the brilliant light thrown on it, and he could not tear himself away
from it. He positively forgot where he was, and not even hearing what was
said, he could not take his eyes off the marvelous portrait. It was not a
picture, but a living, charming woman, with black curling hair, with bare
arms and shoulders, with a pensive smile on the lips, covered with soft
down; triumphantly and softly she looked at him with eyes that baffled him.
She was not living only because she was more beautiful than a living
woman can be.
“I am delighted!” He heard suddenly near him a voice, unmistakably
addressing him, the voice of the very woman he had been admiring in the
portrait. Anna had come from behind the treillage to meet him, and Levin
saw in the dim light of the study the very woman of the portrait, in a dark
blue shot gown, not in the same position nor with the same expression, but
with the same perfection of beauty which the artist had caught in the
portrait. She was less dazzling in reality, but, on the other hand, there was
something fresh and seductive in the living woman which was not in the
portrait.
Chapter 10
She had risen to meet him, not concealing her pleasure at seeing him; and
in the quiet ease with which she held out her little vigorous hand,
introduced him to Vorkuev and indicated a red-haired, pretty little girl who
was sitting at work, calling her her pupil, Levin recognized and liked the
manners of a woman of the great world, always self-possessed and natural.
“I am delighted, delighted,” she repeated, and on her lips these simple
words took for Levin’s ears a special significance. “I have known you and
liked you for a long while, both from your friendship with Stiva and for
your wife’s sake…. I knew her for a very short time, but she left on me the
impression of an exquisite flower, simply a flower. And to think she will
soon be a mother!”
She spoke easily and without haste, looking now and then from Levin to
her brother, and Levin felt that the impression he was making was good,
and he felt immediately at home, simple and happy with her, as though he
had known her from childhood.
“Ivan Petrovitch and I settled in Alexey’s study,” she said in answer to
Stepan Arkadyevitch’s question whether he might smoke, “just so as to be
able to smoke”—and glancing at Levin, instead of asking whether he would
smoke, she pulled closer a tortoise-shell cigar-case and took a cigarette.
“How are you feeling today?” her brother asked her.
“Oh, nothing. Nerves, as usual.”
“Yes, isn’t it extraordinarily fine?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, noticing
that Levin was scrutinizing the picture.
“I have never seen a better portrait.”
“And extraordinarily like, isn’t it?” said Vorkuev.
Levin looked from the portrait to the original. A peculiar brilliance
lighted up Anna’s face when she felt his eyes on her. Levin flushed, and to
cover his confusion would have asked whether she had seen Darya
Alexandrovna lately; but at that moment Anna spoke. “We were just
talking, Ivan Petrovitch and I, of Vashtchenkov’s last pictures. Have you
seen them?”
“Yes, I have seen them,” answered Levin.
“But, I beg your pardon, I interrupted you … you were saying?…”
Levin asked if she had seen Dolly lately.
“She was here yesterday. She was very indignant with the high school
people on Grisha’s account. The Latin teacher, it seems, had been unfair to
him.”
“Yes, I have seen his pictures. I didn’t care for them very much,” Levin
went back to the subject she had started.
Levin talked now not at all with that purely businesslike attitude to the
subject with which he had been talking all the morning. Every word in his
conversation with her had a special significance. And talking to her was
pleasant; still pleasanter it was to listen to her.
Anna talked not merely naturally and cleverly, but cleverly and
carelessly, attaching no value to her own ideas and giving great weight to
the ideas of the person she was talking to.
The conversation turned on the new movement in art, on the new
illustrations of the Bible by a French artist. Vorkuev attacked the artist for a
realism carried to the point of coarseness.
Levin said that the French had carried conventionality further than
anyone, and that consequently they see a great merit in the return to realism.
In the fact of not lying they see poetry.
Never had anything clever said by Levin given him so much pleasure as
this remark. Anna’s face lighted up at once, as at once she appreciated the
thought. She laughed.
“I laugh,” she said, “as one laughs when one sees a very true portrait.
What you said so perfectly hits off French art now, painting and literature
too, indeed—Zola, Daudet. But perhaps it is always so, that men form their
conceptions from fictitious, conventional types, and then—all the
combinaisons made—they are tired of the fictitious figures and begin to
invent more natural, true figures.”
“That’s perfectly true,” said Vorknev.
“So you’ve been at the club?” she said to her brother.
“Yes, yes, this is a woman!” Levin thought, forgetting himself and staring
persistently at her lovely, mobile face, which at that moment was all at once
completely transformed. Levin did not hear what she was talking of as she
leaned over to her brother, but he was struck by the change of her
expression. Her face—so handsome a moment before in its repose—
suddenly wore a look of strange curiosity, anger, and pride. But this lasted
only an instant. She dropped her eyelids, as though recollecting something.
“Oh, well, but that’s of no interest to anyone,” she said, and she turned to
the English girl.
“Please order the tea in the drawing-room,” she said in English.
The girl got up and went out.
“Well, how did she get through her examination?” asked Stepan
Arkadyevitch.
“Splendidly! She’s a very gifted child and a sweet character.”
“It will end in your loving her more than your own.”
“There a man speaks. In love there’s no more nor less. I love my
daughter with one love, and her with another.”
“I was just telling Anna Arkadyevna,” said Vorkuev, “that if she were to
put a hundredth part of the energy she devotes to this English girl to the
public question of the education of Russian children, she would be doing a
great and useful work.”
“Yes, but I can’t help it; I couldn’t do it. Count Alexey Kirillovitch urged
me very much” (as she uttered the words Count Alexey Kirillovitch she
glanced with appealing timidity at Levin, and he unconsciously responded
with a respectful and reassuring look); “he urged me to take up the school in
the village. I visited it several times. The children were very nice, but I
could not feel drawn to the work. You speak of energy. Energy rests upon
love; and come as it will, there’s no forcing it. I took to this child—I could
not myself say why.”
And she glanced again at Levin. And her smile and her glance—all told
him that it was to him only she was addressing her words, valuing his good
opinion, and at the same time sure beforehand that they understood each
other.
“I quite understand that,” Levin answered. “It’s impossible to give one’s
heart to a school or such institutions in general, and I believe that’s just why
philanthropic institutions always give such poor results.”
She was silent for a while, then she smiled.
“Yes, yes,” she agreed; “I never could. Je n’ai pas le cœur assez large to
love a whole asylum of horrid little girls. Cela ne m’a jamais réussi. There
are so many women who have made themselves une position sociale in that
way. And now more than ever,” she said with a mournful, confiding
expression, ostensibly addressing her brother, but unmistakably intending
her words only for Levin, “now when I have such need of some occupation,
I cannot.” And suddenly frowning (Levin saw that she was frowning at
herself for talking about herself) she changed the subject. “I know about
you,” she said to Levin; “that you’re not a public-spirited citizen, and I have
defended you to the best of my ability.”
“How have you defended me?”
“Oh, according to the attacks made on you. But won’t you have some
tea?” She rose and took up a book bound in morocco.
“Give it to me, Anna Arkadyevna,” said Vorkuev, indicating the book.
“It’s well worth taking up.”
“Oh, no, it’s all so sketchy.”
“I told him about it,” Stepan Arkadyevitch said to his sister, nodding at
Levin.
“You shouldn’t have. My writing is something after the fashion of those
little baskets and carving which Liza Mertsalova used to sell me from the
prisons. She had the direction of the prison department in that society,” she
turned to Levin; “and they were miracles of patience, the work of those
poor wretches.”
And Levin saw a new trait in this woman, who attracted him so
extraordinarily. Besides wit, grace, and beauty, she had truth. She had no
wish to hide from him all the bitterness of her position. As she said that she
sighed, and her face suddenly taking a hard expression, looked as it were
turned to stone. With that expression on her face she was more beautiful
than ever; but the expression was new; it was utterly unlike that expression,
radiant with happiness and creating happiness, which had been caught by
the painter in her portrait. Levin looked more than once at the portrait and at
her figure, as taking her brother’s arm she walked with him to the high
doors and he felt for her a tenderness and pity at which he wondered
himself.
She asked Levin and Vorkuev to go into the drawing-room, while she
stayed behind to say a few words to her brother. “About her divorce, about
Vronsky, and what he’s doing at the club, about me?” wondered Levin. And
he was so keenly interested by the question of what she was saying to
Stepan Arkadyevitch, that he scarcely heard what Vorkuev was telling him
of the qualities of the story for children Anna Arkadyevna had written.
At tea the same pleasant sort of talk, full of interesting matter, continued.
There was not a single instant when a subject for conversation was to seek;
