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“What makes you suppose I know?”
“Because everybody knows it...”
“That’s just where you are mistaken; I did not know it, though I
had guessed it was so.”
“Well, now you know it.”
“All I knew was that something had happened that made her
dreadfully miserable, and that she begged me never to speak of it.
And if she would not tell me, she would certainly not speak of it to
anyone else. But what did pass between you? Tell me.”
“I have told you.”
“When was it?”
“When I was at their house the last time.”
“Do you know that,” said Darya Alexandrovna, “I am awfully,
awfully sorry for her. You suffer only from pride....”
“Perhaps so,” said Levin, “but...”
She interrupted him.
“But she, poor girl...I am awfully, awfully sorry for her. Now I see it
all.”
“Well, Darya Alexandrovna, you must excuse me,” he said, getting
up. “Good-bye, Darya Alexandrovna, till we meet again.”
“No, wait a minute,” she said, clutching him by the sleeve. “Wait a
minute, sit down.”
“Please, please, don’t let us talk of this,” he said, sitting down, and at
the same time feeling rise up and stir within his heart a hope he had
believed to be buried.
“If I did not like you,” she said, and tears came into her eyes; “if I
did not know you, as I do know you.. .”
The feeling that had seemed dead revived more and more, rose up
and took possession of Levin’s heart.
“Yes, I understand it all now,” said Darya Alexandrovna. “You
can’t understand it; for you men, who are free and make your own
choice, it’s always clear whom you love. But a girl’s in a position of
suspense, with all a woman’s or maiden’s modesty, a girl who sees you
men from afar, who takes everything on trust,— a girl may have, and
often has, such a feeling that she cannot tell what to say.”
“Yes, if the heart does not speak...”
“No, the heart does speak; but just consider: you men have views
about a girl, you come to the house, you make friends, you criticize, you
wait to see if you have found what you love, and then, when you are
sure you love her, you make an offer....”
“Well, that’s not quite it.”
“Anyway you make an offer, when your love is ripe or when the
balance has completely turned between the two you are choosing from.
But a girl is not asked. She is expected to make her choice, and yet she
cannot choose, she can only answer ‘yes’ or ‘no.’”
“Yes, to choose between me and Vronsky,” thought Levin, and the
dead thing that had come to life within him died again, and only weighed
on his heart and set it aching.
“Darya Alexandrovna,” he said, “that’s how one chooses a new
dress or some purchase or other, not love. The choice has been made,
and so much the better.... And there can be no repeating it.”
“Ah, pride, pride!” said Darya Alexandrovna, as though despising
him for the baseness of this feeling in comparison with that other
feeling which only women know. “At the time when you made Kitty an
offer she was just in a position in which she could not answer. She was
in doubt. Doubt between you and Vronsky. Him she was seeing every
day, and you she had not seen for a long while. Supposing she had
been older...I, for instance, in her place could have felt no doubt. I