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question calling for settlement—the question of the organization of
agriculture.
While he was writing his ideas she was thinking how unnaturally
cordial her husband had been to young Prince Tcharsky, who had, with
great want of tact, flirted with her the day before they left Moscow.
“He’s jealous,” she thought. “Goodness! how sweet and silly he is!
He’s jealous of me! If he knew that I think no more of them than of
Piotr the cook,” she thought, looking at his head and red neck with a
feeling of possession strange to herself. “Though it’s a pity to take him
from his work (but he has plenty of time!), I must look at his face; will
he feel I’m looking at him? I wish he’d turn round...I’ll WILL him to!”
and she opened her eyes wide, as though to intensify the influence of
her gaze.
“Yes, they draw away all the sap and give a false appearance of
prosperity,” he muttered, stopping to write, and, feeling that she was
looking at him and smiling, he looked round.
“Well?” he queried, smiling, and getting up.
“He looked round,” she thought.
“It’s nothing; I wanted you to look round,” she said, watching him,
and trying to guess whether he was vexed at being interrupted or not.
“How happy we are alone together!—I am, that is,” he said, going
up to her with a radiant smile of happiness.
“I’m just as happy. I’ll never go anywhere, especially not to Mos-
cow.”
“And what were you thinking about?”
“I? I was thinking.... No, no, go along, go on writing; don’t break
off,” she said, pursing up her lips, “and I must cut out these little holes
now, do you see?”
She took up her scissors and began cutting them out.
“No; tell me, what was it?” he said, sitting down beside her and
watching the tiny scissors moving round.
“Oh! what was I thinking about? I was thinking about Moscow,
about the back of your head.”
“Why should I, of all people, have such happiness! It’s unnatural,
too good,” he said, kissing her hand.
“I feel quite the opposite; the better things are, the more natural it
seems to me.”
“And you’ve got a little curl loose,” he said, carefully turning her
head round.
“A little curl, oh yes. No, no, we are busy at our work!”
Work did not progress further, and they darted apart from one
another like culprits when Kouzma came in to announce that tea was
ready.
“Have they come from the town?” Levin asked Kouzma.
“They’ve just come; they’re unpacking the things.”
“Come quickly,” she said to him as she went out of the study, “or
else I shall read your letters without you.”
Left alone, after putting his manuscripts together in the new port-
folio bought by her, he washed his hands at the new washstand with
the elegant fittings, that had all made their appearance with her. Levin
smiled at his own thoughts, and shook his head disapprovingly at those
thoughts; a feeling akin to remorse fretted him. There was something
shameful, effeminate, Capuan, as he called it to himself, in his present
mode of life. “It’s not right to go on like this,” he thought. “It’ll soon be
three months, and I’m doing next to nothing. Today, almost for the first
time, I set to work seriously, and what happened? I did nothing but
begin and throw it aside. Even my ordinary pursuits I have almost
given up. On the land I scarcely walk or drive about at all to look after