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“Well?” her husband questioned her as they were going home
again.
“It doesn’t bite,” said Kitty, her smile and manner of speaking re-
calling her father, a likeness Levin often noticed with pleasure.
“How doesn’t bite?”
“I’ll show you,” she said, taking her husband’s hand, lifting it to her
mouth, and just faintly brushing it with closed lips. “Like a kiss on a
priest’s hand.”
“Which didn’t it bite with?” he said, laughing.
“Both. But it should have been like this...”
“There are some peasants coming...”
“Oh, they didn’t see.”
Chapter 6.
During the time of the children’s tea the grown-up people sat in
the balcony and talked as though nothing had happened, though they
all, especially Sergey Ivanovitch and Varenka, were very well aware
that there had happened an event which, though negative, was of very
great importance. They both had the same feeling, rather like that of a
schoolboy after an examination, which has left him in the same class or
shut him out of the school forever. Everyone present, feeling too that
something had happened, talked eagerly about extraneous subjects.
Levin and Kitty were particularly happy and conscious of their love
that evening. And their happiness in their love seemed to imply a
disagreeable slur on those who would have liked to feel the same and
could not—and they felt a prick of conscience.
“Mark my words, Alexander will not come,” said the old princess.
That evening they were expecting Stepan Arkadyevitch to come
down by train, and the old prince had written that possibly he might
come too.
“And I know why,” the princess went on; “he says that young
people ought to be left alone for a while at first.”
“But papa has left us alone. We’ve never seen him,” said Kitty.
“Besides, we’re not young people!—we’re old, married people by now.”
“Only if he doesn’t come, I shall say good-bye to you children,” said