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The princess, sitting on the other side of the table with Marya
Vlasyevna and Stepan Arkadyevitch, called Levin to her side, and
began to talk to him about moving to Moscow for Kitty’s confinement,
and getting ready rooms for them. Just as Levin had disliked all the
trivial preparations for his wedding, as derogatory to the grandeur of
the event, now he felt still more offensive the preparations for the
approaching birth, the date of which they reckoned, it seemed, on their
fingers. He tried to turn a deaf ear to these discussions of the best
patterns of long clothes for the coming baby; tried to turn away and
avoid seeing the mysterious, endless strips of knitting, the triangles of
linen, and so on, to which Dolly attached special importance. The birth
of a son (he was certain it would be a son) which was promised him, but
which he still could not believe in—so marvelous it seemed—pre-
sented itself to his mind, on one hand, as a happiness so immense, and
therefore so incredible; on the other, as an event so mysterious, that
this assumption of a definite knowledge of what would be, and conse-
quent preparation for it, as for something ordinary that did happen to
people, jarred on him as confusing and humiliating.
But the princess did not understand his feelings, and put down his
reluctance to think and talk about it to carelessness and indifference,
and so she gave him no peace. She had commissioned Stepan
Arkadyevitch to look at a fiat, and now she called Levin up.
“I know nothing about it, princess. Do as you think fit,” he said.
“You must decide when you will move.”
“I really don’t know. I know millions of children are born away from
Moscow, and doctors...why...”
“But if so...”
“Oh, no, as Kitty wishes.”
“We can’t talk to Kitty about it! Do you want me to frighten her?
Why, this spring Natalia Golitzina died from having an ignorant doc-
tor.”
“I will do just what you say,” he said gloomily.
The princess began talking to him, but he did not hear her. Though
the conversation with the princess had indeed jarred upon him, he was
gloomy, not on account of that conversation, but from what he saw at
the samovar.
“No, it’s impossible,” he thought, glancing now and then at Vassenka
bending over Kitty, telling her something with his charming smile, and
at her, flushed and disturbed.
There was something not nice in Vassenka’s attitude, in his eyes, in
his smile. Levin even saw something not nice in Kitty’s attitude and
look. And again the light died away in his eyes. Again, as before, all of
a sudden, without the slightest transition, he felt cast down from a
pinnacle of happiness, peace, and dignity, into an abyss of despair, rage,
and humiliation. Again everything and everyone had become hateful
to him.
“You do just as you think best, princess,” he said again, looking
round.
“Heavy is the cap of Monomach,” Stepan Arkadyevitch said play-
fully, hinting, evidently, not simply at the princess’s conversation, but at
the cause of Levin’s agitation, which he had noticed.
“How late you are today, Dolly!”
Everyone got up to greet Darya Alexandrovna. Vassenka only
rose for an instant, and with the lack of courtesy to ladies characteristic
of the modern young man, he scarcely bowed, and resumed his conver-
sation again, laughing at something.
“I’ve been worried about Masha. She did not sleep well, and is
dreadfully tiresome today,” said Dolly.