1058 1059
Part Seven.
Chapter 1.
The Levins had been three months in Moscow. The date had long
passed on which, according to the most trustworthy calculations of
people learned in such matters, Kitty should have been confined. But
she was still about, and there was nothing to show that her time was
any nearer than two months ago. The doctor, the monthly nurse, and
Dolly and her mother, and most of all Levin, who could not think of the
approaching event without terror, began to be impatient and uneasy.
Kitty was the only person who felt perfectly calm and happy.
She was distinctly conscious now of the birth of a new feeling of
love for the future child, for her to some extent actually existing already,
and she brooded blissfully over this feeling. He was not by now alto-
gether a part of herself, but sometimes lived his own life indepen-
dently of her. Often this separate being gave her pain, but at the same
time she wanted to laugh with a strange new joy.
All the people she loved were with her, and all were so good to her,
so attentively caring for her, so entirely pleasant was everything pre-
sented to her, that if she had not known and felt that it must all soon be
over, she could not have wished for a better and pleasanter life. The
only thing that spoiled the charm of this manner of life was that her
husband was not here as she loved him to be, and as he was in the
country.
She liked his serene, friendly, and hospitable manner in the coun-
try. In the town he seemed continually uneasy and on his guard, as
though he were afraid someone would be rude to him, and still more to
her. At home in the country, knowing himself distinctly to be in his
right place, he was never in haste to be off elsewhere. He was never
unoccupied. Here in town he was in a continual hurry, as though afraid
of missing something, and yet he had nothing to do. And she felt sorry
for him. To others, she knew, he did not appear an object of pity. On
the contrary, when Kitty looked at him in society, as one sometimes
looks at those one loves, trying to see him as if he were a stranger, so as
to catch the impression he must make on others, she saw with a panic
even of jealous fear that he was far indeed from being a pitiable figure,
that he was very attractive with his fine breeding, his rather old-fash-
ioned, reserved courtesy with women, his powerful figure, and striking,
as she thought, and expressive face. But she saw him not from with-
out, but from within; she saw that here he was not himself; that was
the only way she could define his condition to herself. Sometimes she
inwardly reproached him for his inability to live in the town; sometimes
she recognized that it was really hard for him to order his life here so
that he could be satisfied with.
What had he to do, indeed? He did not care for cards; he did not
go to a club. Spending the time with jovial gentlemen of Oblonsky’s
type—she knew now what that meant...it meant drinking and going
somewhere after drinking. She could not think without horror of where
men went on such occasions. Was he to go into society? But she knew
he could only find satisfaction in that if he took pleasure in the society
of young women, and that she could not wish for. Should he stay at
home with her, her mother and her sisters? But much as she liked and