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“He keeps losing, and I’m the only friend that can restrain him.”
“Well, what do you say to pyramids? Levin, will you play? Capi-
tal!” said Stepan Arkadyevitch. “Get the table ready,” he said to the
marker.
“It has been ready a long while,” answered the marker, who had
already set the balls in a triangle, and was knocking the red one about
for his own diversion.
“Well, let us begin.”
After the game Vronsky and Levin sat down at Gagin’s table, and
at Stepan Arkadyevitch’s suggestion Levin took a hand in the game.
Vronsky sat down at the table, surrounded by friends, who were
incessantly coming up to him. Every now and then he went to the
“infernal” to keep an eye on Yashvin. Levin was enjoying a delightful
sense of repose after the mental fatigue of the morning. He was glad
that all hostility was at an end with Vronsky, and the sense of peace,
decorum, and comfort never left him.
When the game was over, Stepan Arkadyevitch took Levin’s arm.
“Well, let us go to Anna’s, then. At once? Eh? She is at home. I
promised her long ago to bring you. Where were you meaning to
spend the evening?”
“Oh, nowhere specially. I promised Sviazhsky to go to the Society
of Agriculture. By all means, let us go,” said Levin.
“Very good; come along. Find out if my carriage is here,” Stepan
Arkadyevitch said to the waiter.
Levin went up to the table, paid the forty roubles he had lost; paid
his bill, the amount of which was in some mysterious way ascertained
by the little old waiter who stood at the counter, and swinging his arms
he walked through all the rooms to the way out.
Chapter 9.
“Oblonsky’s carriage!” the porter shouted in an angry bass. The
carriage drove up and both got in. It was only for the first few mo-
ments, while the carriage was driving out of the clubhouse gates, that
Levin was still under the influence of the club atmosphere of repose,
comfort, and unimpeachable good form. But as soon as the carriage
drove out into the street, and he felt it jolting over the uneven road,
heard the angry shout of a sledge driver coming towards them, saw in
the uncertain light the red blind of a tavern and the shops, this impres-
sion was dissipated, and he began to think over his actions, and to
wonder whether he was doing right in going to see Anna. What would
Kitty say? But Stepan Arkadyevitch gave him no time for reflection,
and, as though divining his doubts, he scattered them.
“How glad I am,” he said, “that you should know her! You know
Dolly has long wished for it. And Lvov’s been to see her, and often
goes. Though she is my sister,” Stepan Arkadyevitch pursued, “I don’t
hesitate to say that she’s a remarkable woman. But you will see. Her
position is very painful, especially now.”
“Why especially now?”
“We are carrying on negotiations with her husband about a di-
vorce. And he’s agreed; but there are difficulties in regard to the son,
and the business, which ought to have been arranged long ago, has