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interests me.’ But who will she be?” And he remembered what had
happened at Moscow.... “Well, there’s nothing to be done.... It’s not
my fault. But now everything shall go on in a new way. It’s nonsense
to pretend that life won’t let one, that the past won’t let one. One must
struggle to live better, much better.”... He raised his head, and fell to
dreaming. Old Laska, who had not yet fully digested her delight at his
return, and had run out into the yard to bark, came back wagging her
tail, and crept up to him, bringing in the scent of fresh air, put her head
under his hand, and whined plaintively, asking to be stroked.
“There, who’d have thought it?” said Agafea Mihalovna. “The
dog now...why, she understands that her master’s come home, and that
he’s low-spirited.”
“Why low-spirited?”
“Do you suppose I don’t see it, sir? It’s high time I should know the
gentry. Why, I’ve grown up from a little thing with them. It’s nothing,
sir, so long as there’s health and a clear conscience.”
Levin looked intently at her, surprised at how well she knew his
thought.
“Shall I fetch you another cup?” said she, and taking his cup she
went out.
Laska kept poking her head under his hand. He stroked her, and
she promptly curled up at his feet, laying her head on a hindpaw. And
in token of all now being well and satisfactory, she opened her mouth a
little, smacked her lips, and settling her sticky lips more comfortably
about her old teeth, she sank into blissful repose. Levin watched all
her movements attentively.
“That’s what I’ll do,” he said to himself; “that’s what I’ll do! Nothing’s
amiss.... All’s well.”
Chapter 28.
After the ball, early next morning, Anna Arkadyevna sent her
husband a telegram that she was leaving Moscow the same day.
“No, I must go, I must go”; she explained to her sister-in-law the
change in her plans in a tone that suggested that she had to remember
so many things that there was no enumerating them: “no, it had really
better be today!”
Stepan Arkadyevitch was not dining at home, but he promised to
come and see his sister off at seven o’clock.
Kitty, too, did not come, sending a note that she had a headache.
Dolly and Anna dined alone with the children and the English gov-
erness. Whether it was that the children were fickle, or that they had
acute senses, and felt that Anna was quite different that day from
what she had been when they had taken such a fancy to her, that she
was not now interested in them,—but they had abruptly dropped
their play with their aunt, and their love for her, and were quite indif-
ferent that she was going away. Anna was absorbed the whole morn-
ing in preparations for her departure. She wrote notes to her Moscow
acquaintances, put down her accounts, and packed. Altogether Dolly
fancied she was not in a placid state of mind, but in that worried mood,
which Dolly knew well with herself, and which does not come without
cause, and for the most part covers dissatisfaction with self. After