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torment me for. I’ve told you, And I say it again, that I have some pride,
and never, NEVER would I do as you’re doing—go back to a man
who’s deceived you, who has cared for another woman. I can’t under-
stand it! You may, but I can’t!”
And saying these words she glanced at her sister, and seeing that
Dolly sat silent, her head mournfully bowed, Kitty, instead of running
out of the room as she had meant to do, sat down near the door, and hid
her face in her handkerchief.
The silence lasted for two minutes: Dolly was thinking of herself.
That humiliation of which she was always conscious came back to her
with a peculiar bitterness when her sister reminded her of it. She had
not looked for such cruelty in her sister, and she was angry with her.
But suddenly she heard the rustle of a skirt, and with it the sound of
heart-rending, smothered sobbing, and felt arms about her neck. Kitty
was on her knees before her.
“Dolinka, I am so, so wretched!” she whispered penitently. And
the sweet face covered with tears hid itself in Darya Alexandrovna’s
skirt.
As though tears were the indispensable oil, without which the
machinery of mutual confidence could not run smoothly between the
two sisters, the sisters after their tears talked, not of what was upper-
most in their minds, but, though they talked of outside matters, they
understood each other. Kitty knew that the words she had uttered in
anger about her husband’s infidelity and her humiliating position had
cut her poor sister to the heart, but that she had forgiven her. Dolly for
her part knew all she had wanted to find out. She felt certain that her
surmises were correct; that Kitty’s misery, her inconsolable misery, was
due precisely to the fact that Levin had made her an offer and she had
refused him, and Vronsky had deceived her, and that she was fully
prepared to love Levin and to detest Vronsky. Kitty said not a word of
that; she talked of nothing but her spiritual condition.
“I have nothing to make me miserable,” she said, getting calmer;
“but can you understand that everything has become hateful, loath-
some, coarse to me, and I myself most of all? You can’t imagine what
loathsome thoughts I have about everything.”
“Why, whatever loathsome thoughts can you have?” asked Dolly,
smiling.
“The most utterly loathsome and coarse: I can’t tell you. It’s not
unhappiness, or low spirits, but much worse. As though everything
that was good in me was all hidden away, and nothing was left but the
most loathsome. Come, how am I to tell you?” she went on, seeing the
puzzled look in her sister’s eyes. “Father began saying something to me
just now.... It seems to me he thinks all I want is to be married. Mother
takes me to a ball: it seems to me she only takes me to get me married
off as soon as may be, and be rid of me. I know it’s not the truth, but I
can’t drive away such thoughts. Eligible suitors, as they call them—I
can’t bear to see them. It seems to me they’re taking stock of me and
summing me up. In old days to go anywhere in a ball dress was a
simple joy to me, I admired myself; now I feel ashamed and awkward.
And then! The doctor.... Then...” Kitty hesitated; she wanted to say
further that ever since this change had taken place in her, Stepan
Arkadyevitch had become insufferably repulsive to her, and that she
could not see him without the grossest and most hideous conceptions
rising before her imagination.
“Oh, well, everything presents itself to me, in the coarsest, most
loathsome light,” she went on. “That’s my illness. Perhaps it will pass
off.”
“But you mustn’t think about it.”