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Chapter 11.
Everyone took part in the conversation except Kitty and Levin. At
first, when they were talking of the influence that one people has on
another, there rose to Levin’s mind what he had to say on the subject.
But these ideas, once of such importance in his eyes, seemed to come
into his brain as in a dream, and had now not the slightest interest for
him. It even struck him as strange that they should be so eager to talk
of what was of no use to anyone. Kitty, too, should, one would have
supposed, have been interested in what they were saying of the rights
and education of women. How often she had mused on the subject,
thinking of her friend abroad, Varenka, of her painful state of depen-
dence, how often she had wondered about herself what would become
of her if she did not marry, and how often she had argued with her
sister about it! But it did not interest her at all. She and Levin had a
conversation of their own, yet not a conversation, but some sort of
mysterious communication, which brought them every moment nearer,
and stirred in both a sense of glad terror before the unknown into
which they were entering.
At first Levin, in answer to Kitty’s question how he could have
seen her last year in the carriage, told her how he had been coming
home from the mowing along the highroad and had met her.
“It was very, very early in the morning. You were probably only just
awake. Your mother was asleep in the corner. It was an exquisite
morning. I was walking along wondering who it could be in a four-in-
hand? It was a splendid set of four horses with bells, and in a second
you flashed by, and I saw you at the window—you were sitting like
this, holding the strings of your cap in both hands, and thinking awfully
deeply about something,” he said, smiling. “How I should like to know
what you were thinking about then! Something important?”
“Wasn’t I dreadfully untidy?” she wondered, but seeing the smile
of ecstasy these reminiscences called up, she felt that the impression
she had made had been very good. She blushed and laughed with
delight; “Really I don’t remember.”
“How nicely Turovtsin laughs!” said Levin, admiring his moist eyes
and shaking chest.
“Have you known him longs” asked Kitty.
“Oh, everyone knows him!”
“And I see you think he’s a horrid man?”
“Not horrid, but nothing in him.”
“Oh, you’re wrong! And you must give up thinking so directly!”
said Kitty. “I used to have a very poor opinion of him too, but he, he’s
an awfully nice and wonderfully good-hearted man. He has a heart of
gold.”
“How could you find out what sort of heart he has?”
“We are great friends. I know him very well. Last winter, soon
after...you came to see us,” she said, with a guilty and at the same time
confiding smile, “all Dolly’s children had scarlet fever, and he hap-
pened to come and see her. And only fancy,” she said in a whisper, “he
felt so sorry for her that he stayed and began to help her look after the
children. Yes, and for three weeks he stopped with them, and looked
after the children like a nurse.”