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during those days. What was extraordinary was that everyone not
only liked him, but even people previously unsympathetic, cold, and
callous, were enthusiastic over him, gave way to him in everything,
treated his feeling with tenderness and delicacy, and shared his con-
viction that he was the happiest man in the world because his be-
trothed was beyond perfection. Kitty too felt the same thing. When
Countess Nordston ventured to hint that she had hoped for some-
thing better, Kitty was so angry and proved so conclusively that noth-
ing in the world could be better than Levin, that Countess Nordston
had to admit it, and in Kitty’s presence never met Levin without a
smile of ecstatic admiration.
The confession he had promised was the one painful incident of
this time. He consulted the old prince, and with his sanction gave Kitty
his diary, in which there was written the confession that tortured him.
He had written this diary at the time with a view to his future wife.
Two things caused him anguish: his lack of purity and his lack of faith.
His confession of unbelief passed unnoticed. She was religious, had
never doubted the truths of religion, but his external unbelief did not
affect her in the least. Through love she knew all his soul, and in his
soul she saw what she wanted, and that such a state of soul should be
called unbelieving was to her a matter of no account. The other confes-
sion set her weeping bitterly.
Levin, not without an inner struggle, handed her his diary. He
knew that between him and her there could not be, and should not be,
secrets, and so he had decided that so it must be. But he had not
realized what an effect it would have on her, he had not put himself in
her place. It was only when the same evening he came to their house
before the theater, went into her room and saw her tear-stained, pitiful,
sweet face, miserable with suffering he had caused and nothing could
undo, he felt the abyss that separated his shameful past from her
dovelike purity, and was appalled at what he had done.
“Take them, take these dreadful books!” she said, pushing away
the notebooks lying before her on the table. “Why did you give them
me? No, it was better anyway,” she added, touched by his despairing
face. “But it’s awful, awful!”
His head sank, and he was silent. He could say nothing.
“You can’t forgive me,” he whispered.
“Yes, I forgive you; but it’s terrible!”
But his happiness was so immense that this confession did not
shatter it, it only added another shade to it. She forgave him; but from
that time more than ever he considered himself unworthy of her, mor-
ally bowed down lower than ever before her, and prized more highly
than ever his undeserved happiness.