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“Splendidly! She’s a very gifted child and a sweet character.”
“It will end in your loving her more than your own.”
“There a man speaks. In love there’s no more nor less. I love my
daughter with one love, and her with another.”
“I was just telling Anna Arkadyevna,” said Vorkuev, “that if she
were to put a hundredth part of the energy she devotes to this English
girl to the public question of the education of Russian children, she
would be doing a great and useful work.”
“Yes, but I can’t help it; I couldn’t do it. Count Alexey Kirillovitch
urged me very much” (as she uttered the words Count Alexey
Kirillovitch she glanced with appealing timidity at Levin, and he un-
consciously responded with a respectful and reassuring look); “he urged
me to take up the school in the village. I visited it several times. The
children were very nice, but I could not feel drawn to the work. You
speak of energy. Energy rests upon love; and come as it will, there’s no
forcing it. I took to this child—I could not myself say why.”
And she glanced again at Levin. And her smile and her glance—
all told him that it was to him only she was addressing her words,
valuing his good opinion, and at the same time sure beforehand that
they understood each other.
“I quite understand that,” Levin answered. “It’s impossible to give
one’s heart to a school or such institutions in general, and I believe
that’s just why philanthropic institutions always give such poor re-
sults.”
she was silent for a while, then she smiled.
“Yes, yes,” she agreed; “I never could. Je n’ai pas le coeur assez
large to love a whole asylum of horrid little girls. Cela ne m’a jamais
reussi. There are so many women who have made themselves une
position sociale in that way. And now more than ever,” she said with a
mournful, confiding expression, ostensibly addressing her brother, but
unmistakably intending her words only for Levin, “now when I have
such need of some occupation, I cannot.” And suddenly frowning
(Levin saw that she was frowning at herself for talking about herself )
she changed the subject. “I know about you,” she said to Levin; “that
you’re not a public-spirited citizen, and I have defended you to the
best of my ability.”
“How have you defended me?”
“Oh, according to the attacks made on you. But won’t you have
some tea?” She rose and took up a book bound in morocco.
“Give it to me, Anna Arkadyevna,” said Vorkuev, indicating the
book. “It’s well worth taking up.”
“Oh, no, it’s all so sketchy.”
“I told him about it,” Stepan Arkadyevitch said to his sister, nod-
ding at Levin.
“You shouldn’t have. My writing is something after the fashion of
those little baskets and carving which Liza Mertsalova used to sell me
from the prisons. She had the direction of the prison department in
that society,” she turned to Levin; “and they were miracles of patience,
the work of those poor wretches.”
And Levin saw a new trait in this woman, who attracted him so
extraordinarily. Besides wit, grace, and beauty, she had truth. She had
no wish to hide from him all the bitterness of her position. As she said
that she sighed, and her face suddenly taking a hard expression, looked
as it were turned to stone. With that expression on her face she was
more beautiful than ever; but the expression was new; it was utterly
unlike that expression, radiant with happiness and creating happiness,
which had been caught by the painter in her portrait. Levin looked
more than once at the portrait and at her figure, as taking her brother’s