Anna Karenina - Part 2

"Why are you tormenting me?"

"But I...quite the contrary...I see you're unhappy..."

But Kitty in her fury did not hear her.

"I've nothing to grieve over and be comforted about. I am too

proud ever to allow myself to care for a man who does not love

me."

"Yes, I don't say so either.... Only one thing. Tell me the

truth," said Darya Alexandrovna, taking her by the hand: "tell

me, did Levin speak to you?..."

The mention of Levin's name seemed to deprive Kitty of the last

vestige of self-control. She leaped up from her chair, and

flinging her clasp on the ground, she gesticulated rapidly with

her hands and said: "Why bring Levin in too? I can't understand what you want to

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 understand 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 uppermost 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.