Anna Karenina - Part 3

They killed three of the best calves by letting them into the

clover aftermath without care as to their drinking, and nothing

would make the men believe that they had been blown out by the

clover, but they told him, by way of consolation, that one of his

neighbors had lost a hundred and twelve head of cattle in three

days. All this happened, not because anyone felt ill-will to

Levin or his farm; on the contrary, he knew that they liked him,

thought him a simple gentleman (their highest praise); but it

happened simply because all they wanted was to work merrily and

carelessly, and his interests were not only remote and

incomprehensible to them, but fatally opposed to their most just

claims. Long before, Levin had felt dissatisfaction with his own

position in regard to the land. He saw where his boat leaked,

but he did not look for the leak, perhaps purposely deceiving

himself. (Nothing would be left him if he lost faith in it.) But

now he could deceive himself no longer. The farming of the land,

as he was managing it, had become not merely unattractive but

revolting to him, and he could take no further interest in it.

To this now was joined the presence, only twenty-five miles off,

of Kitty Shtcherbatskaya, whom he longed to see and could not

see. Darya Alexandrovna Oblonskaya had invited him, when he was

over there, to come; to come with the object of renewing his

offer to her sister, who would, so she gave him to understand,

accept him now. Levin himself had felt on seeing Kitty

Shtcherbatskaya that he had never ceased to love her; but he

could not go over to the Oblonskys', knowing she was there. The

fact that he had made her an offer, and she had refused him,

had placed an insuperable barrier between her and him. "I can't

ask her to be my wife merely because she can't be the wife of the

man she wanted to marry," he said to himself. The thought of

this made him cold and hostile to her. "I should not be able to

speak to her without a feeling of reproach; I could not look at

her without resentment; and she will only hate me all the more,

as she's bound to. And besides, how can I now, after what Darya

Alexandrovna told me, go to see them? Can I help showing that I

know what she told me? And me to go magnanimously to forgive

her, and have pity on her! Me go through a performance before

her of forgiving, and deigning to bestow my love on her!... What

induced Darya Alexandrovna to tell me that? By chance I might

have seen her, then everything would have happened of itself;

but, as it is, it's out of the question, out of the question!"