"Perhaps it was for the best. You will have to forgive me so

much. I ought to tell you..."

This was one of the things he had meant to speak about. He had

resolved from the first to tell her two things--that he was not

chaste as she was, and that he was not a believer. It was

agonizing, but he considered he ought to tell her both these

facts.

"No, not now, later!" he said.

"Very well, later, but you must certainly tell me. I'm not

afraid of anything. I want to know everything. Now it is

settled."

He added: "Settled that you'll take me whatever I may be--you

won't give me up? Yes?"

"Yes, yes."

Their conversation was interrupted by Mademoiselle Linon, who

with an affected but tender smile came to congratulate her

favorite pupil. Before she had gone, the servants came in with

their congratulations. Then relations arrived, and there began

that state of blissful absurdity from which Levin did not emerge

till the day after his wedding. Levin was in a continual state

of awkwardness and discomfort, but the intensity of his happiness

went on all the while increasing. He felt continually that a

great deal was being expected of him--what, he did not know; and

he did everything he was told, and it all gave him happiness. He

had thought his engagement would have nothing about it like

others, that the ordinary conditions of engaged couples would

spoil his special happiness; but it ended in his doing exactly as

other people did, and his happiness being only increased thereby

and becoming more and more special, more and more unlike anything

that had ever happened.

"Now we shall have sweetmeats to eat," said Mademoiselle Linon--

and Levin drove off to buy sweetmeats.

"Well, I'm very glad," said Sviazhsky. "I advise you to get the

bouquets from Fomin's."

"Oh, are they wanted?" And he drove to Fomin's.

His brother offered to lend him money, as he would have so many

expenses, presents to give....

"Oh, are presents wanted?" And he galloped to Foulde's.

And at the confectioner's, and at Fomin's, and at Foulde's he saw

that he was expected; that they were pleased to see him, and

prided themselves on his happiness, just as every one whom he had

to do with 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 conviction that he was

the happiest man in the world because his betrothed was beyond

perfection. Kitty too felt the same thing. When Countess

Nordston ventured to hint that she had hoped for something

better, Kitty was so angry and proved so conclusively that

nothing 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.




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