Anna Karenina - Part 6

"Yes, but now with Varenka...I fancy there's something..."

"Perhaps there is.... But one has to know him.... He's a

peculiar, wonderful person. He lives a spiritual life only.

He's too pure, too exalted a nature."

"Why? Would this lower him, then?"

"No, but he's so used to a spiritual life that he can't reconcile

himself with actual fact, and Varenka is after all fact."

Levin had grown used by now to uttering his thought boldly,

without taking the trouble of clothing it in exact language. He

knew that his wife, in such moments of loving tenderness as now,

would understand what he meant to say from a hint, and she did

understand him.

"Yes, but there's not so much of that actual fact about her as

about me. I can see that he would never have cared for me. She

is altogether spiritual."

"Oh, no, he is so fond of you, and I am always so glad when my

people like you...."

"Yes, he's very nice to me; but..."

"It's not as it was with poor Nikolay...you really cared for

each other," Levin finished. "Why not speak of him?" he added.

"I sometimes blame myself for not; it ends in one's forgetting.

Ah, how terrible and dear he was!... Yes, what were we talking

about?" Levin said, after a pause.

"You think he can't fall in love," said Kitty, translating into

her own language.

"It's not so much that he can't fall in love," Levin said,

smiling, "but he has not the weakness necessary.... I've always

envied him, and even now, when I'm so happy, I still envy him."

"You envy him for not being able to fall in love?"

"I envy him for being better than I," said Levin. "He does not

live for himself. His whole life is subordinated to his duty.

And that's why he can be calm and contented."

"And you?" Kitty asked, with an ironical and loving smile.

She could never have explained the chain of thought that made her

smile; but the last link in it was that her husband, in exalting

his brother and abasing himself, was not quite sincere. Kitty

knew that this insincerity came from his love for his brother,

from his sense of shame at being too happy, and above all from

his unflagging craving to be better--she loved it in him, and so

she smiled.

"And you? What are you dissatisfied with?" she asked, with the

same smile.