Anna Karenina - Part 7

Anna talked not merely naturally and cleverly, but cleverly and

carelessly, attaching no value to her own ideas and giving great

weight to the ideas of the person she was talking to.

The conversation turned on the new movement in art, on the new

illustrations of the Bible by a French artist. Vorkuev attacked

the artist for a realism carried to the point of coarseness.

Levin said that the French had carried conventionality further

than anyone, and that consequently they see a great merit in the

return to realism. In the fact of not lying they see poetry.

Never had anything clever said by Levin given him so much

pleasure as this remark. Anna's face lighted up at once, as at

once she appreciated the thought. She laughed.

"I laugh," she said, "as one laughs when one sees a very true

portrait. What you said so perfectly hits off French art now,

painting and literature too, indeed--Zola, Daudet. But perhaps

it is always so, that men form their conceptions from fictitious,

conventional types, and then--all the _combinaisons_ made--they

are tired of the fictitious figures and begin to invent more

natural, true figures."

"That's perfectly true," said Vorknev.

"So you've been at the club?" she said to her brother.

"Yes, yes, this is a woman!" Levin thought, forgetting himself

and staring persistently at her lovely, mobile face, which at

that moment was all at once completely transformed. Levin did

not hear what she was talking of as she leaned over to her

brother, but he was struck by the change of her expression. Her

face--so handsome a moment before in its repose--suddenly wore a

look of strange curiosity, anger, and pride. But this lasted

only an instant. She dropped her eyelids, as though recollecting

something.

"Oh, well, but that's of no interest to anyone," she said, and

she turned to the English girl.

"Please order the tea in the drawing room," she said in English.

The girl got up and went out.

"Well, how did she get through her examination?" asked Stepan

Arkadyevitch.

"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."