"Yes, but I can't help it; I couldn't do it. Count Alexey
Kirillovitch urged me very much" (as she uttered the words _Count
Alexey Kirillovitch_ she glanced with appealing timidity at Levin,
and he unconsciously responded with a respectful and reassuring
look); "he urged me to take up the school in the village. I
visited it several times. The children were very nice, but I
could not feel drawn to the work. You speak of energy. Energy
rests upon love; and come as it will, there's no forcing it. I
took to this child--I could not myself say why."
And she glanced again at Levin. And her smile and her glance--
all told him that it was to him only she was addressing her
words, valuing his good opinion, and at the same time sure
beforehand that they understood each other.
"I quite understand that," Levin answered. "It's impossible to
give one's heart to a school or such institutions in general, and
I believe that's just why philanthropic institutions always
give such poor results."
She was silent for a while, then she smiled.
"Yes, yes," she agreed; "I never could. _Je n'ai pas le coeur
assez_ large to love a whole asylum of horrid little girls.
_Cela ne m'a jamais réussi._ There are so many women who have
made themselves _une position sociale_ in that way. And now more
than ever," she said with a mournful, confiding expression,
ostensibly addressing her brother, but unmistakably intending her
words only for Levin, "now when I have such need of some occupation,
I cannot." And suddenly frowning (Levin saw that she was frowning
at herself for talking about herself) she changed the subject.
"I know about you," she said to Levin; "that you're not a
public-spirited citizen, and I have defended you to the best of
my ability."
"How have you defended me?"
"Oh, according to the attacks made on you. But won't you have
some tea?" She rose and took up a book bound in morocco.
"Give it to me, Anna Arkadyevna," said Vorkuev, indicating the
book. "It's well worth taking up."
"Oh, no, it's all so sketchy."
"I told him about it," Stepan Arkadyevitch said to his sister,
nodding at Levin.
"You shouldn't have. My writing is something after the fashion
of those little baskets and carving which Liza Mertsalova used to
sell me from the prisons. She had the direction of the prison
department in that society," she turned to Levin; "and they were
miracles of patience, the work of those poor wretches."