Anna Karenina - Part 7

"What a marvelous, sweet and unhappy woman!" he was thinking,

as he stepped out into the frosty air with Stepan Arkadyevitch.

"Well, didn't I tell you?" said Stepan Arkadyevitch, seeing that

Levin had been completely won over.

"Yes," said Levin dreamily, "an extraordinary woman! It's not

her cleverness, but she has such wonderful depth of feeling. I'm

awfully sorry for her!"

"Now, please God, everything will soon be settled. Well, well,

don't be hard on people in future," said Stepan Arkadyevitch,

opening the carriage door. "Good-bye; we don't go the same way."

Still thinking of Anna, of everything, even the simplest phrase

in their conversation with her, and recalling the minutest

changes in her expression, entering more and more into her

position, and feeling sympathy for her, Levin reached home.

At home Kouzma told Levin that Katerina Alexandrovna was quite

well, and that her sisters had not long been gone, and he handed

him two letters. Levin read them at once in the hall, that he

might not over look them later. One was from Sokolov, his

bailiff. Sokolov wrote that the corn could not be sold, that it

was fetching only five and a half roubles, and that more than

that could not be got for it. The other letter was from his

sister. She scolded him for her business being still unsettled.

"Well, we must sell it at five and a half if we can't get more,"

Levin decided the first question, which had always before seemed

such a weighty one, with extraordinary facility on the spot.

"It's extraordinary how all one's time is taken up here," he

thought, considering the second letter. He felt himself to blame

for not having got done what his sister had asked him to do for

her. "Today, again, I've not been to the court, but today I've

certainly not had time." And resolving that he would not fail to

do it next day, he went up to his wife. As he went in, Levin

rapidly ran through mentally the day he had spent. All the

events of the day were conversations, conversations he had heard

and taken part in. All the conversations were upon subjects

which, if he had been alone at home, he would never have taken

up, but here they were very interesting. And all these

conversations were right enough, only in two places there was

something not quite right. One was what he had said about the

carp, the other was something not "quite the thing" in the tender

sympathy he was feeling for Anna.