Anna Karenina - Part 8

He walked across the terrace and looked at two stars that had

come out in the darkening sky, and suddenly he remembered. "Yes,

looking at the sky, I thought that the dome that I see is not a

deception, and then I thought something, I shirked facing

something," he mused. "But whatever it was, there can be no

disproving it! I have but to think, and all will come clear!"

Just as he was going into the nursery he remembered what it was

he had shirked facing. It was that if the chief proof of the

Divinity was His revelation of what is right, how is it this

revelation is confined to the Christian church alone? What

relation to this revelation have the beliefs of the Buddhists,

Mohammedans, who preached and did good too?

It seemed to him that he had an answer to this question; but he

had not time to formulate it to himself before he went into the

nursery.

Kitty was standing with her sleeves tucked up over the baby in

the bath. Hearing her husband's footstep, she turned towards

him, summoning him to her with her smile. With one hand she was

supporting the fat baby that lay floating and sprawling on its

back, while with the other she squeezed the sponge over him.

"Come, look, look!" she said, when her husband came up to her.

"Agafea Mihalovna's right. He knows us!"

Mitya had on that day given unmistakable, incontestable signs of

recognizing all his friends.

As soon as Levin approached the bath, the experiment was tried,

and it was completely successful. The cook, sent for with this

object, bent over the baby. He frowned and shook his head

disapprovingly. Kitty bent down to him, he gave her a beaming

smile, propped his little hands on the sponge and chirruped,

making such a queer little contented sound with his lips, that

Kitty and the nurse were not alone in their admiration. Levin,

too, was surprised and delighted.

The baby was taken out of the bath, drenched with water, wrapped

in towels, dried, and after a piercing scream, handed to his

mother.

"Well, I am glad you are beginning to love him," said Kitty to

her husband, when she had settled herself comfortably in her

usual place, with the baby at her breast. "I am so glad! It had

begun to distress me. You said you had no feeling for him."

"No; did I say that? I only said I was disappointed."

"What! disappointed in him?"

"Not disappointed in him, but in my own feeling; I had expected

more. I had expected a rush of new delightful emotion to come

as a surprise. And then instead of that--disgust, pity..."