Anna Karenina. Leo Tolstoy

"There are laws, madam, and since you've challenged me to it, I'll tell you who's to blame for it all: you and you, you and nobody else. Laws against such young gallants there have always been, and there still are! Yes, if there has been nothing that ought not to have been, old as I am, I'd have called him out to the barrier, the young dandy. Yes, and now you physic her and call in these quacks."

      The prince apparently had plenty more to say, but as soon as the princess heard his tone she subsided at once, and became penitent, as she always did on serious occasions.

      "Alexander, Alexander," she whispered, moving to him and beginning to weep.

      As soon as she began to cry the prince too calmed down. He went up to her.

      "There, that's enough, that's enough! You're wretched too, I know. It can't be helped. There's no great harm done. God is merciful… thanks… " he said, not knowing what he was saying, as he responded to the tearful kiss of the princess that he felt on his hand. And the prince went out of the room.

      Before this, as soon as Kitty went out of the room in tears, Dolly, with her motherly, family instincts, had promptly perceived that here a woman's work lay before her, and she prepared to do it. She took of her hat, and, morally speaking, tucked up her sleeves and prepared for action. While her mother was attacking her father, she tried to restrain her mother, so far as filial reverence would allow. During the prince's outburst she was silent; she felt ashamed for her mother, and tender towards her father for so quickly being kind again. But when her father left them she made ready for what was the chief thing needful—to go to Kitty and console her.

      "I'd been meaning to tell you something for a long while, mamma: did you know that Levin meant to make Kitty an offer when he was here the last time? He told Stiva so."

      "Well, what then? I don't understand… "

      "So did Kitty perhaps refuse him?… She didn't tell you so?"

      "No, she has said nothing to me either of one or the other; she's too proud. But I know it's all on account of the other."

      "Yes, but suppose she has refused Levin, and she wouldn't have refused him if it hadn't been for the other, I know. And then, he has deceived her so horribly."

      It was too terrible for the princess to think how she had sinned against her daughter, and she broke out angrily.

      "Oh, I really don't understand! Nowadays they will all go their own way, and mothers haven't a word to say in anything, and then… "

      "Mamma, I'll go up to her."

      "Well, do. Did I tell you not to?" said her mother.

      Chapter 3

      When she went into Kitty's little room, a pretty, pink little room, full of knick-knacks in vieux saxe, as fresh, and pink, and white, and gay as Kitty herself had been two months ago, Dolly remembered how they had decorated the room the year before together, with what love and gaiety. Her heart turned cold when she saw Kitty sitting on a low chair near the door, her eyes fixed immovably on a corner of the rug. Kitty glanced at her sister, and the cold, rather ill-tempered expression of her face did not change.

      "I'm just going now, and I shall have to keep in and you won't be able to come to see me," said Dolly, sitting down beside her. "I want to talk to you."

      "What about?" Kitty asked swiftly, lifting her head in dismay.

      "What should it be, but your trouble?"

      "I have no trouble."

      "Nonsense, Kitty. Do you suppose I could help knowing? I know all about it. And believe me, it's of so little consequence… . We've all been through it."

      Kitty did not speak, And her face had a stern expression.

      "He's not worth your grieving over him," pursued Darya Alexandrovna, coming straight to the point.

      "No, because he has treated me with contempt," said Kitty, in a breaking voice. "Don't talk of it! Please, don't talk of it!"

      "But who can have told you so? No one has said that. I'm certain he was in love with you, and would still be in love with you, if it hadn't…

      "Oh, the most awful thing of all for me is this sympathizing!" shrieked Kitty, suddenly flying into a passion. She turned round on her chair, flushed crimson, and rapidly moving her fingers, pinched the clasp of her belt first with one hand and then with the other. Dolly knew this trick her sister had of clenching her hands when she was much excited; she knew, too, that in moments of excitement Kitty was capable of forgetting herself and saying a great deal too much, and Dolly would have soothed her, but it was too late.

      "What, what is it you want to make me feel, eh?" said Kitty quickly. "That I've been in love with a man who didn't care a straw for me, And that I'm dying of love for him? And this is said to me by my own sister, who imagines that… that… that she's sympathizing with me!… I don't want these condolences And his humbug!"

      "Kitty, you're unjust."

      "Why are you tormenting me?"

      "But I… quite the contrary… I see you're unhappy… "

      But Kitty in her fury did not hear her.

      "I've nothing to grieve over and be comforted about. I am too proud ever to allow myself to care for a man who does not love me."

      "Yes, I don't say so either… . Only one thing. Tell me the truth," said Darya Alexandrovna, taking her by the hand: "tell me, did Levin speak to you?… "

      The mention of Levin's name seemed to deprive Kitty of the last vestige of self-control. She leaped up from her chair, and flinging her clasp on the ground, she gesticulated rapidly with her hands and said:

      "Why bring Levin in too? I can't understand what you want to torment me for. I've told you, And I say it again, that I have some pride, and never, NEVER would I do as you're doing—go back to a man who's deceived you, who has cared for another woman. I can't understand it! You may, but I can't!"

      And saying these words she glanced at her sister, and seeing that Dolly sat silent, her head mournfully bowed, Kitty, instead of running out of the room as she had meant to do, sat down near the door, and hid her face in her handkerchief.

      The silence lasted for two minutes: Dolly was thinking of herself. That humiliation of which she was always conscious came back to her with a peculiar bitterness when her sister reminded her of it. She had not looked for such cruelty in her sister, and she was angry with her. But suddenly she heard the rustle of a skirt, and with it the sound of heart-rending, smothered sobbing, and felt arms about her neck. Kitty was on her knees before her.

      "Dolinka, I am so, so wretched!" she whispered penitently. And the sweet face covered with tears hid itself in Darya Alexandrovna's skirt.

      As though tears were the indispensable oil, without which the machinery of mutual confidence could not run smoothly between the two sisters, the sisters after their tears talked, not of what was uppermost in their minds, but, though they talked of outside matters, they understood each other. Kitty knew that the words she had uttered in anger about her husband's infidelity and her humiliating position had cut her poor sister to the heart, but that she had forgiven her. Dolly for her part knew all she had wanted to find out. She felt certain that her surmises were correct; that Kitty's misery, her inconsolable misery, was due precisely to the fact that Levin had made her an offer and she had refused him, and Vronsky had deceived her, and that she was fully prepared to love Levin and to detest Vronsky. Kitty said not a word of that; she talked of nothing but her spiritual condition.

      "I have nothing to make me miserable," she said, getting calmer; "but can you understand that everything has become hateful, loathsome, coarse to me, and I myself most of all? You can't imagine what loathsome thoughts I have about everything."

      "Why, whatever loathsome thoughts can you have?" asked Dolly, smiling.

      "The most utterly loathsome and coarse: I can't tell you. It's not unhappiness, or low spirits, but much worse.