He snatched the chalk with nervous, trembling fingers, and breaking it, wrote the initial letters of the following phrase, “I have nothing to forget and to forgive; I have never ceased to love you.”

She glanced at him with a smile that did not waver.

“I understand,” she said in a whisper.

He sat down and wrote a long phrase.  She understood it all, and without asking him, “Is it this?” took the chalk and at once answered.

For a long while he could not understand what she had written, and often looked into her eyes.  He was stupefied with happiness.  He could not supply the word she had meant; but in her charming eyes, beaming with happiness, he saw all he needed to know.  And he wrote three letters.  But he had hardly finished writing when she read them over her arm, and herself finished and wrote the answer, “Yes.”

“You’re playing secretaire?” said the old prince.  “But we must really be getting along if you want to be in time at the theater.”

Levin got up and escorted Kitty to the door.

In their conversation everything had been said; it had been said that she loved him, and that she would tell her father and mother that he would come tomorrow morning.

Chapter 14

When Kitty had gone and Levin was left alone, he felt such uneasiness without her, and such an impatient longing to get as quickly, as quickly as possible, to tomorrow morning, when he would see her again and be plighted to her forever, that he felt afraid, as though of death, of those fourteen hours that he had to get through without her.  It was essential for him to be with someone to talk to, so as not to be left alone, to kill time.  Stepan Arkadyevitch would have been the companion most congenial to him, but he was going out, he said, to a soiree, in reality to the ballet.  Levin only had time to tell him he was happy, and that he loved him, and would never, never forget what he had done for him.  The eyes and the smile of Stepan Arkadyevitch showed Levin that he comprehended that feeling fittingly.

“Oh, so it’s not time to die yet?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, pressing Levin’s hand with emotion.

“N-n-no!” said Levin.

Darya Alexandrovna too, as she said good-bye to him, gave him a sort of congratulation, saying, “How glad I am you have met Kitty again!  One must value old friends.”  Levin did not like these words of Darya Alexandrovna’s.  She could not understand how lofty and beyond her it all was, and she ought not to have dared to allude to it.  Levin said good-bye to them, but, not to be left alone, he attached himself to his brother.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going to a meeting.”

“Well, I’ll come with you.  May I?”

“What for?  Yes, come along,” said Sergey Ivanovitch, smiling.  “What is the matter with you today?”