“Put it on quite,” voices were heard urging when the priest had put on the wedding crowns and Shtcherbatsky, his hand shaking in its three-button glove, held the crown high above her head.

“Put it on!” she whispered, smiling.

Levin looked round at her, and was struck by the joyful radiance on her face, and unconsciously her feeling infected him.  He too, like her felt glad and happy.

They enjoyed hearing the epistle read, and the roll of the head deacon’s voice at the last verse, awaited with such impatience by the outside public.  They enjoyed drinking out of the shallow cup of warm red wine and water, and they were still more pleased when the priest, flinging back his stole and taking both their hands in his, led them round the lectern to the accompaniment of bass voices chanting “Glory to God.”

Shtcherbatsky and Tchirikov, supporting the crowns and stumbling over the bride’s train, smiling too and seeming delighted at something, were at one moment left behind, at the next treading on the bridal pair as the priest came to a halt.  The spark of joy kindled in Kitty seemed to have infected everyone in the church.  It seemed to Levin that the priest and the deacon too wanted to smile just as he did.

Taking the crowns off their heads the priest read the last prayer and congratulated the young people.  Levin looked at Kitty, and he had never before seen her look as she did.  She was charming with the new radiance of happiness in her face.  Levin longed to say something to her, but he did not know whether it was all over.  The priest got him out of his difficulty.  He smiled his kindly smile and said gently, “Kiss your wife, and you kiss your husband,” and took the candles out of their hands.

Levin kissed her smiling lips with timid care, gave her his arm, and with a new strange sense of closeness, walked out of the church.  He did not believe, he could not believe, that it was true.  It was only when their wondering and timid eyes met that he believed in it, because he felt that they were one.

After supper, the same night, the young people left for the country.

Chapter 7

Vronsky and Anna had been traveling for three months together in Europe.  They had visited Venice, Rome, and Naples, and had just arrived at a small Italian town where they meant to stay some time.  A handsome head waiter, with thick pomaded hair parted from the neck upwards, an evening coat, a broad white cambric shirt front, and a bunch of trinkets hanging above his rounded stomach, stood with his hands in the full curve of his pockets, looking contemptuously from under his eyelids while he gave some frigid reply to a gentleman who had stopped him.  Catching the sound of footsteps coming from the other side of the entry towards the staircase, the head waiter turned round, and seeing the Russian count, who had taken their best rooms, he took his hands out of his pockets deferentially, and with a bow informed him that a courier had been, and that the business about the palazzo had been arranged.  The steward was prepared to sign the agreement.