“Yes, I’m going,” he answered her in an unnatural voice, disagreeable to himself.

“No, better spend the day here tomorrow, or Dolly won’t see anything of her husband, and set off the day after,” said Kitty.

The motive of Kitty’s words was interpreted by Levin thus:  “Don’t separate me from him.  I don’t care about your going, but do let me enjoy the society of this delightful young man.”

“Oh, if you wish, we’ll stay here tomorrow,” Levin answered, with peculiar amiability.

Vassenka meanwhile, utterly unsuspecting the misery his presence had occasioned, got up from the table after Kitty, and watching her with smiling and admiring eyes, he followed her.

Levin saw that look.  He turned white, and for a minute he could hardly breathe.  “How dare he look at my wife like that!” was the feeling that boiled within him.

“Tomorrow, then?  Do, please, let us go,” said Vassenka, sitting down on a chair, and again crossing his leg as his habit was.

Levin’s jealousy went further still.  Already he saw himself a deceived husband, looked upon by his wife and her lover as simply necessary to provide them with the conveniences and pleasures of life....  But in spite of that he made polite and hospitable inquiries of Vassenka about his shooting, his gun, and his boots, and agreed to go shooting next day.

Happily for Levin, the old princess cut short his agonies by getting up herself and advising Kitty to go to bed.  But even at this point Levin could not escape another agony.  As he said good-night to his hostess, Vassenka would again have kissed her hand, but Kitty, reddening, drew back her hand and said with a naive bluntness, for which the old princess scolded her afterwards: 

“We don’t like that fashion.”

In Levin’s eyes she was to blame for having allowed such relations to arise, and still more to blame for showing so awkwardly that she did not like them.

“Why, how can one want to go to bed!” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, who, after drinking several glasses of wine at supper, was now in his most charming and sentimental humor.  “Look, Kitty,” he said, pointing to the moon, which had just risen behind the lime trees —­“how exquisite!  Veslovsky, this is the time for a serenade.  You know, he has a splendid voice; we practiced songs together along the road.  He has brought some lovely songs with him, two new ones.  Varvara Andreevna and he must sing some duets.”

When the party had broken up, Stepan Arkadyevitch walked a long while about the avenue with Veslovsky; their voices could be heard singing one of the new songs.

Levin hearing these voices sat scowling in an easy-chair in his wife’s bedroom, and maintained an obstinate silence when she asked him what was wrong.  But when at last with a timid glance she hazarded the question:  “Was there perhaps something you disliked about Veslovsky?”—­it all burst out, and he told her all.  He was humiliated himself at what he was saying, and that exasperated him all the more.