He stood facing her with his eyes glittering menacingly under his scowling brows, and he squeezed his strong arms across his chest, as though he were straining every nerve to hold himself in.  The expression of his face would have been grim, and even cruel, if it had not at the same time had a look of suffering which touched her.  His jaws were twitching, and his voice kept breaking.

“You must understand that I’m not jealous, that’s a nasty word.  I can’t be jealous, and believe that....  I can’t say what I feel, but this is awful....  I’m not jealous, but I’m wounded, humiliated that anybody dare think, that anybody dare look at you with eyes like that.”

“Eyes like what?” said Kitty, trying as conscientiously as possible to recall every word and gesture of that evening and every shade implied in them.

At the very bottom of her heart she did think there had been something precisely at the moment when he had crossed over after her to the other end of the table; but she dared not own it even to herself, and would have been even more unable to bring herself to say so to him, and so increase his suffering.

“And what can there possibly be attractive about me as I am now?...”

“Ah!” he cried, clutching at his head, “you shouldn’t say that!...  If you had been attractive then...”

“Oh, no, Kostya, oh, wait a minute, oh, do listen!” she said, looking at him with an expression of pained commiseration.  “Why, what can you be thinking about!  When for me there’s no one in the world, no one, no one!...  Would you like me never to see anyone?”

For the first minute she had been offended at his jealousy; she was angry that the slightest amusement, even the most innocent, should be forbidden her; but now she would readily have sacrificed, not merely such trifles, but everything, for his peace of mind, to save him from the agony he was suffering.

“You must understand the horror and comedy of my position,” he went on in a desperate whisper; “that he’s in my house, that he’s done nothing improper positively except his free and easy airs and the way he sits on his legs.  He thinks it’s the best possible form, and so I’m obliged to be civil to him.”

“But, Kostya, you’re exaggerating,” said Kitty, at the bottom of her heart rejoicing at the depth of his love for her, shown now in his jealousy.

“The most awful part of it all is that you’re just as you always are, and especially now when to me you’re something sacred, and we’re so happy, so particularly happy—­and all of a sudden a little wretch....  He’s not a little wretch; why should I abuse him?  I have nothing to do with him.  But why should my, and your, happiness...”

“Do you know, I understand now what it’s all come from,” Kitty was beginning.

“Well, what? what?”

“I saw how you looked while we were talking at supper.”

“Well, well!” Levin said in dismay.