“It will end in your loving her more than your own.”

“There a man speaks.  In love there’s no more nor less.  I love my daughter with one love, and her with another.”

“I was just telling Anna Arkadyevna,” said Vorkuev, “that if she were to put a hundredth part of the energy she devotes to this English girl to the public question of the education of Russian children, she would be doing a great and useful work.”

“Yes, but I can’t help it; I couldn’t do it.  Count Alexey Kirillovitch urged me very much” (as she uttered the words Count Alexey Kirillovitch she glanced with appealing timidity at Levin, and he unconsciously responded with a respectful and reassuring look); “he urged me to take up the school in the village.  I visited it several times.  The children were very nice, but I could not feel drawn to the work.  You speak of energy.  Energy rests upon love; and come as it will, there’s no forcing it.  I took to this child—­I could not myself say why.”

And she glanced again at Levin.  And her smile and her glance—­ all told him that it was to him only she was addressing her words, valuing his good opinion, and at the same time sure beforehand that they understood each other.

“I quite understand that,” Levin answered.  “It’s impossible to give one’s heart to a school or such institutions in general, and I believe that’s just why philanthropic institutions always give such poor results.”

She was silent for a while, then she smiled.

“Yes, yes,” she agreed; “I never could. Je n’ai pas le coeur assez large to love a whole asylum of horrid little girls. Cela ne m’a jamais reussi. There are so many women who have made themselves une position sociale in that way.  And now more than ever,” she said with a mournful, confiding expression, ostensibly addressing her brother, but unmistakably intending her words only for Levin, “now when I have such need of some occupation, I cannot.”  And suddenly frowning (Levin saw that she was frowning at herself for talking about herself) she changed the subject.  “I know about you,” she said to Levin; “that you’re not a public-spirited citizen, and I have defended you to the best of my ability.”

“How have you defended me?”

“Oh, according to the attacks made on you.  But won’t you have some tea?” She rose and took up a book bound in morocco.

“Give it to me, Anna Arkadyevna,” said Vorkuev, indicating the book.  “It’s well worth taking up.”

“Oh, no, it’s all so sketchy.”

“I told him about it,” Stepan Arkadyevitch said to his sister, nodding at Levin.

“You shouldn’t have.  My writing is something after the fashion of those little baskets and carving which Liza Mertsalova used to sell me from the prisons.  She had the direction of the prison department in that society,” she turned to Levin; “and they were miracles of patience, the work of those poor wretches.”