But Kitty took not the slightest interest in discussing the drinking habits of the peasants.  She saw that he blushed, and she wanted to know why.

“Well, and then where did you go?”

“Stiva urged me awfully to go and see Anna Arkadyevna.”

And as he said this, Levin blushed even more, and his doubts as to whether he had done right in going to see Anna were settled once for all.  He knew now that he ought not to have done so.

Kitty’s eyes opened in a curious way and gleamed at Anna’s name, but controlling herself with an effort, she concealed her emotion and deceived him.

“Oh!” was all she said.

“I’m sure you won’t be angry at my going.  Stiva begged me to, and Dolly wished it,” Levin went on.

“Oh, no!” she said, but he saw in her eyes a constraint that boded him no good.

“She is a very sweet, very, very unhappy, good woman,” he said, telling her about Anna, her occupations, and what she had told him to say to her.

“Yes, of course, she is very much to be pitied,” said Kitty, when he had finished.  “Whom was your letter from?”

He told her, and believing in her calm tone, he went to change his coat.

Coming back, he found Kitty in the same easy chair.  When he went up to her, she glanced at him and broke into sobs.

“What? what is it?” he asked, knowing beforehand what.

“You’re in love with that hateful woman; she has bewitched you!  I saw it in your eyes.  Yes, yes!  What can it all lead to?  You were drinking at the club, drinking and gambling, and then you went...to her of all people!  No, we must go away....  I shall go away tomorrow.”

It was a long while before Levin could soothe his wife.  At last he succeeded in calming her, only by confessing that a feeling of pity, in conjunction with the wine he had drunk, had been too much for him, that he had succumbed to Anna’s artful influence, and that he would avoid her.  One thing he did with more sincerity confess to was that living so long in Moscow, a life of nothing but conversation, eating and drinking, he was degenerating.  They talked till three o’clock in the morning.  Only at three o’clock were they sufficiently reconciled to be able to go to sleep.

Chapter 12

After taking leave of her guests, Anna did not sit down, but began walking up and down the room.  She had unconsciously the whole evening done her utmost to arouse in Levin a feeling of love—­as of late she had fallen into doing with all young men—­ and she knew she had attained her aim, as far as was possible in one evening, with a married and conscientious man.  She liked him indeed extremely, and, in spite of the striking difference, from the masculine point of view, between Vronsky and Levin, as a woman she saw something they had in common, which had made Kitty able to love both.  Yet as soon as he was out of the room, she ceased to think of him.