‘No, she can’t tell a lie with such eyes,’ her mother thought, smiling at her excitement and happiness. The princess was smiling at how immense and significant everything now happening in her soul must seem to the poor dear.
XIII
Between dinner and the beginning of the evening, Kitty experienced a feeling similar to that of a young man before battle. Her heart was beating hard, and she could not fix her thoughts on anything.
She felt that this evening, when the two of them would meet for the first time, must be decisive in her fate. And she constantly pictured them to herself, first each of them separately, then the two together. When she thought about the past, she paused with pleasure, with tenderness, over memories of her relations with Levin. Memories of childhood and memories of Levin’s friendship with her dead brother lent her relations with him a special poetic charm. His love for her, which she was certain of, was flattering and joyful for her. And it was easy for her to recall Levin. But in her recollections of Vronsky there was an admixture of something awkward, though he was in the highest degree a calm and worldly man. It was as if there were some falseness - not in him, he was very simple and nice - but in herself, while with Levin she felt completely simple and clear. But on the other hand, the moment she thought of a future with Vronsky, the most brilliantly happy prospects rose before her, while with Levin the future seemed cloudy.
Going upstairs to dress for the evening and glancing in the mirror, she noticed with joy that she was having one of her good days and was in full possession of all her powers, which she so needed for what lay ahead of her: she felt in herself an external calm and a free grace of movement.
At half-past seven, just as she came down to the drawing room, the footman announced: ‘Konstantin Dmitrich Levin.’ The princess was still in her room, and the prince also did not emerge. ‘That’s it,’ thought Kitty, and the blood rushed to her heart. Glancing in the mirror, she was horrified at her paleness.
Now she knew for certain that he had come earlier in order to find her alone and to propose. And only here did the whole matter present itself to her for the first time with quite a different, new side. Only here did she realize that the question concerned not just herself - with whom would she be happy and whom she loved - but that at this very minute she must hurt a man she loved. And hurt him cruelly ... Why? Because he, the dear man, loved her, was in love with her. But, no help for it, it must be so, it had to be so.
‘My God, can it be that I must tell him myself?’ she thought. ‘Well, what shall I tell him? Can I possibly tell him I don’t love him? It wouldn’t be true. What shall I tell him, then? That I love another man? No, that’s impossible. I’ll go away, just go away.’
She was already close to the door when she heard his steps. ‘No, it’s dishonest! What am I afraid of? I haven’t done anything wrong. What will be, will be! I’ll tell the truth. I can’t feel awkward with him. Here he is,’ she said to herself, seeing his whole strong and timid figure, with his shining eyes directed at her. She looked straight into his face, as if begging him for mercy, and gave him her hand.
‘I’ve come at the wrong time, it seems - too early,’ he said, glancing around the empty drawing room. When he saw that his expectations had been fulfilled, that nothing prevented him from speaking out, his face darkened.
‘Oh, no,’ said Kitty, and she sat down at the table.
‘But this is just what I wanted, to find you alone,’ he began, not sitting down and not looking at her, so as not to lose courage.
‘Mama will come out presently. Yesterday she got very tired. Yesterday...’
She spoke, not knowing what her lips were saying, and not taking her pleading and caressing eyes off him.
He glanced at her; she blushed and fell silent.
‘I told you I didn’t know whether I had come for long ... that it depended on you ...’
She hung her head lower and lower, not knowing how she would reply to what was coming.
‘That it depended on you,’ he repeated. ‘I wanted to say ... I wanted to say... I came for this ... that ... to be my wife!’ he said, hardly aware of what he was saying; but, feeling that the most dreadful part had been said, he stopped and looked at her.
She was breathing heavily, not looking at him. She was in ecstasy. Her soul overflowed with happiness. She had never imagined that the voicing of his love would make such a strong impression on her. But this lasted only a moment. She remembered Vronsky. Raising her light, truthful eyes to Levin and seeing his desperate face, she hastily replied:
‘It cannot be ... forgive me ...’
How close she had been to him just a minute ago, how important for his life! And now how alien and distant from him she had become!
‘It couldn’t have been otherwise,’ he said, not looking at her.
He bowed and was about to leave.
XIV
But just then the princess came out. Horror showed on her face when she saw them alone and looking upset. Levin bowed to her and said nothing. Kitty was silent, not raising her eyes. ‘Thank God, she’s refused him,’ thought the mother, and her face brightened with the usual smile with which she met her guests on Thursdays. She sat down and began asking Levin about his life in the country. He sat down again, awaiting the arrival of other guests so that he could leave inconspicuously.
Five minutes later Kitty’s friend, Countess Nordston, who had been married the previous winter, came in.
She was a dry, yellow woman, sickly and nervous, with black shining eyes. She loved Kitty, and her love expressed itself, as a married woman’s love for young girls always does, in her wish to get Kitty married according to her own ideal of happiness, and therefore she wished her to marry Vronsky. Levin, whom she had met often in their house at the beginning of winter, she had always found disagreeable. Her constant and favourite occupation when she met him consisted in making fun of him.
‘I love it when he looks down at me from the height of his grandeur: either he breaks off his clever conversation with me because I’m stupid, or he condescends to me. Condescends! I just love it! I’m very glad he can’t stand me,’ she said of him.
She was right, because Levin indeed could not stand her and had contempt for what she took pride in and counted as a merit - her nervousness, her refined contempt and disregard for all that was coarse and common.
Between Countess Nordston and Levin there had been established those relations, not infrequent in society, in which two persons, while ostensibly remaining on friendly terms, are contemptuous of each other to such a degree that they cannot even treat each other seriously and cannot even insult one another.
Countess Nordston fell upon Levin at once.
‘Ah! Konstantin Dmitrich! You’ve come back to our depraved Babylon,’ she said, giving him her tiny yellow hand and recalling the words he had spoken once at the beginning of winter, that Moscow was Babylon. ‘Has Babylon become better, or have you become worse?’ she added, glancing at Kitty with a mocking smile.
‘I’m very flattered, Countess, that you remember my words so well,’ answered Levin, who had managed to recover and by force of habit entered at once into his banteringly hostile attitude towards Countess Nordston. ‘They must have had a very strong effect on you.’
‘Oh, surely! I write it all down. Well, Kitty, so you went skating again?’
And she began talking with Kitty. Awkward as it was for Levin to leave now, it was still easier for him to commit that awkwardness than to stay all evening and see Kitty, who glanced at him now and then yet avoided his eyes. He was about to get up, but the princess, noticing that he was silent, addressed him: ‘Have you come to Moscow for long? Though it seems you’re involved with the zemstvo and cannot be long away.’