Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/1074

 Sergyeï Ivanovitch also was very gay; and at tea he explained the future of the Eastern question so simply and well that all could follow him. Kitty alone did not hear him. She had been summoned to the nursery to give Mitya his bath.

A few moments after Kitty had left the room, Levin also was called to follow her.

Leaving his tea, and feeling regretful at having an interesting conversation interrupted, and at the same time troubled because they had called him to the nursery, a thing which had hitherto happened only in cases of emergency, Levin followed his wife.

In spite of the fact that he was greatly interested in his brother's partly outlined scheme of making the newly enfranchised world of forty millions of Slavs join with Russia in establishing a new epoch in history—for it was something entirely novel to him, in spite of his curiosity and anxiety at having been summoned to the nursery, as soon as he had left the drawing-room and was once more alone, he immediately remembered his thoughts of the morning. And all these theories as to the significance of the Slav element in the universal history seemed to him so insignificant in comparison with what was taking place in his own soul, that for a moment he forgot all about it, and returned to the moral state that had so delighted him at the beginning of the day.

This time he did not wholly retrace the course of thought which had led him to this state of mind, nor was it necessary. He was borne immediately back to that feeling which had guided him, which had been connected with those thoughts, and he now found the feeling stronger and more definite in his soul than ever before. Now there was no longer what had always marked his previous imaginary attempts at gaining spiritual calmness, when he had been obliged to call a halt to the whole course of his thoughts in order to find the feeling; now, on the contrary, the feeling of joy and calmness was more vivid than before, but thought did not overtake the feeling. He walked along the terrace, and