Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/1076

 They took the baby from the water, wiped him, and, after he had expressed his disapprobation with a piercing scream, they gave him to his mother.

"Well, I am very glad to see that you begin to love him," said Kitty, as she sat down in a comfortable seat, with the child at her breast. "I am very glad. It really troubled me when you said you had n't any feeling for him."

"No! did I say that I had no feeling for him? I only said that I was disappointed."

"How were you disappointed?"

"I was n't disappointed in him, but in the feeling that he would arouse. I expected more. I expected as a surprise some new and pleasant feeling; and instead of that, it was pity, disgust."

She listened to him as she put on her slender fingers the rings which she had taken off while bathing the baby.

"And more of fear and pity than of satisfaction. I never knew until to-day, after the storm, how I loved him."

Kitty smiled with radiant joy.

"Were you very much afraid?" she asked. "And so was I. But it seems more terrible to me now when the danger is all past. I shall go and look at the oak to-morrow. How nice Katavasof is! Well, the whole day has been so pleasant. You are so delightful with your brother when you want to be. .... Well, go to them. It is always hot and stifling here after the bath."

on leaving the nursery and finding himself alone, began to follow out his line of thought, in which there had been something obscure.

Instead of going back to the drawing-room, where he heard the sound of voices, he remained on the terrace, and, leaning over the balustrade of the terrace, he looked