Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/125

 CHAPTER XXIV

, there must be something repellent, even repulsive, about me," thought Levin, as he left the Shcherbatskys', and went on foot in search of his brother. "I am not popular with men. They say it is pride. No, I am not proud; if I had been proud, I should not have put myself in my present situation."

And he imagined himself Vronsky, happy, popular, calm, witty, who had apparently never put himself in such a terrible position as he was in on that evening.

"Yes, she naturally chose him, and I have no right to complain about any one or any thing. I myself am to blame. What right had I to think that she would ever unite her life with mine? Who am I? and what am I? A man useful to no one—a good-for-nothing."

Then the memory of his brother Nikolaï came back to him.

"Was he not right in saying that everything in the world was miserable and wretched? Have we been, and are we, just in our judgment of brother Nikolaï? Of course, from the point of view of Prokofi, who saw him drunk and in ragged clothes, he is a miserable creature; but I judge him differently. I know his heart, and I know that we are alike. And I, instead of going to find him, have been out dining, and to this reception!"

Levin went to a street-lamp and read his brother's address, which was written on a slip of paper, and called an izvoshchik. All the long way he vividly recalled one by one the well-known incidents of his brother Nikolaï's life. He remembered how at the university, and for a year after his graduation, he had lived like a monk notwithstanding the ridicule of his comrades, strictly devoted to all forms of religion, services, fasts, turning his back on all pleasures, and especially women; and then how he had suddenly turned around, and fallen into the company of people of the lowest lives, and entered upon a course of dissipation and debauchery. He remembered his conduct toward a lad whom he