Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/540

 "I know what it is," said she, blushing.

"What is this word?" he asked, pointing to the i of the word impossible.

"That letter stands for impossible. The word is not right," she replied.

He quickly rubbed out what he had written, gave the chalk to her, and stood up.

She wrote: t, I, c, n, a, d.

Dolly, seeing her sister with the chalk in her hand, a timid and happy smile on her lips, raising her eyes to Levin, who was leaning over the table, beaming now at her, now at the cloth, felt consoled for the grief caused by her conversation with Alekseï Aleksandrovitch. His face suddenly grew radiant; he had understood the reply: "Then I could not answer differently."

He looked at Kitty timidly and inquiringly.

"Only then?"

"Yes," replied the young girl's smile.

"B, n—but now?" he asked.

"Read this. I will tell you what I wish, what I wish very much;" and she quickly traced the initials, t, y, m, f, a, f, w, t, p.

This meant: "That you might forgive and forget what took place!"

He seized the chalk in turn, with his excited, trembling fingers, and crushing it wrote down the initials of these words: "I have nothing to forgive and forget. I have never ceased to love you."

Kitty looked at him, and her smile died away.

"I understand," she murmured.

He sat down and wrote a long phrase. She comprehended it and without even asking is it thus and so, took the chalk and instantly replied.

It was some time before he made out what she wrote and had to keep looking into her eyes. His wits were dulled by his happiness. He could not supply the words which she intended; but in her lovely eyes, radiant with joy, he understood all that he needed to know. And he wrote three letters. But he had not finished