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 corridor, and in his horror and despair imagining what Kitty might be thinking all this time.

Finally the guilty Kuzma rushed into the room all out of breath, with the shirt in his hand.

"I got there just in time, as they were carrying off the trunks!" he exclaimed.

In three minutes Levin rushed through the corridor, without daring to look at his watch, for fear of increasing his agony of mind.

"You can't change anything," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, with a smile, following leisurely. "I told you it would come out all right."

CHAPTER IV

they come!—There he is!—Which one? Is it the youngest? Just look at her! Poor little matushka, more dead than alive!" was murmured through the crowd, as Levin, having met the bride at the entrance, came into the church with her.

Stepan Arkadyevitch told his wife the reason of the delay, and a smile passed over the congregation as it was whispered about. Levin neither saw any one nor anything, but kept his eyes fixed on his bride.

Every one said that she had grown very homely during these last days, and certainly she did not look so pretty under her bridal wreath as usual; but such was not Levin's opinion. He looked at her high coiffure, with the long white veil attached, and white flowers, at her high plaited collar encircling her slender neck in a peculiarly maidenly fashion, and just showing it a little in front,—her remarkably graceful figure; and she seemed more beautiful to him than ever. But it was not because the flowers or her veil or her Paris gown added anything to her beauty, but because of the expression of her lovely face, her eyes, her lips, with their innocent sincerity, preserved in spite of all this adornment.

"I was beginning to think that you had made up your mind to run away," she said to him with a smile.