Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/652

 Kuzma came to announce tea, they separated as if they were guilty.

"Are they returned from town?" asked Levin of Kuzma.

"They're just back,—they're unpacking the things now."

"Come as quickly as you can," said Kitty, going from the library.

Levin, left alone, shut up his books and papers in a new portfolio, bought by his wife, washed his hands in a new wash-basin supplied with elegant new appurtenances, also bought by her, and, smiling at his thoughts, nodded his head disapprovingly; he was tormented by a feeling which resembled remorse. His life had become too indolent, too spoiled. It was a life of a Capuan, and he felt ashamed of it. "To live so is not good," he thought. "Here, for three months, I have scarcely done a thing! To-day, almost for the first time, I have set about anything seriously, and what was the result? I have hardly begun before I give it up. I even neglect my ordinary occupations. I don't watch the men. I don't go anywhere. Sometimes I am sorry to leave her; sometimes I see that she is out of spirits; I who believed that existence before marriage counted for nothing, and that life only began after marriage! And here, for three months, I have been spending my time in absolute idleness. This must not go on. I must do something. Of course, she is not to blame, and one could not lay the least blame on her. But I ought to have shown more firmness, and have preserved my manly independence; otherwise, I shall get into confirmed bad habits.... of course, she is not to blame...."

A discontented man finds it hard not to blame some one or other for his discontent, and generally the very person who is nearest. And so Levin felt vaguely that while the fault was not his wife's—and he could not lay it to her charge—it was owing to her bringing up; it was too superficial and frivolous. "That fool of a Charsky, for example, .... I know she wanted to get rid of him; but she did not know how."