Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/751

 eyes, there was a gentleness and gravity like that which people show when their attention has been concentrated on some one favorite task.

"You are not getting tired, are you? Lean on me more," said he.

"No, I am so glad to have a chance to be alone with you, and I confess that I miss our winter evenings when we two were alone together, much as I enjoy having them here!"

"That was good, but this is better. Both are better," said he, pressing her hand.

"Do you know what we were talking about when you came?"

"About preserves?"

"Yes, about preserves; but afterward about the way men propose."

"Ah!" said Levin, listening rather to the sound of her voice than to the words which she spoke, and all the time thinking of the road which they were following down to the forest, and carefully avoiding the places that might cause her to stumble.

"But how about Sergyeï Ivanovitch and Varenka? Have you noticed it? .... I very much wish it might come about," she went on to say. "What do you think about it?"

And she glanced into his face.

"I don't know what to think," replied Levin, with a smile. "Sergyeï in this respect was always a mystery to me. I think I told you about it." ....

"Yes, that he was in love with a young girl, but she died."....

"That was when I was a child; I knew it by tradition. I remember him as he was then. He was wonderfully charming. But since then I have watched him with women. He is polite; he likes some of them; but you can't help feeling that for him they are merely people, not women."

"Yes, but now in the case of Varenka .... it seems to me there is some ...."

"Maybe there is .... but one must know him. .... He is