Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/757

 her all that he desired in a wife. She was poor and unencumbered, so that she would not bring a throng of relatives and their influence into her husband's home, as he saw was the case with Kitty; but she would be in everything pledged to her husband, which was one of the conditions which he had demanded for himself in case he ever had any family life.

And this young woman, having all these qualities, loved him. He was modest, but he could not help seeing this. And he liked her. One obstacle stood in the way—his age. But his family were long-lived, he had not as yet a single gray hair, no one took him to be more than forty, and he remembered that Varenka had said that only in Russia men of fifty considered themselves old men, while in France a man of fifty reckoned himself dans la force de l'âge and one of forty was un jeune homme. But what signified his years when he felt himself as young in spirit as he had been twenty years before? Was not youth the feeling which he enjoyed when, coming out again from the forest into the clearing, he saw in the clear sunlight Varenka's graceful figure in her yellow frock and with her basket, moving along with light steps past the bole of an ancient birch tree, and the impression produced by the sight of Varenka blended with the surprising beauty of a field of oats shining yellow under the oblique rays of the sun, and beyond the field the old forest, variegated with yellow and stretching away into the azure distance? His heart swelled with joy. A feeling of tenderness seized him. He felt within him that his mind was made up. Varenka, who had just stooped down to pick up a mushroom, with an agile motion straightened herself up again and glanced around.

Sergyeï Ivanovitch, tossing away his cigar, went toward her with resolute steps.