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 stay up all night and also keep other people awake," said Dolly, in that tone of playful irony which she almost habitually employed in addressing her husband. "In my opinion, I had better be going to bed. I won't eat any supper. I'll go now."

"No, Dollenka, sit down," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, going to the other side of the great table and taking a seat near his wife. "I've so many things to tell you about,"

"Probably mighty little!"

"Do you know—Veslovsky has been at Anna's? She lives only seventy versts away from here; he is going there when he leaves us, and I intend to go too. Veslovsky, come here."

Vasenka approached the ladies, and sat down next to Kitty.

"Oh, please tell us about it. Have you really been to Anna Arkadyevna's? How is she?" asked Darya Aleksandrovna.

Levin had remained at the other end of the table, and while he kept on talking with the princess and Varenka, he observed that Stepan Arkadyevitch, Dolly, Kitty, and Veslovsky were having an animated and mysterious conversation. Not only were they talking confidentially, but it seemed to him that his wife's face expressed a deep tenderness, as, without dropping her eyes, she looked into Vasenka's handsome face, while he was talking vivaciously.

"Their establishment is superb," Vasenka Veslovsky was saying in reference to Vronsky and Anna; "of course, I don't take it on myself to pass judgment on them, but when you are there in their house, you feel yourself at home."

"What are their plans?"

"They would like to pass the winter in Moscow, I believe."

"How jolly it would be for us to go there together When shall you be there?" Oblonsky asked Vasenka.

"I am going to spend July with them."