Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/769

 Levin noticed that smile. He grew pale and for a moment could not get his breath.

"How does he dare to look at my wife in that way?" He was boiling!

"We are to go hunting to-morrow, are we not?" asked Vasenka, and he sat down in a chair and again doubled one leg under him, as his habit was.

Levin's jealousy grew still more intense. Already he saw himself a deceived husband, whom his wife and her lover were plotting to get rid of that they might enjoy each other in peace.

Nevertheless, he asked Veslovsky, with all friendliness and hospitality, about his hunting-gear, his guns and boots, and agreed to go the next day.

To Levin's happiness the old princess put an end to his torture by advising Kitty to go to bed. But even this was accompanied by new suffering for Levin. On bidding his hostess "good night," Vasenka tried to kiss her hand again. But Kitty, blushing and drawing away her hand, said, with a naïve rudeness for which her mother afterward chided her:—

"That is not the custom with us."

In Levin's eyes she was blameworthy for permitting such liberties with her, and still more so for being so awkward in showing her disapprobation.

"Why should you go to bed?" said Oblonsky, who had taken several glasses of wine at dinner, and was in his most genial and poetic mood. "Look, Kitty," said he, pointing to the moon just rising above the lindens, "how lovely! Veslovsky, it is just the time for serenading. You know he has a splendid voice; he and I tried some on the way down. He has brought two new ballads with him. He and Varvara might sing to us."

After they had all left, Stepan Arkadyevitch and Veslovsky still for a long time walked up and down in the avenue, and their voices could be heard as they practised singing over the new ballads.

Hearing these voices, Levin sat scowling in an easy-chair in his wife's room, and obstinately refused to an-