Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/770

 swer her questions as to what was the matter with him. But at last Kitty, timidly smiling, asked him: "Is there anything about Veslovsky that has displeased you?"

This question loosened his tongue, and he told her all. What he said filled him with vexation, and so he grew still more excited.

He stood up in front of his wife with his eyes flashing terribly under his contracted brows and his hands pressed against his chest as if exerting all his force to restrain himself. His face would have been harsh and even cruel, had it not expressed also such keen suffering. His cheeks trembled and his voice shook. "Don't think me jealous; the word is disgusting. I could not be jealous and at the same time believe that.... I cannot tell you what I feel, but it is horrible to me .... I am not jealous, but I am hurt, humiliated, that any one should dare to look at you so."....

"Why, look at me how?" asked Kitty, honestly trying to recall all the remarks and incidents of the evening and all their possible significance. In the depth of her heart she had thought that there was something peculiar at the time when Veslovsky followed her to the other end of the table, but she dared not acknowledge it even to herself, and still more she did not wish to say this to him and thus increase his suffering.

"But what could he find attractive in me in my condition?" ....

"Akh!" he cried, clutching his head "You should not have said that That means, if you had been attractive...."

"Now stop, Kostia, and listen to me!" said Kitty, looking at him with a passionately compassionate expression. "What can you be thinking about? You know you are the only person in the world for me. .... But you would not wish me to shut myself up away from everybody?"

At first she had been wounded by this jealousy of his, which spoiled even the slightest and most innocent pleasures; but she was ready now to renounce, not merely the trifling things, but everything, for the sake