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 extraordinary that he could not believe in its possibility, and while on the one hand it promised him a happiness too enormous and therefore incredible, on the other hand it seemed to him too mysterious to admit of trying to imagine what it meant, and consequently all this preparation as if for something commonplace, for something in the hands of men, seemed to him revolting and humiliating. The princess did not understand his feelings, and she attributed his unwillingness to think and talk about this to indifference and carelessness, and so she gave him no peace. She had just been charging Stepan Arkadyevitch to look up a suite of rooms, and now she called Levin to her.

"Do as you think best, princess; I understand nothing about the matter," said he.

"But it must be decided just when you will go to Moscow."

"Truly I don't know; what I know is that millions of children are born away from Moscow, and doctors ... and all that ...."

"Yes, but in that case ...."

"Let Kitty do as she pleases about it."

"It is impossible to speak with Kitty about it. Do you want me to frighten her? Only this spring Natali Golitsuin died in consequence of an unskilful accoucheur."

"I shall do as you wish," repeated Levin, angrily.

The princess began to say something more to him, but he was not listening. Though his conversation with the princess upset him, he was not angered by what she said, but by what he saw at the samovar.

"No; that can't go on," thought he, as he from time to time glanced over at Vasenka, who was bending down to Kitty, with a flattering smile, and making some remark to her; and he also noticed his wife's disturbed and blushing face.

There was something improper in Veslovsky's attitude, his smile, his eyes. So, too, Kitty's action and appearance seemed to him unbecoming, and again the light flashed in his eyes. And again, as happened two days before, he felt himself suddenly, without the least warn-