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 before had not been, and which with every right and every responsibility would live, and propagate its kind.

"He lives, he lives! Yes, it is a boy! Don't be worried," Levin heard Lizavyeta's voice saying, while with a trembling hand she slapped the little one's back.

"Mamma, is it true?" asked Kitty.

And the princess's sobs answered her.

And amid the silence, like an indubitable answer to the young mother's questions, was heard a voice, absolutely different from the subdued voices speaking in the room. It was the bold, decided, imperious, almost impertinent cry of the new human being, which had come whence no one knew.

Just before, if Levin had been told that Kitty was dead, that he himself had died with her, and that their children were angels, and that they were all in the presence of God, he would not have been surprised. And now that he had come back to reality, it took a prodigious effort of thought to comprehend that his wife was alive, that she was doing well, and that this desperately screeching creature was his son. Kitty was saved, her suffering was passed, and he was inexpressibly happy. That he could understand, and it made him happy; but the child! Whence? Why? What was it? .... He could not wont himself to the thought of it. It seemed to him somehow too much, too overwhelming; and it was long before he became accustomed to it.

CHAPTER XVI

old Prince Sergyeï Ivanovitch and Stepan Arkadyevitch met at Levin's the next morning, about ten o'clock, and after they talked about the little mother, they began to converse about irrelevant topics. Levin listened to them, and involuntarily remembering what had taken place, what had been going on that morning, he also remembered what he himself had been but a few hours before.

It was as if a hundred years had passed since then.