`Is there anything troubling you? However, I've no right to ask such a question,' he said hurriedly.
`Oh, why so?... No, I have nothing to trouble me,' she responded coldly, and immediately added: `You haven't seen Mlle. Linon, have you?'
`Not yet.'
`Go and speak to her - she likes you so much.'
`What's wrong? I have offended her. Lord help me!' thought Levin, and he flew towards the old Frenchwoman with the gray ringlets, who was sitting on a bench. Smiling and showing her false teeth, she greeted him as an old friend.
`Yes, you see we're growing up,' she said to him, glancing toward Kitty, `and growing old. Tiny bear has grown big now!' pursued the Frenchwoman, laughing, and she reminded him of his joke about the three young ladies whom he had compared to the three bears in the English nursery tale. `Do you remember that's what you used to call them?'
He remembered absolutely nothing, but she had been laughing at the joke for ten years now and was fond of it.
`Now, go and skate, go and skate. Our Kitty has learned to skate nicely, hasn't she?'
When Levin darted up to Kitty her face was no longer stern; her eyes looked at him with the same sincerity and tenderness, but Levin fancied that in her tenderness there was a certain note of deliberate composure.
And he felt depressed. After talking a little of her old governess and her peculiarities, she questioned him about his life.
`Surely, you must feel dull in the country in the winter,' she said.
`No, I'm not dull - I am very busy,' he said, feeling that she was making him submit to her composed tone, which he would not have the strength to break through - just as had been the case at the beginning of the winter.
`Are you going to stay in town long?' Kitty questioned him.
`I don't know,' he answered, not thinking of what he was saying.
The thought came into his mind that if he were held in submission by her tone of quiet friendliness he would end by going back again without deciding anything, and he resolved to mutiny against it.
`How is it you don't know?'
`I don't know. It depends upon you,' he said, and was immediately horror-stricken at his own words.
Whether it was that she did not hear his words, or that she did not want to hear them, she made a sort of stumble, twice struck out, and hurriedly skated away from him. She skated up to Mlle. Linon, said something to her, and went toward the pavilion where the ladies took off their skates.
`My God! What have I done! Merciful God! Help me, guide me,' said Levin, praying inwardly, and at the same time, feeling a need of violent exercise, he skated about, describing concentric and eccentric circles.
1
`Ah, that's a new trick!' said Levin, and he promptly ran up to the top to perform this new trick.
`Don't break your neck! This needs practice!' Nikolai Shcherbatsky shouted after him.
Levin went to the steps, took a run from above as best he could, and dashed down, preserving his balance in this unwonted movement with his hands. On the last step he stumbled, but barely touching the ice with his hand, with a violent effort recovered himself, and skated off, laughing.
`What a fine, darling chap he is!' Kitty was thinking at that moment, as she came out of the pavilion with Mlle. Linon and looked toward him with a smile of quiet kindness, as though he were a favorite brother.
`And can it be my fault, can I have done anything wrong? They talk of coquetry.
I know it's not he that I love; but still I am happy with him, and he's so nice. Only, why did he say that?...' she mused.
Catching sight of Kitty going away, and her mother meeting her at the steps, Levin, flushed from his rapid exercise, stood still and pondered a minute. He took off his skates, and overtook the mother and daughter at the entrance of the gardens.
`Delighted to see you,' said Princess Shcherbatskaia. `On Thursdays we are home, as always.'
`Today, then?'
`We shall be pleased to see you,' the Princess said stiffly.
This stiffness hurt Kitty, and she could not resist the desire to smooth over her mother's coldness. She turned her head, and with a smile said:
`Good-by till this evening.'
At that moment Stepan Arkadyevich, his hat cocked on one side, with beaming face and eyes, strode into the garden like a buoyant conqueror.
But as he approached his mother-in-law, he responded to her inquiries about Dolly's health with a mournful and guilty countenance. After a little subdued and dejected conversation with her he set straight his chest again, and took Levin by the arm.
`Well, shall we set off?' he asked. `I've been thinking about you all this time, and I'm very, very glad you've come,' he said, looking him in the face with a significant air.
`Yes, come along,' answered Levin in ecstasy, hearing unceasingly the sound of that voice saying, `Good-by till this evening,' and seeing the smile with which it was said.
`To England or The Hermitage?'
`It's all the same to me.'
`Well, then, England it is,' said Stepan Arkadyevich, selecting that restaurant because he owed more there than at The Hermitage, and consequently considered it mean to avoid it. `Have you got a sleigh? That's fine - for I sent my carriage home.'
The friends hardly spoke all the way. Levin was wondering what that change in Kitty's expression had meant, and alternately assuring himself that there was hope, and falling into despair, seeing clearly that his hopes were insane, and yet all the while he felt himself quite another man, utterly unlike what he had been before her smile and those words, `Good-by till this evening.'
Stepan Arkadyevich was absorbed during the drive in composing the menu of the dinner.
`You like turbot, don't you?' he said to Levin as they were arriving.
`Eh?' responded Levin. `Turbot? Yes, I'm awfully fond of turbot.'
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