Page 1218 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

Chapter 4

Varenka, with her white kerchief on her black hair,
surrounded by the children, gaily and good-humoredly
looking after them, and at the same time visibly excited at
the possibility of receiving a declaration from the man she
cared for, was very attractive. Sergey Ivanovitch walked
beside her, and never left off admiring her. Looking at her,
he recalled all the delightful things he had heard from her
lips, all the good he knew about her, and became more
and more conscious that the feeling he had for her was
something special that he had felt long, long ago, and only
once, in his early youth. The feeling of happiness in being
near her continually grew, and at last reached such a point
that, as he put a huge, slender-stalked agaric fungus in her
basket, he looked straight into her face, and noticing the
flush of glad and alarmed excitement that overspread her
face, he was confused himself, and smiled to her in silence
a smile that said too much.
‘If so,’ he said to himself, ‘I ought to think it over and
make up my mind, and not give way like a boy to the
impulse of a moment.’

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