Page 1287 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

was pointing at grouse, and with an inward prayer for
luck, especially with the first bird, he ran up to her.
Coming quite close up to her, he could from his height
look beyond her, and he saw with his eyes what she was

seeing with her nose. In a space between two little
thickets, to a couple of yards’ distance, he could see a
grouse. Turning its head, it was listening. Then lightly
preening and folding its wings, it disappeared round a
corner with a clumsy wag of its tail.
‘Fetch it, fetch it!’ shouted Levin, giving Laska a shove
from behind.
‘But I can’t go,’ thought Laska. ‘Where am I to go?
From here I feel them, but if I move forward I shall know
nothing of where they are or who they are.’ But then he
shoved her with his knee, and in an excited whisper said,
‘Fetch it, Laska.’
‘Well, if that’s what he wishes, I’ll do it, but I can’t
answer for myself now,’ she thought, and darted forward
as fast as her legs would carry her between the thick
bushes. She scented nothing now; she could only see and
hear, without understanding anything.
Ten paces from her former place a grouse rose with a
guttural cry and the peculiar round sound of its wings.
And immediately after the shot it splashed heavily with its

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