Page 1307 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

glittering eyes, the soft voice, and quivering jaws,
convinced Vassenka better than any words. He bowed,
shrugging his shoulders, and smiling contemptuously.
‘Can I not see Oblonsky?’

The shrug and the smile did not irritate Levin.
‘What else was there for him to do?’ he thought.
‘I’ll send him to you at once.’
‘What madness is this?’ Stepan Arkadyevitch said when,
after hearing from his friend that he was being turned out
of the house, he found Levin in the garden, where he was
walking about waiting for his guest’s departure. ‘Mais c’est
ridicule! What fly has stung you? Mais c’est du dernier
ridicule! What did you think, if a young man..’
But the place where Levin had been stung was
evidently still sore, for he turned pale again, when Stepan
Arkadyevitch would have enlarged on the reason, and he
himself cut him short.
‘Please don’t go into it! I can’t help it. I feel ashamed of
how I’m treating you and him. But it won’t be, I imagine,
a great grief to him to go, and his presence was distasteful
to me and to my wife.’
‘But it’s insulting to him! Et puis c’est ridicule.’

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