Page 1498 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

hot it is!’ he said, in spite of twelve degrees of frost,
flinging his open overcoat still wider open.
‘But she has a daughter: no doubt she’s busy looking
after her?’ said Levin.

‘I believe you picture every woman simply as a female,
une couveuse,’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch. ‘If she’s
occupied, it must be with her children. No, she brings her
up capitally, I believe, but one doesn’t hear about her.
She’s busy, in the first place, with what she writes. I see
you’re smiling ironically, but you’re wrong. She’s writing
a children’s book, and doesn’t talk about it to anyone, but
she read it to me and I gave the manuscript to
Vorkuev...you know the publisher...and he’s an author
himself too, I fancy. He understands those things, and he
says it’s a remarkable piece of work. But are you fancying
she’s an authoress?—not a bit of it. She’s a woman with a
heart, before everything, but you’ll see. Now she has a
little English girl with her, and a whole family she’s
looking after.’
‘Oh, something in a philanthropic way?’
‘Why, you will look at everything in the worst light.
It’s not from philanthropy, it’s from the heart. They—that
is, Vronsky— had a trainer, an Englishman, first-rate in his
own line, but a drunkard. He’s completely given up to

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