Page 1505 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

Never had anything clever said by Levin given him so
much pleasure as this remark. Anna’s face lighted up at
once, as at once she appreciated the thought. She laughed.
‘I laugh,’ she said, ‘as one laughs when one sees a very

true portrait. What you said so perfectly hits off French art
now, painting and literature too, indeed—Zola, Daudet.
But perhaps it is always so, that men form their
conceptions from fictitious, conventional types, and
then—all the combinaisons made—they are tired of the
fictitious figures and begin to invent more natural, true
figures.’
‘That’s perfectly true,’ said Vorknev.
‘So you’ve been at the club?’ she said to her brother.
‘Yes, yes, this is a woman!’ Levin thought, forgetting
himself and staring persistently at her lovely, mobile face,
which at that moment was all at once completely
transformed. Levin did not hear what she was talking of as
she leaned over to her brother, but he was struck by the
change of her expression. Her face—so handsome a
moment before in its repose—suddenly wore a look of
strange curiosity, anger, and pride. But this lasted only an
instant. She dropped her eyelids, as though recollecting
something.

1504 of 1759