Page 1544 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

Chapter 16

At ten o’clock the old prince, Sergey Ivanovitch, and
Stepan Arkadyevitch were sitting at Levin’s. Having
inquired after Kitty, they had dropped into conversation
upon other subjects. Levin heard them, and unconsciously,
as they talked, going over the past, over what had been up
to that morning, he thought of himself as he had been
yesterday till that point. It was as though a hundred years
had passed since then. He felt himself exalted to
unattainable heights, from which he studiously lowered
himself so as not to wound the people he was talking to.
He talked, and was all the time thinking of his wife, of her
condition now, of his son, in whose existence he tried to
school himself into believing. The whole world of
woman, which had taken for him since his marriage a new
value he had never suspected before, was now so exalted
that he could not take it in in his imagination. He heard
them talk of yesterday’s dinner at the club, and thought:
‘What is happening with her now? Is she asleep? How is
she? What is she thinking of? Is he crying, my son
Dmitri?’ And in the middle of the conversation, in the

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