Page 1747 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

‘Katerina Alexandrovna?’ Levin asked of Agafea
Mihalovna, who met them with kerchiefs and rugs in the
hall.
‘We thought she was with you,’ she said.

‘And Mitya?’
‘In the copse, he must be, and the nurse with him.’
Levin snatched up the rugs and ran towards the copse.
In that brief interval of time the storm clouds had
moved on, covering the sun so completely that it was dark
as an eclipse. Stubbornly, as though insisting on its rights,
the wind stopped Levin, and tearing the leaves and flowers
off the lime trees and stripping the white birch branches
into strange unseemly nakedness, it twisted everything on
one side—acacias, flowers, burdocks, long grass, and tall
tree-tops. The peasant girls working in the garden ran
shrieking into shelter in the servants’ quarters. The
streaming rain had already flung its white veil over all the
distant forest and half the fields close by, and was rapidly
swooping down upon the copse. The wet of the rain
spurting up in tiny drops could be smelt in the air.
Holding his head bent down before him, and struggling
with the wind that strove to tear the wraps away from
him, Levin was moving up to the copse and had just
caught sight of something white behind the oak tree,

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