Page 1748 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

when there was a sudden flash, the whole earth seemed on
fire, and the vault of heaven seemed crashing overhead.
Opening his blinded eyes, Levin gazed through the thick
veil of rain that separated him now from the copse, and to

his horror the first thing he saw was the green crest of the
familiar oak-tree in the middle of the copse uncannily
changing its position. ‘Can it have been struck?’ Levin
hardly had time to think when, moving more and more
rapidly, the oak tree vanished behind the other trees, and
he heard the crash of the great tree falling upon the others.
The flash of lightning, the crash of thunder, and the
instantaneous chill that ran through him were all merged
for Levin in one sense of terror.
‘My God! my God! not on them!’ he said.
And though he thought at once how senseless was his
prayer that they should not have been killed by the oak
which had fallen now, he repeated it, knowing that he
could do nothing better than utter this senseless prayer.
Running up to the place where they usually went, he
did not find them there.
They were at the other end of the copse under an old
lime-tree; they were calling him. Two figures in dark
dresses (they had been light summer dresses when they
started out) were standing bending over something. It was

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