Page 1756 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

Chapter 19

Going out of the nursery and being again alone, Levin
went back at once to the thought, in which there was
something not clear.
Instead of going into the drawing room, where he
heard voices, he stopped on the terrace, and leaning his
elbows on the parapet, he gazed up at the sky.
It was quite dark now, and in the south, where he was
looking, there were no clouds. The storm had drifted on
to the opposite side of the sky, and there were flashes of
lightning and distant thunder from that quarter. Levin
listened to the monotonous drip from the lime trees in the
garden, and looked at the triangle of stars he knew so well,
and the Milky Way with its branches that ran through its
midst. At each flash of lightning the Milky Way, and even
the bright stars, vanished, but as soon as the lightning died
away, they reappeared in their places as though some hand
had flung them back with careful aim.
‘Well, what is it perplexes me?’ Levin said to himself,
feeling beforehand that the solution of his difficulties was
ready in his soul, though he did not know it yet. ‘Yes, the
one unmistakable, incontestable manifestation of the

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