Page 351 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

‘In shall find out for certain whether she’s married, or
when she’s going to be married,’ he thought. And on that
delicious spring day he felt that the thought of her did not
hurt him at all.

‘Well, you didn’t expect me, eh?’ said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, getting out of the sledge, splashed with mud
on the bridge of his nose, on his cheek, and on his
eyebrows, but radiant with health and good spirits. ‘I’ve
come to see you in the first place,’ he said, embracing and
kissing him, ‘to have some stand-shooting second, and to
sell the forest at Ergushovo third.’
‘Delightful! What a spring we’re having! How ever did
you get along in a sledge?’
‘In a cart it would have been worse still, Konstantin
Dmitrievitch,’ answered the driver, who knew him.
‘Well, I’m very, very glad to see you,’ said Levin, with
a genuine smile of childlike delight.
Levin let his friend to the room set apart for visitors,
where Stepan Arkadyevitch’s things were carried also—a
bag, a gun in a case, a satchel for cigars. Leaving him there
to wash and change his clothes, Levin went off to the
counting house to speak about the ploughing and clover.
Agafea Mihalovna, always very anxious for the credit of
the house, met him in the hall with inquiries about dinner.

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