Page 44 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

‘I’ll tell you what: let’s go to Gurin’s to lunch, and
there we can talk. I am free till three.’
‘No,’ answered Levin, after an instant’s thought, ‘I have
got to go on somewhere else.’

‘All right, then, let’s dine together.’
‘Dine together? But I have nothing very particular,
only a few words to say, and a question I want to ask you,
and we can have a talk afterwards.’
‘Well, say the few words, then, at once, and we’ll
gossip after dinner.’
‘Well, it’s this,’ said Levin; ‘but it’s of no importance,
though.’
His face all at once took an expression of anger from
the effort he was making to surmount his shyness.
‘What are the Shtcherbatskys doing? Everything as it
used to be?’ he said.
Stepan Arkadyevitch, who had long known that Levin
was in love with his sister-in-law, Kitty, gave a hardly
perceptible smile, and his eyes sparkled merrily.
‘You said a few words, but I can’t answer in a few
words, because.... Excuse me a minute..’
A secretary came in, with respectful familiarity and the
modest consciousness, characteristic of every secretary, of
superiority to his chief in the knowledge of their business;

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