Page 44 - ANNA KARENINA
P. 44

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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