Page 50 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

In his student days he had all but been in love with the
eldest, Dolly, but she was soon married to Oblonsky.
Then he began being in love with the second. He felt, as
it were, that he had to be in love with one of the sisters,

only he could not quite make out which. But Natalia, too,
had hardly made her appearance in the world when she
married the diplomat Lvov. Kitty was still a child when
Levin left the university. Young Shtcherbatsky went into
the navy, was drowned in the Baltic, and Levin’s relations
with the Shtcherbatskys, in spite of his friendship with
Oblonsky, became less intimate. But when early in the
winter of this year Levin came to Moscow, after a year in
the country, and saw the Shtcherbatskys, he realized
which of the three sisters he was indeed destined to love.
One would have thought that nothing could be simpler
than for him, a man of good family, rather rich than poor,
and thirty-two years old, to make the young Princess
Shtcherbatskaya an offer of marriage; in all likelihood he
would at once have been looked upon as a good match.
But Levin was in love, and so it seemed to him that Kitty
was so perfect in every respect that she was a creature far
above everything earthly; and that he was a creature so
low and so earthly that it could not even be conceived

49 of 1759