Page 593 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

musingly. ‘So you won’t come to see us, then, when
Kitty’s here?’
‘No, I shan’t come. Of course I won’t avoid meeting
Katerina Alexandrovna, but as far as I can, I will try to

save her the annoyance of my presence.’
‘You are very, very absurd,’ repeated Darya
Alexandrovna, looking with tenderness into his face. ‘Very
well then, let it be as though we had not spoken of this.
What have you come for, Tanya?’ she said in French to
the little girl who had come in.
‘Where’s my spade, mamma?’
‘I speak French, and you must too.’
The little girl tried to say it in French, but could not
remember the French for spade; the mother prompted
her, and then told her in French where to look for the
spade. And this made a disagreeable impression on Levin.
Everything in Darya Alexandrovna’s house and
children struck him now as by no means so charming as a
little while before. ‘And what does she talk French with
the children for?’ he thought; ‘how unnatural and false it
is! And the children feel it so: Learning French and
unlearning sincerity,’ he thought to himself, unaware that
Darya Alexandrovna had thought all that over twenty
times already, and yet, even at the cost of some loss of

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