Page 594 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

sincerity, believed it necessary to teach her children
French in that way.
‘But why are you going? Do stay a little.’
Levin stayed to tea; but his good-humor had vanished,

and he felt ill at ease.
After tea he went out into the hall to order his horses
to be put in, and, when he came back, he found Darya
Alexandrovna greatly disturbed, with a troubled face, and
tears in her eyes. While Levin had been outside, an
incident had occurred which had utterly shattered all the
happiness she had been feeling that day, and her pride in
her children. Grisha and Tanya had been fighting over a
ball. Darya Alexandrovna, hearing a scream in the nursery,
ran in and saw a terrible sight. Tanya was pulling Grisha’s
hair, while he, with a face hideous with rage, was beating
her with his fists wherever he could get at her. Something
snapped in Darya Alexandrovna’s heart when she saw this.
It was as if darkness had swooped down upon her life; she
felt that these children of hers, that she was so proud of,
were not merely most ordinary, but positively bad, ill-bred
children, with coarse, brutal propensities—wicked
children.
She could not talk or think of anything else, and she
could not speak to Levin of her misery.

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