Page 68 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

detected the familiar change in her expression that
denoted the working of thought; a crease showed on her
smooth brow.
‘Is there anything troubling you?—though I’ve no right

to ask such a question,’ he added hurriedly.
‘Oh, why so?.... No, I have nothing to trouble me,’ she
responded coldly; and she added immediately: ‘You
haven’t seen Mlle. Linon, have you?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Go and speak to her, she likes you so much.’
‘What’s wrong? I have offended her. Lord help me!’
thought Levin, and he flew towards the old Frenchwoman
with the gray ringlets, who was sitting on a bench. Smiling
and showing her false teeth, she greeted him as an old
friend.
‘Yes, you see we’re growing up,’ she said to him,
glancing towards Kitty, ‘and growing old. Tiny bear has
grown big now!’ pursued the Frenchwoman, laughing,
and she reminded him of his joke about the three young
ladies whom he had compared to the three bears in the
English nursery tale. ‘Do you remember that’s what you
used to call them?’
He remembered absolutely nothing, but she had been
laughing at the joke for ten years now, and was fond of it.

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