Page 706 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

his boat leaked, but he did not look for the leak, perhaps
purposely deceiving himself. (Nothing would be left him
if he lost faith in it.) But now he could deceive himself no
longer. The farming of the land, as he was managing it,

had become not merely unattractive but revolting to him,
and he could take no further interest in it.
To this now was joined the presence, only twenty-five
miles off, of Kitty Shtcherbatskaya, whom he longed to
see and could not see. Darya Alexandrovna Oblonskaya
had invited him, when he was over there, to come; to
come with the object of renewing his offer to her sister,
who would, so she gave him to understand, accept him
now. Levin himself had felt on seeing Kitty
Shtcherbatskaya that he had never ceased to love her; but
he could not go over to the Oblonskys’, knowing she was
there. The fact that he had made her an offer, and she had
refused him, had placed an insuperable barrier between her
and him. ‘I can’t ask her to be my wife merely because she
can’t be the wife of the man she wanted to marry,’ he said
to himself. The thought of this made him cold and hostile
to her. ‘I should not be able to speak to her without a
feeling of reproach; I could not look at her without
resentment; and she will only hate me all the more, as
she’s bound to. And besides, how can I now, after what

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