Page 870 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

Dolly was completely comforted in the depression
caused by her conversation with Alexey Alexandrovitch
when she caught sight of the two figures: Kitty with the
chalk in her hand, with a shy and happy smile looking

upwards at Levin, and his handsome figure bending over
the table with glowing eyes fastened one minute on the
table and the next on her. He was suddenly radiant: he
had understood. It meant, ‘Then I could not answer
differently.’
He glanced at her questioningly, timidly.
‘Only then?’
‘Yes,’ her smile answered.
‘And n...and now?’ he asked.
‘Well, read this. I’ll tell you what I should like—should
like so much!’ she wrote the initial letters, i, y, c, f, a, f, w,
h. This meant, ‘If you could forget and forgive what
happened.’
He snatched the chalk with nervous, trembling fingers,
and breaking it, wrote the initial letters of the following
phrase, ‘I have nothing to forget and to forgive; I have
never ceased to love you.’
She glanced at him with a smile that did not waver.
‘I understand,’ she said in a whisper.

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