Page 978 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

Chapter 4

‘They’ve come!’ ‘Here he is!’ ‘Which one?’ ‘Rather
young, eh?’ ‘Why, my dear soul, she looks more dead than
alive!’ were the comments in the crowd, when Levin,
meeting his bride in the entrance, walked with her into
the church.
Stepan Arkadyevitch told his wife the cause of the
delay, and the guests were whispering it with smiles to one
another. Levin saw nothing and no one; he did not take
his eyes off his bride.
Everyone said she had lost her looks dreadfully of late,
and was not nearly so pretty on her wedding day as usual;
but Levin did not think so. He looked at her hair done up
high, with the long white veil and white flowers and the
high, stand-up, scalloped collar, that in such a maidenly
fashion hid her long neck at the sides and only showed it
in front, her strikingly slender figure, and it seemed to him
that she looked better than ever—not because these
flowers, this veil, this gown from Paris added anything to
her beauty; but because, in spite of the elaborate
sumptuousness of her attire, the expression of her sweet

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