Page 981 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

It was a long while before Levin could make out what
was expected of him. For a long time they tried to set him
right and made him begin again—because he kept taking
Kitty by the wrong arm or with the wrong arm—till he

understood at last that what he had to do was, without
changing his position, to take her right hand in his right
hand. When at last he had taken the bride’s hand in the
correct way, the priest walked a few paces in front of them
and stopped at the lectern. The crowd of friends and
relations moved after them, with a buzz of talk and a rustle
of skirts. Someone stooped down and pulled out the
bride’s train. The church became so still that the drops of
wax could be heard falling from the candles.
The little old priest in his ecclesiastical cap, with his
long silvery-gray locks of hair parted behind his ears, was
fumbling with something at the lectern, putting out his
little old hands from under the heavy silver vestment with
the gold cross on the back of it.
Stepan Arkadyevitch approached him cautiously,
whispered something, and making a sign to Levin, walked
back again.
The priest lighted two candles, wreathed with flowers,
and holding them sideways so that the wax dropped
slowly from them he turned, facing the bridal pair. The

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