第296章

`Ivan Petrovich and I settled in Alexei's study,' she said in answer to Stepan Arkadyevich's question whether he might smoke, `just so as to be able to smoke' - and glancing at Levin, instead of asking whether he would smoke, she pulled closer a tortoise-shell cigarette case and took a corn-leaf cigarette.

`How are you feeling today?' her brother asked her.

`Oh, nothing. Nerves, as usual.'

`Yes, isn't it extraordinarily fine?' said Stepan Arkadyevich, noticing that Levin was glancing at the picture.

`I have never seen a better portrait.'

`And extraordinarily like, isn't it?' said Vorkuev.

Levin looked from the portrait to the original. A peculiar brilliance lighted up Anna's face when she felt his eyes on her. Levin flushed, and to cover his confusion would have asked whether she had seen Darya Alexandrovna lately; but at that moment Anna spoke:

`We were just talking, Ivan Petrovich and I, of Vashchenkov's last pictures. Have you seen them?'

`Yes, I have seen them,' answered Levin.

`But, I beg your pardon, I interrupted you... You were saying?...'

Levin asked if she had seen Dolly lately.

`She was here yesterday. She was very indignant with the high school people on Grisha's account. The Latin teacher, it seems, had been unfair to him.'

`Yes, I have seen his pictures. I didn't care for them very much,'

Levin went back to the subject she had started.

Levin talked now not at all with that purely businesslike attitude to the subject with which he had been talking all the morning. Every word in his conversation with her had a special significance. And talking to her was pleasant; still pleasanter was it to listen to her.

Anna talked not merely naturally and cleverly, but cleverly and carelessly, attaching no value to her own ideas and giving great weight to the ideas of the person she was talking to.

The conversation turned on the new movement in art, on the new illustrations of the Bible by a French artist. Vorkuev attacked the artist for a realism carried to the point of coarseness. Levin said that the French had carried conventionality further than anyone, and that consequently they see a great merit in the return to realism. In the fact of not lying they see poetry.

Never had anything clever said by Levin given him so much pleasure as this remark. Anna's face lighted up at once, as she immediately appreciated the thought. She laughed.

`I laugh,' she said, `as one laughs when one sees a very true portrait. What you said so perfectly hits off French art now, painting - and literature too, indeed - Zola, Daudet. But perhaps it is always so, that men form their conceptions from fictitious, conventional types, and then - all the combinaisons made - they are tired of the fictitious figures and begin to invent more natural, true figures.'

`That's perfectly true,' said Vorkuev.

`So you've been at the club?' she said to her brother.

`Yes, yes, this a woman!' Levin thought, forgetting himself and staring persistently at her lovely, mobile face, which at that moment was all at once completely transformed. Levin did not hear what she was talking of as she leaned over to her brother, but he was struck by the change of her expression. Her face - so handsome a moment before in its repose -suddenly wore a look of strange curiosity, anger, and pride. But this lasted only an instant. She half-closed her eyes, as though recollecting something.

`Oh, well, but that's of no interest to anyone,' she said, and she turned to the English girl.

`Please order the tea in the drawing room,' she said in English.

The girl got up and went out.

`Well, how did she get through her examination?' asked Stepan Arkadyevich.

`Splendidly! She's a very gifted child and a sweet character.'

`It will end in your loving her more than your own.'

`There a man speaks. In love there's no such thing as more or less. I love my daughter with one love, and her with another.'

`I was just telling Anna Arkadyevna,' said Vorkuev, `that if she were to put a hundredth part of the energy she devotes to this English girl to the public question of the education of Russian children, she would be doing a great and useful work.'

`Yes, but I can't help it; I couldn't do it. Count Alexei Kirillovich urged me very much' (as she uttered the words Count Alexei Kirillovich she glanced with appealing timidity at Levin, and he unconsciously responded with a respectful and reassuring look), `he urged me to take up the school in the village. I visited it several times. The children were very dear, but I could not feel drawn to the work. You speak of energy. Energy rests upon love; and, come as it will, there's no forcing it. I took to this child - I could not myself say why.'

And she glanced again at Levin. And her smile and her glance -all told him that it was to him only she was addressing her words, valuing his good opinion, and at the same time sure beforehand that they understood one another.

`I quite understand that,' Levin answered. `It's impossible to give one's heart to a school or such institutions in general, and I believe that that's just why philanthropic institutions always give such poor results.'

She was silent for a while, then she smiled. `Yes, yes,' she agreed;`I never could. Je n'ai pas le coeur assez large to love a whole asylum of horrid little girls. Cela ne m'a jamais réussi .

There are so many women who have made themselves une position sociale in that way. And now more than ever,' she said with a mournful, confiding expression, ostensibly addressing her brother, but unmistakably intending her words only for Levin, `now when I have such need of some occupation, I cannot.' And suddenly frowning (Levin saw that she was frowning at herself for talking about herself) she changed the subject. `I know about you,'

she said to Levin; `that you're not a public-spirited citizen, and I have defended you to the best of my ability.'

`How have you defended me?'

`Oh, according to the attacks made on you. But won't you have some tea?' She rose and took up a book bound in morocco.