CHAPTER 7

WHEN THE GROUP finished eating and rose from the table, Levin would have liked to follow Kitty into the drawing room, but he was afraid she might dislike this as too obviously paying her attention. He remained in the little ring of men, taking part in the general conversation, and without looking at Kitty, he was aware of her movements, her looks, and the place where she was in the drawing room.

“I thought you were going toward the piano,” he said, at last approaching her. “That’s something I miss in the country—music.”

She rewarded him with a smile that was like a gift. “What do they want to argue for? No one ever convinces anyone, you know.”

“Yes, that’s true,” said Levin. “It generally happens that one argues hotly simply because one can’t make out what one’s opponent wants to prove.”

And with that the two in the drawing room, with their beloved-companions standing back a deferential distance, closed their eyes against the discussion in the other room, and felt at once that all the world was theirs alone. Kitty, going up to a game table, sat down, and, taking up a mini-blade, began drawing diverging circles over the new acetate surface.

They began on another of the subjects that had been started at dinner—the liberty and occupations of women. Levin was of the opinion of Darya Alexandrovna that a girl who did not marry should find a woman’s duties in a family: that of petite mécanicienne, maintaining the Class Is of the household.

“No,” said Kitty, blushing, but looking at him all the more boldly with her truthful eyes, “a girl may be so positioned that she cannot live in the family without humiliation, while she herself. . .”

At the hint he understood her.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “Yes, yes, yes—you’re right, you’re right!”

Socrates and Tatiana exchanged a knowing look, and then both enacted an exceedingly rare gesture, in tacit acknowledgment of the powerful mood of intimacy blossoming between their respective masters: reaching up at the same moment beneath their chins, they put themselves in Surcease.

A silence followed. She was still tracing shapes with the blade on the table. Kitty’s eyes were shining with a soft light. Under the influence of her mood he felt in all his being a continually growing tension of happiness.

“Ah! I’ve scratched figures all over the acetate!” she said, and, laying down the little blade, she made a movement as though to get up.

“What! Shall I be left alone—without her?” he thought with horror, and he took the knife. “Wait a minute,” he said, sitting down to the table. “I’ve long wanted to ask you one thing.”

He looked straight into her caressing, though frightened eyes.

“Please, ask it.”

“Here,” he said, and he carved the initial letters: w, y, t, m, i, c, n, b, d, t, m, n, o, t. These letters meant: When you told me it could never be, did that mean never, or then? There seemed no likelihood that she could make out this complicated sentence; among the thousands of miraculous innovations groznium had gifted to the Russian people, mind-reading remained as impossible as it was in the time of the Tsars.

But Levin looked at her as though his life depended on her understanding the words. She glanced at him seriously, then leaned her puckered brow on her hands and began to read. Once or twice she stole a look at him, as though asking him, Is it what I think?

“I understand,” she said, flushing a little.

“What is this word?” he said, pointing to the n that stood for never.

“It means never” she said, “but that’s not true!”

He quickly laid down another sheet of acetate, gave her the blade, and stood up. She scratched: t, i, c, n, a, d.

Dolly was completely relieved of the depression caused by her conversation with Alexei Alexandrovich when she caught sight of the four figures Tatiana and Socrates in their meaningful Surcease; Kitty with the penknife in her hand, with a shy and happy smile looking upward 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 etched the initial letters: i, y, c, fa, fw, h. This meant: if you could forget and forgive what happened. He snatched the knife with nervous, trembling fingers, and wrote the initial letters of the following phrase: I have nothing to forget and 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.

He sat down and scratched out a long phrase, requiring him to roll out a third sheet of acetate. She understood it all, and without asking him, “Is it this?” took the blade and at once answered.

For a long while he could not understand what she had written, and often looked into her eyes. He was stupefied with happiness. He could not supply the word she had meant; but in her charming eyes, beaming with happiness, he saw all he needed to know. And he scratched out three letters. But he had hardly finished writing when she read them over her arm, and herself finished and wrote the answer, Yes.

Levin rose, beaming, and escorted Kitty to the door, their two revivified Class Ills trailing behind, arm in arm.

In their conversation everything had been said; it had been said that she loved him, and that she would tell her father and mother that he would come tomorrow morning.