Chapter 10

`And how is she - better?' Levin asked in agitation.

`Thank God, she's quite well again. I never believed her lungs were affected.'

`Oh, I'm very glad!' said Levin, and Dolly fancied she saw something touching, helpless, in his face as he said this and looked silently into her face.

`Let me ask you, Konstantin Dmitrievich,' said Darya Alexandrovna, smiling her kindly and rather mocking smile, `why are you angry with Kitty?'

`I? I'm not angry with her,' said Levin.

`Yes, you are. Why was it you did not come to see us or them when you were in Moscow?'

`Darya Alexandrovna,' he said, blushing up to the roots of his hair, `I wonder really that with your kind heart you don't feel this. How it is you feel no pity for me, if nothing else, when you know...'

`What do I know?'

`You know that I proposed and was refused,' said Levin, and all the tenderness he had been feeling for Kitty a minute before was replaced by a feeling of anger for the slight he had suffered.

`What makes you suppose I know?'

`Because everybody knows it....'

`That's just where you are mistaken; I did not know it, though I had guessed it was so.'

`Well, now you know it.'

`All I knew was that something had happened that made her dreadfully miserable, and that she begged me never to speak of it. And if she would not tell me, she would certainly not speak of it to anyone else. But what did pass between you? Tell me.'

`I have told you.'

`When was it?'

`When I was at their house the last time.'

`Do you know,' said Darya Alexandrovna, `I am awfully, awfully sorry for her. You suffer only from pride....'

`Perhaps so,' said Levin, `but...'

She interrupted him.

`But she, poor girl... I am awfully, awfully sorry for her. Now I see it all.'

`Well, Darya Alexandrovna, you must excuse me,' he said, getting up. `Good-by, Darya Alexandrovna, till we meet again.'

`No, wait a minute,' she said, clutching him by the sleeve. `Wait a minute, sit down.'