that the thought of her approaching motherhood was never for
a moment absent from his mind, a new and delicious bliss, quite
pure from all alloy of sense, in the being near to the woman he
loved. There was no need of speech, yet he longed to hear the
sound of her voice, which like her eyes had changed since she had
been with child. In her voice, as in her eyes, there was that
softness and gravity which is found in people continually
concentrated on some cherished pursuit.

"So you're not tired? Lean more on me," said he.

"No, I'm so glad of a chance of being alone with you, and I must
own, though I'm happy with them, I do regret our winter evenings
alone."

"That was good, but this is even better. Both are better," he
said, squeezing her hand.

"Do you know what we were talking about when you came in?"

"About jam?"

"Oh, yes, about jam too; but afterwards, about how men make
offers."

"Ah!" said Levin, listening more to the sound of her voice than
to the words she was saying, and all the while paying attention
to the road, which passed now through the forest, and avoiding
places where she might make a false step.

"And about Sergey Ivanovitch and Varenka. You've noticed?...
I'm very anxious for it," she went on. "What do you think about
it?" And she peeped into his face.

"I don't know what to think," Levin answered, smiling. "Sergey
seems very strange to me in that way. I told you, you know..."

"Yes, that he was in love with that girl who died...."

"That was when I was a child; I know about it from hearsay and
tradition. I remember him then. He was wonderfully sweet. But
I've watched him since with women; he is friendly, some of them
he likes, but one feels that to him they're simply people, not
women."

"Yes, but now with Varenka...I fancy there's something..."

"Perhaps there is.... But one has to know him.... He's a
peculiar, wonderful person. He lives a spiritual life only.
He's too pure, too exalted a nature."

"Why? Would this lower him, then?"

"No, but he's so used to a spiritual life that he can't reconcile
himself with actual fact, and Varenka is after all fact."

Levin had grown used by now to uttering his thought boldly,
without taking the trouble of clothing it in exact language. He
knew that his wife, in such moments of loving tenderness as now,
would understand what he meant to say from a hint, and she did
understand him.

"Yes, but there's not so much of tha