t actual fact about her as
about me. I can see that he would never have cared for me. She
is altogether spiritual."

"Oh, no, he is so fond of you, and I am always so glad when my
people like you...."

"Yes, he's very nice to me; but..."

"It's not as it was with poor Nikolay...you really cared for
each other," Levin finished. "Why not speak of him?" he added.
"I sometimes blame myself for not; it ends in one's forgetting.
Ah, how terrible and dear he was!... Yes, what were we talking
about?" Levin said, after a pause.

"You think he can't fall in love," said Kitty, translating into
her own language.

"It's not so much that he can't fall in love," Levin said,
smiling, "but he has not the weakness necessary.... I've always
envied him, and even now, when I'm so happy, I still envy him."

"You envy him for not being able to fall in love?"

"I envy him for being better than I," said Levin. "He does not
live for himself. His whole life is subordinated to his duty.
And that's why he can be calm and contented."

"And you?" Kitty asked, with an ironical and loving smile.

She could never have explained the chain of thought that made her
smile; but the last link in it was that her husband, in exalting
his brother and abasing himself, was not quite sincere. Kitty
knew that this insincerity came from his love for his brother,
from his sense of shame at being too happy, and above all from
his unflagging craving to be better--she loved it in him, and so
she smiled.

"And you? What are you dissatisfied with?" she asked, with the
same smile.

Her disbelief in his self-dissatisfaction delighted him, and
unconsciously he tried to draw her into giving utterance to the
grounds of her disbelief.

"I am happy, but dissatisfied with myself..." he said.

"Why, how can you be dissatisfied with yourself if you are
happy?"

"Well, how shall I say?... In my heart I really care for nothing
whatever but that you should not stumble--see? Oh, but really
you mustn't skip about like that!" he cried, breaking off to
scold her for too agile a movement in stepping over a branch that
lay in the path. "But when I think about myself, and compare
myself with others, especially with my brother, I feel I'm a poor
creature."

"But in what way?" Kitty pursued with the same smile. "Don't you
too work for others? What about your co-operative settlement,
and your work on the estate, and your book?..."

"Oh, but I feel, and part