Anna Karenina — Chapter 16 (Part 1 of 2)

At ten o'clock the old Prince, Sergei Ivanovich, and Stepan Arkadyevich, were sitting at Levin's. Having inquired after Kitty, they had dropped into conversation upon other subjects. Levin heard them, and unconsciously, as they talked, going over the past, over what they had been up to that morning, he thought of himself as he had been yesterday till that point. It was as though a hundred years had passed since then. He felt himself exalted to unattainable heights, from which he studiously lowered himself so as not to wound the people he was talking to. He talked, and was all the time thinking of his wife, of her present condition, of his son, in whose existence he tried to school himself into believing. The whole world of woman, which had taken for him since his marriage a new value he had never suspected before, was now so exalted that his imagination could not embrace it. He heard them talk of yesterday's dinner at the club, and thought: `What is happening with her now? Is she asleep? How is she? What is she thinking of? Is he crying - my son Dmitrii?' And in the middle of the conversation, in the middle of a sentence, he jumped up and went out of the room.

`Send me word if I can see her,' said the Prince.

`Very well, in a minute,' answered Levin, and without stopping, he went to her room.

She was not asleep, she was talking gently with her mother, making plans about the christening.

Carefully set to rights, with hair well brushed, in a smart little cap with some blue in it, her arms out on the quilt, she was lying on her back. Meeting his eyes, her eyes drew him to her. Her face, bright before, brightened still more as he drew near her. There was the same change in it from earthly to unearthly that is seen in the face of the dead. But there it means farewell - here it meant welcome. Again a rush of emotion, such as he had felt at the moment of the child's birth, flooded his heart. She took his hand and asked him if he had slept. He could not answer, and turned away, realizing his weakness.

`I have had a nap, Kostia!' she said to him. `And I am so comfortable now.'

She looked at him, but suddenly her expression changed.

`Give him to me,' she said, hearing the baby's cry. `Give him to me, Lizaveta Petrovna, and he shall look at him.'

`To be sure, his papa shall look at him,' said Lizaveta Petrovna, getting up and bringing something red, and queer and wriggling. `Wait a minute, we'll array ourselves first,' and Lizaveta Petrovna laid the red wobbling thing on the bed, began untrussing and trussing up the baby, lifting it up and turning it over with one finger and powdering it with something.

Levin, looking at the tiny, pitiful creature, made strenuous efforts to discover in his heart some traces of fatherly feeling for it. He felt nothing toward it but disgust. But when it was undressed and he caught a glimpse of wee, wee, little hands, little feet, saffron-colored, with little toes, too; and even with a little big toe different from the rest, and when he saw Lizaveta Petrovna closing the wide-open little hands, as though they were soft springs, and putting them into linen garments, such pity for the little creature came upon him, and such terror that she would hurt it, that he held her hand back.

Lizaveta Petrovna laughed.

`Don't be frightened, don't be frightened!'

When the baby had been arrayed and transformed into a solid doll, Lizaveta Petrovna dandled it as though proud of her handiwork, and stood a little away so that Levin might see his son in all his glory.

Kitty looked sideways in the same direction, never taking her eyes off the baby. `Give him to me! Give him to me!' she said, and even made as though she would sit up.