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ANNA KARENINA
353

"enjoying the gentle current of your softly flowing happiness. And here is our friend, Feodor Vasilyevitch who has come at last."

"But I am not a negro. When I have washed, I shall look like a human being," said Katavasof, with his usual pleasantry, offering his hand, and laughing, so that his white teeth gleamed out from his dusty face.

"Kostia will be very glad. He is out on the farm, but he ought to be back by this time."

"Always occupied with his estate," said Katavasof. "The rest of us can think of nothing but the Serbian war. How does my friend regard this subject? He is sure not to think as other people do."

"Yes, he does, .... but .... perhaps not like everybody," said Kitty, a little confused, looking at Sergyeï Ivanovitch. "I will send some one to find him. We have papa with us just now; he has recently come back from abroad."

And Kitty, while making her arrangements to send for Levin, and to furnish her guests a chance to wash off the dust — the one in the library, the other in the room assigned to Dolly — and then to have luncheon ready for them, enjoyed the full power of quick motion which before her baby was born she had been so long deprived of. Then she went to the balcony where her father was: —

"It's Sergyeï Ivanovitch and Professor Katavasof."

"Okh! in this heat! It will be a bore!"

"Not at all, papa; he is very nice, and Kostia loves him dearly," said Kitty, laughing at the expression of consternation on her father's face.

"Go entertain them, dushenka," she said to her sister. "They saw Stiva at the station; he was well. And I am going to the baby for a little while. I actually have not nursed him since morning; he will be crying if I don't go," and she, feeling the pressure of milk, hastened to the nursery. In reality it had not been guesswork with her, — the tie that bound her to the child was still unbroken, — she actually knew by the flow of milk that he needed something to eat. Even before she reached