of half length, and Kitty's very short, showing her shapely ankles and close-fitting red stockings; and why when they went to the Tverskoï Boulevard they had to be accompanied by a lackey with a gilt cockade on his hat,—all these things and many others were absolutely incomprehensible to him. But he felt that all that took place in this mysterious sphere was beautiful, and he was in love especially with this mystery of accomplishment.
While he was a student he almost fell in love with Dolly, the eldest; but she soon married Oblonsky; then he began to be in love with the second. It was as if he felt it to be a necessity to love one of the three, only he could not decide which one he liked the best. But Natalie entered society, and soon married the diplomat, Lvof. Kitty was only a child when Levin left the university. Young Shcherbatsky joined the fleet, and was drowned in the Baltic; and Levin's relations with the family became more distant, in spite of his friendship with Oblonsky. At the beginning of the winter, however, after a year's absence in the country, he had met the Shcherbatskys again, and learned for the first time which of the three he was destined really to love.
It would seem as if there could be nothing simpler for a young man of thirty-two, of good family, possessed of a fair fortune, and likely to be regarded as an eligible suitor, than to ask the young Princess Shcherbatskaya in marriage, and probably Levin would have been accepted as an excellent match. But he was in love, and consequently it seemed to him Kitty was a creature so accomplished, her superiority was so above everything earthly, and he himself was such an earthly insignificant being, that he was unwilling to admit, even in thought, that others or Kitty herself would regard him as worthy of her.
Having spent two months in Moscow, as in a dream, meeting Kitty almost every day in society, which he allowed himself to frequent on account of her, he suddenly concluded that this alliance was impossible, and took his departure for the country. Levin's conclusion that it
