that every family, however poor or rich, has and must have some one to look after the children.
"No," said Kitty, blushing but looking at him frankly with her honest eyes; "a girl may be so situated that she cannot without humiliation go into a family, but she herself ...."
He understood what she hinted at.
"Oh, yes," he said; "yes, yes, yes, you are right."
And he realized all that Pestsof was trying to prove at dinner about the freedom of women merely by the fact that he saw in Kitty's heart a maiden's dread of humiliation, and, loving her, he experienced this dread and this humiliation, and immediately renounced his former arguments.
A silence ensued. She went on making designs with the chalk on the table. Her eyes shone with a gentle gleam. Submitting to her mood, he felt in his being all the increasing tension of happiness.
"Akh! I have covered the table with my scrawls," said she, laying down the chalk, with a movement as if she were going to rise.
"How can I stay alone without her?" thought Levin, terrified, and picking up the chalk.
"Wait," said he, sitting down at the table. "I have wanted for a long time to ask you something."
He looked straight into her affectionate but nevertheless startled eyes.
"Please, what is it ?"
"This is it," said he, taking the chalk, and writing the letters w, y, s, i, i, i, w, i, i, t, o, a ? These letters were the initials of the words, "When you said, 'It is impossible,' was it impossible then, or always?"
It was not at all likely that Kitty would be able to make out this complicated question. Levin looked at her, nevertheless, as if his life depended on whether she could guess these words or not.
She looked at him gravely, then rested her forehead on her hand and tried to decipher it. Occasionally she would look up at him, asking him with her eyes: "Is what I think right?"
