the door he ran against Marya Nikolayevna, who had just heard of his arrival but had not ventured to knock at his room. She had not changed since he last saw her in Moscow. She wore the same woolen dress, without collar or cuffs, and her pock-marked face expressed the same unfailing good nature.
"Well! How is he? tell me!"
"Very bad. He doesn't sit up, and he is all the time asking for you. You.... she.... Is your wife with you?"
Levin at first did not see why she seemed confused; but she immediately explained herself.
"I am going to the kitchen," she went on to say; "he will be glad; he remembers seeing her abroad."
Levin perceived[1] that she meant his wife, and did not know what to say.
"Come," said he, "let us go to him."
But they had not gone a step before the chamber door opened and Kitty appeared. Levin grew red with vexation and mortification to see his wife in such a predicament; but Marya Nikolayevna was still more confused, and crouching back against the wall ready to cry, she caught the ends of her apron and wound it around her red hands, not knowing what to say or to do.
For an instant Levin saw an expression of lively curiosity in the look with which Kitty regarded this terrible creature, so incomprehensible to her; it lasted but a moment.
"Tell me! what is it? how is he?" she asked, turning to her husband, and then to the woman.
"We cannot talk in the corridor," replied Levin, looking with an expression of annoyance at a gentleman who, with leisurely steps, as if on his own business bent, was coming along the corridor just at this time.
"Well, come into the room, then," said Kitty, addressing the apologetic Marya Nikolayevna; then seeing the look of alarm on her husband's face, she added, "Or
- ↑ Marya Nikolayevna in speaking of Nikolaï Levin as well as of Kitty uses the third person plural, a form of exaggerated obsequiousness common with persons addressing their superiors.
