“You have killed a bear, I’ve been told!” said Kitty, trying assiduously to catch with her fork a perverse mushroom that would slip away, and setting the lace quivering over her white arm. “Are there bears on your place?” she added, turning her charming little head to him and smiling.

There was apparently nothing extraordinary in what she said, but what unutterable meaning there was for him in every sound, in every turn of her lips, her eyes, her hand as she said it! There was entreaty for forgiveness, and trust in him, and tenderness⁠—soft, timid tenderness⁠—and promise and hope and love for him, which he could not but believe in and which choked him with happiness.

“No, we’ve been hunting in the Tver province. It was coming back from there that I met your beau-frère in the train, or your beau-frère’s brother-in-law,” he said with a smile. “It was an amusing meeting.”