“And I have confidence in myself when you are leaning on me,” he said, but was at once panic-stricken at what he had said, and blushed. And indeed, no sooner had he uttered these words, when all at once, like the sun going behind a cloud, her face lost all its friendliness, and Levin detected the familiar change in her expression that denoted the working of thought; a crease showed on her smooth brow.
“Is there anything troubling you?—though I’ve no right to ask such a question,” he added hurriedly.
“Oh, why so? … No, I have nothing to trouble me,” she responded coldly; and she added immediately: “You haven’t seen Mlle. Linon, have you?”
“Not yet.”
“Go and speak to her, she likes you so much.”
“What’s wrong? I have offended her. Lord help me!” thought Levin, and he flew towards the old Frenchwoman with the gray ringlets, who was sitting on a bench. Smiling and showing her false teeth, she greeted him as an old friend.
“Yes, you see we’re growing up,” she said to him, glancing towards Kitty, “and growing old. Tiny bear has grown big now!” pursued the Frenchwoman, laughing, and she reminded him of his joke about the three young ladies whom he had compared to the three bears in the English nursery tale. “Do you remember that’s what you used to call them?”
He remembered absolutely nothing, but she had been laughing at the joke for ten years now, and was fond of it.
“Now, go and skate, go and skate. Our Kitty has learned to skate nicely, hasn’t she?”