"I understand," she said, flushing a little.

"What is this word?" he said, pointing to the n that stood for

_never_.

"It means _never_," she said; "but that's not true!"

He quickly rubbed out what he had written, gave her the chalk,

and stood up. She wrote, _t, i, c, n, a, d_.

Dolly was completely comforted in the depression caused by her

conversation with Alexey Alexandrovitch when she caught sight of

the two figures: Kitty with the chalk in her hand, with a shy and

happy smile looking upwards at Levin, and his handsome figure

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bending over the table with glowing eyes fastened one minute on

the table and the next on her. He was suddenly radiant: he had

understood. It meant, "Then I could not answer differently."

He glanced at her questioningly, timidly.

"Only then?"

"Yes," her smile answered.

"And n...and now?" he asked.

"Well, read this. I'll tell you what I should like--should like

so much!" she wrote the initial letters, i, y, c, f, a, f, w, h.

This meant, "If you could forget and forgive what happened."

He snatched the chalk with nervous, trembling fingers, and

breaking it, wrote the initial letters of the following phrase,

"I have nothing to forget and to forgive; I have never ceased to

love you."

She glanced at him with a smile that did not waver.

"I understand," she said in a whisper.

He sat down and wrote a long phrase. She understood it all, and

without asking him, "Is it this?" took the chalk and at once

answered.

For a long while he could not understand what she had written,

and often looked into her eyes. He was stupefied with happiness.

He could not supply the word she had meant; but in her charming

eyes, beaming with happiness, he saw all he needed to know. And

he wrote three letters. But he had hardly finished writing when

she read them over her arm, and herself finished and wrote the

answer, "Yes."

"You're playing _secrétaire_?" said the old prince. "But we must

really be getting along if you want to be in time at the

theater."

Levin got up and escorted Kitty to the door.

In their conversation everything had been said; it had been said

that she loved him, and that she would tell her father and mother

that he would come tomorrow morning.




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