Anna talked not merely naturally and cleverly, but cleverly and
carelessly, attaching no value to her own ideas and giving great
weight to the ideas of the person she was talking to.
The conversation turned on the new movement in art, on the new
illustrations of the Bible by a French artist. Vorkuev attacked
the artist for a realism carried to the point of coarseness.
Levin said that the French had carried conventionality further
than anyone, and that consequently they see a great merit in the
return to realism. In the fact of not lying they see poetry.
Never had anything clever said by Levin given him so much
pleasure as this remark. Anna's face lighted up at once, as at
once she appreciated the thought. She laughed.
"I laugh," she said, "as one laughs when one sees a very true
portrait. What you said so perfectly hits off French art now,
painting and literature too, indeed--Zola, Daudet. But perhaps
it is always so, that men form their conceptions from fictitious,
conventional types, and then--all the _combinaisons_ made--they
are tired of the fictitious figures and begin to invent more
natural, true figures."
"That's perfectly true," said Vorknev.
"So you've been at the club?" she said to her brother.
"Yes, yes, this is a woman!" Levin thought, forgetting himself
and staring persistently at her lovely, mobile face, which at
that moment was all at once completely transformed. Levin did
not hear what she was talking of as she leaned over to her
brother, but he was struck by the change of her expression. Her
face--so handsome a moment before in its repose--suddenly wore a
look of strange curiosity, anger, and pride. But this lasted
only an instant. She dropped her eyelids, as though recollecting
something.
"Oh, well, but that's of no interest to anyone," she said, and
she turned to the English girl.
"Please order the tea in the drawing room," she said in English.
The girl got up and went out.
"Well, how did she get through her examination?" asked Stepan
Arkadyevitch.
"Splendidly! She's a very gifted child and a sweet character."
"It will end in your loving her more than your own."
"There a man speaks. In love there's no more nor less. I love
my daughter with one love, and her with another."
"I was just telling Anna Arkadyevna," said Vorkuev, "that if she
were to put a hundredth part of the energy she devotes to this
English girl to the public question of the education of Russian
children, she would be doing a great and useful work."