Anna Karenina

up with joy. But the same second he looked round at
the young man, and gave the nervous jerk of his head and neck that
Konstantin knew so well, as if his cravat were choking him; and a
quite different expression- wild, suffering and cruel- rested on his
emaciated face.
"I wrote to you and Sergei Ivanovich both that I don't know you, and
don't want to know you. What is it you want?"
He was not at all the same as Konstantin had been fancying him.
The worst and most oppressive part of his character, which made all
relations with him so difficult, had been forgotten by Konstantin
Levin when he thought of him; and now, when he saw his face, and
especially that nervous twitching of his head, he remembered it all.
{PART_ONE|CHAPTER_XXIV ^paragraph 20}
"I didn't want to see you for anything," he answered timidly.
"I've simply come to see you."
His brother's timidity obviously softened Nikolai. His lips
twitched.
"Oh, so that's it?" he said. "Well, come in; sit down. Like some
supper? Masha, bring supper for three. No, stop a minute. Do you
know who this is?" he said, addressing his brother, and indicating the
gentleman in the Russian coat: "This is Mr. Kritsky, a friend of my
Kiev days- a very remarkable man. He's persecuted by the police, of
course, since he's not a scoundrel."
And he surveyed, as it was a habit of his, everyone in the room.
Seeing that the woman standing in the doorway was starting to go, he
shouted to her. "Wait a minute, I said." And with that inability to
express himself, the incoherence that Konstantin knew so well, he
began, with another look round at everyone, to tell Kritsky's story to
his brother: how he had been expelled from the university for starting
a benevolent society for the poor students, and classes on Sunday, and
how he had afterward been a teacher in a rural school, and had been
driven out of that, too; and had afterward been on trial for something
or other.
"You're of the Kiev University?" said Konstantin Levin to Kritsky,
to break the awkward silence that followed.
{PART_ONE|CHAPTER_XXIV ^paragraph 25}
"Yes- I was in Kiev," Kritsky replied angrily, his face darkening.
"And this woman," Nikolai Levin interrupted him, pointing to her,
"is my lifemate, Marya Nikolaevna. I took her out of a dive, and he
jerked his neck as he said it. "But I love her and respect her, and
anyone who wants to know me," he added, raising his voice and knitting
his brows, "is requested to love her and respect her. She's
precisely the same as a wife to me- precisely. So now you know whom
you've got to do with. And if you think you're lowering yourself-
well, there's the door, and God speed thee!"
And again his eyes traveled inquiringly over all of them.
"But how will I lower myself? I don't understand."
"Then, Masha, tell them to bring supper;