Her disbelief in his self-dissatisfaction delighted him, and unconsciously he tried to draw her into giving utterance to the grounds of her disbelief.
“I am happy, but dissatisfied with myself....” he said.
“Why, how can you be dissatisfied with yourself if you are happy?”
“Well, how shall I say?... In my heart I really care for nothing whatever but that you should not stumble—see? Oh, but really you mustn’t skip about like that!” he cried, breaking off to scold her for too agile a movement in stepping over a branch that lay in the path. “But when I think about myself, and compare myself with others, especially with my brother, I feel I’m a poor creature.”
“But in what way?” Kitty pursued with the same smile. “Don’t you too work for others? What about your co-operative settlement, and your work on the estate, and your book?...”
“Oh, but I feel, and particularly just now—it’s your fault,” he said, pressing her hand—“that all that doesn’t count. I do it in a way halfheartedly. If I could care for all that as I care for you!... Instead of that, I do it in these days like a task that is set me.”
“Well, what would you say about papa?” asked Kitty. “Is he a poor creature then, as he does nothing for the public good?”
“He?—no! But then one must have the simplicity, the straightforwardness, the goodness of your father: and I haven’t got that. I do nothing, and I fret about it. It’s all your doing. Before there was you—and this too,” he added with a glance towards her waist that she understood—“I put all my energies into work; now I can’t, and I’m ashamed; I do it just as though it were a task set me, I’m pretending....”
“Well, but would you like to change this minute with Sergey Ivanovitch?” said Kitty. “Would you like to do this work for the general good, and to love the task set you, as he does, and nothing else?”
“Of course not,” said Levin. “But I’m so happy that I don’t understand anything. So you think he’ll make her an offer today?” he added after a brief silence.