Anna Karenina

"Varvara Andreevna, when I was very young, I set before myself the ideal of the woman I loved and should be happy to call my wife. I have lived through a long life, and now for the first time I have met what I sought—in you. I love you, and offer you my hand." Sergey Ivanovitch rehearses these words to himself while walking toward Varenka, who's kneeling with the children, guarding mushrooms from Grisha. Her sweet, deep voice: "Come here, little ones! There are so many!" Seeing him, she doesn't get up, but "everything told him that she felt his presence and was glad of it." She points out a mushroom to little Masha, then rises. "This brings back my childhood," she says, moving beside him. They walk in silence. Varenka knows he wants to speak, feels "faint with joy and panic." No one can hear them now, but he doesn't begin. "Against her own will, as it were accidentally," she says: "So you found nothing? In the middle of the wood there are always fewer, though." Sergey is annoyed—he wanted to return to her words about childhood. But he responds: "I have heard that the white edible funguses are found principally at the edge of the wood." More minutes pass. Varenka's heart throbs. She feels herself turning "red and pale and red again." To be Koznishev's wife "was to her imagination the height of happiness." She's frightened, dreading "both his speaking and his not speaking." Sergey sees her flushed cheeks and downcast eyes betraying "painful suspense." He feels to say nothing would slight her. He runs over his arguments, rehearses his words, but "some utterly unexpected reflection" makes him ask: "What is the difference between the 'birch' mushroom and the 'white' mushroom?" Varenka's lips quiver: "In the top part there is scarcely any difference, it's in the stalk." "And as soon as these words were uttered, both he and she felt that it was over, that what was to have been said would not be said." Sergey speaks calmly now: "The birch mushroom's stalk suggests a dark man's chin after two days without shaving." Varenka smiles. They turn toward the children. She feels "both sore and ashamed; at the same time she had a sense of relief." Later, Sergey thinks his decision was mistaken. He cannot be false to Marie's memory. Kitty sees their "calm and somewhat crestfallen faces" and knows her plans failed. "It doesn't bite," she tells Levin, like "a kiss on a priest's hand."