Chapter 11

`What seems strange to me is that women should seek fresh duties,' said Sergei Ivanovich, `while we see, unhappily, that men usually try to avoid them.'
`Duties are bound up with rights - power, money, honor; those are what women are seeking,' said Pestsov.
`Just as though I should seek the right to be a wet nurse, and feel injured because women are paid for the work, while no one will take me,' said the old Prince.
Turovtsin exploded in a loud roar of laughter, and Sergei Ivanovich regretted that he had not made this comparison. Even Alexei Alexandrovich smiled.
`Yes, but a man can't nurse a baby,' said Pestsov, `while a woman...'
`No, there was an Englishman who did suckle his baby on board ship,' said the old Prince, feeling this freedom in conversation permissible before his own daughters.
`There are as many such Englishmen as there would be women officials,' said Sergei Ivanovich.
`Yes, but what is a girl to do who has no family?' put in Stepan Arkadyevich, thinking of Masha Chibisova, whom he had had in his mind all along, in sympathizing with Pestsov and supporting him.
`If the story of such a girl were thoroughly sifted, you would find she had abandoned a family - her own or a sister's, where she might have found a woman's duties,' Darya Alexandrovna broke in unexpectedly, in a tone of exasperation, probably suspecting what sort of girl Stepan Arkadyevich had in mind.
`But we take our stand on principle, on the ideal,' replied Pestsov in his sonorous bass. `Woman desires to have the right to be independent, educated. She is oppressed, humiliated by the consciousness of her disabilities.'
`And I'm oppressed and humiliated that they won't engage me at the Foundling Asylum,' the old Prince said again, to the huge delight of Turovtsin, who in his mirth dropped his asparagus with the thick end in the sauce.
Chapter 11
Everyone took part in the conversation except Kitty and Levin. At first, when they were talking of the influence that one people has on another, there rose to Levin's mind what he had to say on the subject. But these ideas, once of such importance in his eyes, seemed to come into his brain as in a dream, and had now not the slightest interest for him. It even struck him as strange that they should be so eager to talk of what was of no use to anyone. Kitty, too, one would have supposed, should have been interested in what they were saying of the rights and education of women. How often she had mused on the subject, thinking of her friend abroad, Varenka, of her painful state of dependence; how often she had wondered about herself as to what would become of her if she did not marry, and how often she had argued with her sister about it! But now it did not interest her at all. She and Levin had a conversation of their own, yet not a conversation, but a sort of mysterious communication, which brought them every moment nearer, and stirred in both a sense of glad terror before the unknown into which they were entering.
At first Levin, in answer to Kitty's question how he could have seen her last year in the carriage, told her that he had been coming home from the mowing along the highroad and had met her.
`It was very, very early in the morning. You were probably only just awake. Your maman was asleep in her corner. It was an exquisite morning. I was walking along wondering who it could be in the four-in-hand. It was a splendid set of four horses with bells, and in a second you flashed by, and I saw you at the window - you were sitting, like this; holding the strings of your cap in both hands, and in awfully deep thought about something,' he said, smiling. `How I should like to know what you were thinking about then! Something important?'