Running up to the place where they usually went, he did not find them there.

They were at the other end of the copse under an old lime-tree; they were calling him.  Two figures in dark dresses (they had been light summer dresses when they started out) were standing bending over something.  It was Kitty with the nurse.  The rain was already ceasing, and it was beginning to get light when Levin reached them.  The nurse was not wet on the lower part of her dress, but Kitty was drenched through, and her soaked clothes clung to her.  Though the rain was over, they still stood in the same position in which they had been standing when the storm broke.  Both stood bending over a perambulator with a green umbrella.

“Alive?  Unhurt?  Thank God!” he said, splashing with his soaked boots through the standing water and running up to them.

Kitty’s rosy wet face was turned towards him, and she smiled timidly under her shapeless sopped hat.

“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?  I can’t think how you can be so reckless!” he said angrily to his wife.

“It wasn’t my fault, really.  We were just meaning to go, when he made such a to-do that we had to change him.  We were just...”  Kitty began defending herself.

Mitya was unharmed, dry, and still fast asleep.

“Well, thank God!  I don’t know what I’m saying!”

They gathered up the baby’s wet belongings; the nurse picked up the baby and carried it.  Levin walked beside his wife, and, penitent for having been angry, he squeezed her hand when the nurse was not looking.

Chapter 18

During the whole of that day, in the extremely different conversations in which he took part, only as it were with the top layer of his mind, in spite of the disappointment of not finding the change he expected in himself, Levin had been all the while joyfully conscious of the fulness of his heart.

After the rain it was too wet to go for a walk; besides, the storm clouds still hung about the horizon, and gathered here and there, black and thundery, on the rim of the sky.  The whole party spent the rest of the day in the house.

No more discussions sprang up; on the contrary, after dinner every one was in the most amiable frame of mind.

At first Katavasov amused the ladies by his original jokes, which always pleased people on their first acquaintance with him.  Then Sergey Ivanovitch induced him to tell them about the very interesting observations he had made on the habits and characteristics of common houseflies, and their life.  Sergey Ivanovitch, too, was in good spirits, and at tea his brother drew him on to explain his views of the future of the Eastern question, and he spoke so simply and so well, that everyone listened eagerly.

Kitty was the only one who did not hear it all—­she was summoned to give Mitya his bath.