“Oh, for a girl in any case there’s nothing so awful about it. All girls take pride in being proposed to.”
“All girls, yes, but not her.”
Oblonsky smiled. He understood this feeling of Levin’s very well, he knew that for him all the girls in the world were divided into two kinds: one kind was—all the girls in the world except her, and those girls had every human frailty and were very commonplace girls; the other kind was—she alone, with no frailties at all and far beyond all mankind.
“Wait a second, you must have some of this sauce,” he said, keeping Levin’s hand from pushing the sauce away.
Levin obediently helped himself to the sauce, but did not give Oblonsky a chance to eat.
“No, now you listen—listen!” he said. “You can understand that for me this is a question of life or death. I’ve never spoken about it to anyone. And I can’t speak about it to anyone as I can with you. You and I, after all, are completely different from each other in every way: different tasts, opinions, everything; but I know you’re fond of me and understand me, and because of that I’m terribly fond of you. But for God’s sake you must be absolutely frank!”
P 39
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