Levin rose to his feet

And he went off to get skates.
`It's a long while since we've seen you here, sir,' said the attendant, supporting his foot, and screwing on the heel of the skate. `Except you, there's none of the gentlemen first-rate skaters. Will that be all right?' said he, tightening the strap.
`Oh, yes, yes; make haste, please,' answered Levin, with difficulty restraining the smile of rapture which would overspread his face. `Yes,' he thought, `this is life, this is happiness! Together, she said; let us skate together! Speak to her now? But that's just why I'm afraid to speak - because I'm happy now, happy even though only in hope.... And then?... But I must! I must! I must! Away, faintheartedness!'
Levin rose to his feet, took off his overcoat, and, gaining speed over the rough ice round the pavilion, came out on the smooth ice and skated without effort, as it were, by, simple exercise of will, increasing and slackening speed and turning his course. He approached her with timidity, but again her smile reassured him.
She gave him her hand, and they set off side by side, going faster and faster, and the more rapidly they moved the more tightly she grasped his hand.
`With you I should soon learn; I somehow feel confidence in you,' she said to him.
`And I have confidence in myself when you are leaning on me,' he said, but was at once frightened at what he had said, and blushed. And indeed, no sooner had he uttered these words, than all at once, like the sun going behind a cloud, her face lost all its tenderness, and Levin detected the familiar change in her expression that denoted mental concentration; a tiny wrinkle came upon her smooth brow.
`Is there anything troubling you? However, I've no right to ask such a question,' he said hurriedly.
`Oh, why so?... No, I have nothing to trouble me,' she responded coldly, and immediately added: `You haven't seen Mlle. Linon, have you?'
`Not yet.'
`Go and speak to her - she likes you so much.'
`What's wrong? I have offended her. Lord help me!' thought Levin, and he flew towards the old Frenchwoman with the gray ringlets, who was sitting on a bench. Smiling and showing her false teeth, she greeted him as an old friend.
`Yes, you see we're growing up,' she said to him, glancing toward Kitty, `and growing old. Tiny bear has grown big now!' pursued the Frenchwoman, laughing, and she reminded him of his joke about the three young ladies whom he had compared to the three bears in the English nursery tale. `Do you remember that's what you used to call them?'
He remembered absolutely nothing, but she had been laughing at the joke for ten years now and was fond of it.
`Now, go and skate, go and skate. Our Kitty has learned to skate nicely, hasn't she?'
When Levin darted up to Kitty her face was no longer stern; her eyes looked at him with the same sincerity and tenderness, but Levin fancied that in her tenderness there was a certain note of deliberate composure. And he felt depressed. After talking a little of her old governess and her peculiarities, she questioned him about his life.
`Surely, you must feel dull in the country in the winter,' she said.
`No, I'm not dull - I am very busy,' he said, feeling that she was making him submit to her composed tone, which he would not have the strength to break through - just as had been the case at the beginning of the winter.
`Are you going to stay in town long?' Kitty questioned him.
`I don't know,' he answered, not thinking of what he was saying. The thought came into his mind that if he were held in submission by her tone of quiet friendliness he would end by going back again without deciding anything, and he resolved to mutiny against it.
`How is it you don't know?'
`I don't know. It depends upon you,' he said, and was immediately horror-stricken at his own words.
Whether it was that she did not hear his words, or that she did not want to hear them, she made a sort of stumble, twice struck out, and hurriedly skated away from him. She skated up to Mlle. Linon, said something to her, and went toward the pavilion where the ladies took off their skates.
`My God! What have I done! Merciful God! Help me, guide me,' said Levin, praying inwardly, and at the same time, feeling a need of violent exercise, he skated about, describing concentric and eccentric circles.