She shook her head. I put my arms round her, and as I felt her yielding I had a strong strange pleasure. I held her close to me, kissing her again and again, while she closed her eyes like a cat that is being stroked. For a moment I felt her lips touch mine, then she struggled away from me, and without looking back hurried downstairs. I followed, but before I could rejoin her Owen caught me by the arm. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere. I’ve hardly seen you all the evening. What have you been up to?” I laughed. He looked at me, slightly perplexed. “What is there so amusing?” he inquired. But I didn’t try to explain. “What is the matter?” Owen went on, gazing at me. “Nothing,” I answered. “Come on upstairs: it’s cooler there. There’s a seat on the next lobby.” “Is there?” I replied, as I followed him. CHAPTER XXVIII “I hope you haven’t been awfully bored?” was Owen’s first remark after we sat down. “No; I think it’s a lovely party.” There was a silence. “What _is_ the matter, Peter?” Owen asked again. “Nothing, Owen, except natural excitement. Don’t be suspicious.” Owen looked unconvinced, but he decided to change the subject. “Do you know the part of the book that I really like best? It is where Levine mows the meadows with the peasants.” I knew we were back again at “Anna Karénine,” but I couldn’t bring my mind to bear upon it. “That is the real kind of life,” Owen pursued, “where all is simple, and natural; where there are no balls and clubs and lies and all the rest. I hate towns. I shall always live somewhere in the country.” “It doesn’t suit everybody,” I brilliantly observed. “It doesn’t suit people like Anna and Wronsky.” “You’re always down on poor Anna.” “She’s not poor. She had every chance to be happy. Why couldn’t she have been content to be friends with Wronsky? All the rest was pure selfishness.” “You don’t understand,” I replied. Owen hated to be told this. “Understand what?” he demanded, impatiently. “The kind of love Anna and Wronsky had for each other.” “Why, then, as soon as she goes to live with Wronsky, does she begin to talk so much of her love for her son? I don’t like her. It seems to me that she deliberately spoiled the lives of her husband and her son for her own gratification.” “She didn’t spoil her son’s life. He was only a little boy.” “But she forsook him.” “You don’t understand,” I was obliged to repeat. “You never _will_ understand.” “Do you want to stick up for that sort of thing?” “I’m not sticking up for it; but I don’t think it’s the kind of thing a person can accept or refuse just as if it were an invitation to a party. If you knew anything about it you wouldn’t say they might have been content to be friends.” “And do you like the way she makes fun of her husband to her lover?” “What has that to do with it?”