absorbed his thoughts. 'Can it be that it's only possible to be just negatively?' he was asking himself.
'How strong the smell of the fresh hay is, though,' said Stepan Arkadyevitch, getting up. 'There's not a chance of sleeping. Vassenka has been getting up some fun there. Do you hear the laughing and his voice? Hadn't we better go? Come along!'
'No, I'm not coming,' answered Levin.
'Surely that's not a matter of principle too,' said Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling, as he felt about in the dark for his cap.
'It's not a matter of principle, but why should I go?'
'But do you know you are preparing trouble for yourself,' said Stepan Arkadyevitch, finding his cap and getting up.
'How so?'
'Do you suppose I don't see the line you've taken up with your wife? I heard how it's a question of the greatest consequence, whether or not you're to be away for a couple of days' shooting. That's all very well as an idyllic episode, but for your whole life that won't answer. A man must be independent; he has his masculine interests. A man has to be manly,' said Oblonsky, opening the door.
'In what way? To go running after servant girls?' said Levin.
'Why not, if it amuses him? Ca ne tire pas a consequence. It won't do my wife any harm, and it'll amuse me. The great thing is to respect the sanctity of the home. There should be nothing in the home. But don't tie your own hands.'
'Perhaps so,' said Levin dryly, and he turned on his side. 'Tomorrow, early, I want to go shooting, and I won't wake anyone, and shall set off at daybreak.'
'Messieurs, venes vite!' they heard the voice of Veslovsky coming back. 'Charmante! I've made such a discovery. Charmante! a perfect Gretchen, and I've already made friends with her. Really, exceedingly pretty,' he declared in a tone of approval, as though she had been made pretty entirely on his account, and he was expressing his satisfaction with the entertainment that had been provided for him.
Levin pretended to be asleep, while Oblonsky, putting on his slippers, and lighting a cigar, walked out of the barn, and soon their voices were lost.
For a long while Levin could not get to sleep. He heard the horses munching hay, then he heard the peasant and his elder boy getting ready for the night, and going off for the night watch with the beasts, then he heard the soldier arranging his bed on the other side of the barn, with his nephew, the younger son of their peasant host. He heard the boy in his shrill little voice telling his uncle what he thought about the dogs, who seemed to him huge and terrible creatures, and asking what the dogs were going to hunt next day, and the soldier in a husky, sleepy voice, telling him the sportsmen were going in the morning to the marsh, and would shoot with their guns; and then, to check the boy's questions, he said, 'Go to sleep, Vaska; go to sleep, or you'll catch it,' and soon after he began snoring himself, and everything was still. He could only hear the snort of the horses, and the guttural cry of a snipe.
'Is it really only negative?' he repeated to himself. 'Well, what of it? It's not my fault.' And he began thinking about the next day.
'Tomorrow I'll go out early, and I'll make a point of keeping cool. There are lots of snipe; and there are grouse too. When I come back there'll be the note from Kitty. Yes, Stiva may be right, I'm not manly with her, I'm tied to her apron-strings.... Well, it can't be helped! Negative again....'
Half asleep, he heard the laughter and mirthful talk of Veslovsky and Stepan Arkadyevitch. For an instant he opened his eyes: the moon was up, and in the open doorway, brightly lighted up by the moonlight, they were standing talking. Stepan Arkadyevitch was saying something of the freshness of one girl, comparing her to a freshly peeled nut, and Veslovsky with his infectious laugh was repeating some words, probably said to him by a peasant: 'Ah, you do your best to get round her!' Levin, half asleep, said:
'Gentlemen, tomorrow before daylight!' and fell asleep.
Chapter 12
Waking up at earliest dawn, Levin tried to wake his companions. Vassenka, lying on his stomach, with one leg in a stocking thrust out, was sleeping so soundly that he could elicit no response. Oblonsky, half asleep, declined to get up so early. Even Laska, who was asleep, curled up in the hay, got up unwillingly, and lazily stretched out and straightened her hind legs one after the other. Getting on his boots and stockings, taking his gun, and carefully opening the creaking door of the barn, Levin went out into the road. The coachmen were sleeping in their carriages, the horses were dozing. Only one was lazily eating oats, dipping its nose into the manger. It was still gray out-of- doors.
'Why are you up so early, my dear?' the old woman, their hostess, said, coming out of the hut and addressing him affectionately as an old friend.
'Going shooting, granny. Do I go this way to the marsh?'
'Straight out at the back; by our threshing floor, my dear, and hemp patches; there's a little footpath.' Stepping carefully with her sunburnt, bare feet, the old woman conducted Levin, and moved back the fence for him by the threshing floor.
'Straight on and you'll come to the marsh. Our lads drove the cattle there yesterday evening.'
Laska ran eagerly forward along the little path. Levin followed her with a light, rapid step, continually looking at the sky. He hoped the sun would not be up before he reached the marsh. But the sun did not delay. The moon, which had been bright when he went out, by now shone only like a crescent of quicksilver. The pink flush of dawn, which one could not help seeing before, now had to be sought to be discerned at all. What were before undefined, vague blurs in the distant countryside could now be distinctly seen. They were sheaves of rye. The dew, not visible till the sun was up, wetted Levin's legs and his blouse above his belt in the high growing, fragrant hemp patch, from which the pollen had already fallen out. In the transparent stillness of morning the smallest sounds were audible. A bee flew by Levin's ear with the whizzing sound of a bullet. He looked carefully, and saw a second and a third. They were all flying from the beehives behind the hedge, and they disappeared over the hemp patch in the direction of the marsh. The path led straight to the marsh. The marsh could be recognized by the mist which rose from it, thicker in one place and thinner in another, so that the reeds and willow bushes swayed like islands in this mist. At the edge of the marsh and the road, peasant boys and men, who had been herding for the night, were lying, and in the dawn all were asleep under their coats. Not far from them were three hobbled horses. One of them clanked a
