'Well, say the few words, then, at once, and we'll gossip after dinner.'
'Well, it's this,' said Levin; 'but it's of no importance, though.'
His face all at once took an expression of anger from the effort he was making to surmount his shyness.
'What are the Shtcherbatskys doing? Everything as it used to be?' he said.
Stepan Arkadyevitch, who had long known that Levin was in love with his sister-in-law, Kitty, gave a hardly perceptible smile, and his eyes sparkled merrily.
'You said a few words, but I can't answer in a few words, because.... Excuse me a minute...'
A secretary came in, with respectful familiarity and the modest consciousness, characteristic of every secretary, of superiority to his chief in the knowledge of their business; he went up to Oblonsky with some papers, and began, under pretense of asking a question, to explain some objection. Stepan Arkadyevitch, without hearing him out, laid his hand genially on the secretary's sleeve.
'No, you do as I told you,' he said, softening his words with a smile, and with a brief explanation of his view of the matter he turned away from the papers, and said: 'So do it that way, if you please, Zahar Nikititch.'
The secretary retired in confusion. During the consultation with the secretary Levin had completely recovered from his embarrassment. He was standing with his elbows on the back of a chair, and on his face was a look of ironical attention.
'I don't understand it, I don't understand it,' he said.
'What don't you understand?' said Oblonsky, smiling as brightly as ever, and picking up a cigarette. He expected some queer outburst from Levin.
'I don't understand what you are doing,' said Levin, shrugging his shoulders. 'How can you do it seriously?'
'Why not?'
'Why, because there's nothing in it.'
'You think so, but we're overwhelmed with work.'
'On paper. But, there, you've a gift for it,' added Levin.
'That's to say, you think there's a lack of something in me?'
'Perhaps so,' said Levin. 'But all the same I admire your grandeur, and am proud that I've a friend in such a great person. You've not answered my question, though,' he went on, with a desperate effort looking Oblonsky straight in the face.
'Oh, that's all very well. You wait a bit, and you'll come to this yourself. It's very nice for you to have over six thousand acres in the Karazinsky district, and such muscles, and the freshness of a girl of twelve; still you'll be one of us one day. Yes, as to your question, there is no change, but it's a pity you've been away so long.'
'Oh, why so?' Levin queried, panic-stricken.
'Oh, nothing,' responded Oblonsky. 'We'll talk it over. But what's brought you up to town?'
'Oh, we'll talk about that, too, later on,' said Levin, reddening again up to his ears.
'All right. I see,' said Stepan Arkadyevitch. 'I should ask you to come to us, you know, but my wife's not quite the thing. But I tell you what; if you want to see them, they're sure now to be at the Zoological Gardens from four to five. Kitty skates. You drive along there, and I'll come and fetch you, and we'll go and dine somewhere together.'
'Capital. So good-bye till then.'
'Now mind, you'll forget, I know you, or rush off home to the country!' Stepan Arkadyevitch called out laughing.
'No, truly!'
And Levin went out of the room, only when he was in the doorway remembering that he had forgotten to take leave of Oblonsky's colleagues.
'That gentleman must be a man of great energy,' said Grinevitch, when Levin had gone away.
'Yes, my dear boy,' said Stepan Arkadyevitch, nodding his head, 'he's a lucky fellow! Over six thousand acres in the Karazinsky district; everything before him; and what youth and vigor! Not like some of us.'
'You have a great deal to complain of, haven't you, Stepan Arkadyevitch?'
'Ah, yes, I'm in a poor way, a bad way,' said Stepan Arkadyevitch with a heavy sigh.
Chapter 6
When Oblonsky asked Levin what had brought him to town, Levin blushed, and was furious with himself for blushing, because he could not answer, 'I have come to make your sister-in-law an offer,' though that was precisely what he had come for.
The families of the Levins and the Shtcherbatskys were old, noble Moscow families, and had always been on intimate and friendly terms. This intimacy had grown still closer during Levin's student days. He had both prepared for the university with the young Prince Shtcherbatsky, the brother of Kitty and Dolly, and had entered at the same time with him. In those days Levin used often to be in the Shtcherbatskys' house, and he was in love with the Shtcherbatsky household. Strange as it may appear, it was with the household, the family, that Konstantin Levin was in love, especially with the feminine half of the household. Levin did not remember his own mother, and his only sister was older than he was, so that it was in the Shtcherbatskys' house that he saw for the first time that inner life of an old, noble, cultivated, and honorable family of which he had been deprived by the death of his father and mother. All the members of that family, especially the feminine half, were pictured by him, as it were, wrapped about with a mysterious poetical veil, and he not only perceived no defects whatever in them, but under the poetical veil that shrouded them he assumed the existence of the loftiest sentiments and every possible perfection. Why it was the three young ladies had one day to speak French, and the next English; why it was that at certain hours they played by turns on the piano, the sounds of which were audible in their brother's room above, where the
