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SVIYAZHSKY was Marshal of the Nobility in his district. He was five years older than Levin and had long been married. His young sister-in-law, whom Levin thought very pleasant, lived with them. He knew that both Sviyazhsky and his wife wanted to see her married to him, Levin. He knew this as certainly as all so-called eligible young men know these things, though he could never have said so to anyone; and he also knew that although he wanted to marry, and although this girl, to all appearance very fascinating, ought to make a splendid wife, he could as soon fly as marry her, even had he not been in love with Kitty. And this knowledge spoilt the pleasure which he hoped his visit to Sviyazhsky would give him.

Levin had thought of this when he received Sviyazhsky’s invitation, but in spite of it he made up his mind that this idea of Sviyazhsky’s intentions was only an unfounded conjecture of his and that he would go. Besides, at the bottom of his heart he wanted to put himself to the test and again to estimate his feelings for the girl. Sviyazhsky’s home life was extremely pleasant, and Sviyazhsky himself was the best type of social worker that Levin had ever known, and Levin always found him very interesting.

Sviyazhsky was one of those people — they invariably amazed Levin — whose judgment was very logical though never original and was kept quite apart from their conduct, while their manner of life was very definite and stable, its tendency being quite independent of their judgment, and even clashing with it. Sviyazhsky was an extreme Liberal. He despised the gentry and considered the majority of noblemen to be secretly in favour of serfdom, and only prevented by cowardice from expressing their views. He considered Russia to be a doomed country like Turkey, and the Russian government so bad that he did not think it worth while seriously to criticize its actions; yet he had an official position, was a model Marshal of the Nobility, and when he travelled always wore a cockade and a red band to his cap. He imagined that to live as a human being was possible only in foreign countries, where he went to stay at every opportunity; yet he carried on very complicated and perfected agricultural pursuits in Russia and carefully followed and knew what was being done there. He considered the Russian peasant to be one degree higher than the ape in development, yet at district elections no one shook hands with the peasants and listened to their opinions more willingly than he. He believed in neither God nor Devil, yet he was much concerned by the question of improving the condition of the clergy and limiting parishes, and was at the same time particularly active in seeing that the church should be retained in his village.

On the Woman’s Question he sided with the extreme advocates of woman’s freedom and especially the right to work; yet he lived with his wife in such a way that it gave everybody pleasure to see the friendly relationship in which they passed their childless life, and had so arranged that his wife did nothing and could do nothing except share her husband’s efforts to spend their time as pleasantly and merrily as possible.

Had Levin not possessed the faculty of giving the best interpretation to people’s characters, Sviyazhsky’s character would have presented no difficulty or problem to him; he would only have called him a fool or a good-for-nothing, and everything would have been clear. But he could not call him a fool, because Sviyazhsky was not only very intelligent but also a very well-educated man, who carried his education with extreme modesty. There was no subject with which he was not acquainted, but he only exhibited his knowledge when forced to do so. Still less could Levin call him a good-for-nothing, because Sviyazhsky was certainly an honest, kind-hearted, and clever man, always joyfully and actively engaged on work highly prized by all around, and certainly a man who could never consciously do anything bad.

Levin tried but could not understand him, and regarded him and his life as animated riddles.

The Sviyazhskys were friendly with Levin, and therefore he allowed himself to sound Sviyazhsky and try to get to the very foundation of his philosophy of life; but it was all in vain. Each time that Levin tried to penetrate deeper than the reception rooms of the other’s mind, which were always open to anybody, he noticed Sviyazhsky seemed a little confused. A just perceptible look of fear appeared on his face, as if he were afraid that he would be understood by Levin, whom he met with good-natured, jocose resistance.

Now, after his disillusion with the work on his estate, Levin was especially pleased to stay a while with Sviyazhsky. Not to mention the fact that the sight of the happy doves in their well-ordered nest, so content with themselves and everybody else, had a cheering effect on him, he now wanted, dissatisfied with life as he was, to get at the secret which gave Sviyazhsky such clearness, definiteness, and cheerfulness.

Levin also knew that he would meet neighbouring landowners at the Sviyazhskys’; and it would be very interesting to talk and hear about farming, the harvest, the hire of labour, and all those questions which, though considered very low, seemed to him most important.

‘These matters might not have been so important in the time of serfdom and may be unimportant in England. In these cases the conditions were or are settled; but with us everything has only just been changed, and is only beginning to settle down. The question of how things will settle down is the only important question in the whole of Russia,’ thought Levin.

The shooting did not prove as good as he had expected. The marsh had dried up and there were hardly any snipe. He went about all day and only brought back three, but on the other hand he brought back, as he always did after a day’s shooting, a splendid appetite, good spirits, and the stimulated mental condition which in his case always accompanied physical exertion. And when out shooting, while he did not seem to be thinking at all, he again and again thought about the old peasant and his family, and felt as if the impression made on him called not only for his attention, but for the solution of some problem related thereto.

In the evening at tea a very interesting conversation sprang up, just as Levin had expected, in the company of two landlords who had come about some guardianship business.

Levin sat beside the hostess at the tea-table, and was obliged to converse with her and her sister, who was sitting opposite him. The hostess was a short, fair, round-faced woman, beaming with smiles and dimples. Levin tried to find out through her the answer to the riddle, so important to him, presented by her husband; but he had not full freedom of thought because he felt painfully uncomfortable. This painful discomfort was due to the fact that her sister sat opposite to him in a dress that seemed to him to have been put on especially for his benefit, with a particularly low, square-cut decolletage showing her white bosom. Though her bosom was so white, or perhaps because it was so white, this square-cut deprived Levin of his freedom of thought. He imagined, probably quite mistakenly, that the bodice was cut like that on his account; he felt that he had no right to look at it and tried not to do so, but felt guilty because it was cut so. Levin felt as if he were deceiving some one, as if he ought to offer some explanation which was impossible, and therefore he kept blushing and was restless and uncomfortable. His discomfort communicated itself to the pretty sister, but the hostess did not seem to notice anything and purposely drew her sister into the conversation.

‘You say,’ the hostess continued, ‘that my husband cannot feel an interest in anything Russian? On the contrary, though he is happy abroad, he is never so happy there as here. He feels in his own sphere. He is so busy, and he has a gift for taking an interest in everything. Oh! you have not been to see our school!’

‘I saw it… . It is a little ivy-covered house?’

‘Yes, that is Nastya’s business,’ she said, pointing to her sister.

‘You yourself teach?’ asked Levin, trying to look beyond the bodice, but conscious that if he looked in her direction he must see it.

‘Yes, I have been and am still teaching, but we have a splendid master. And we have introduced gymnastics.’

‘No thanks! No more tea,’ said Levin, and unable to continue the conversation, though he knew he was behaving rudely, he got up blushing. ‘I hear a very interesting conversation there,’ he added, and went to the other end of the table where his host and the two landlords were sitting. Sviyazhsky sat sideways, leaning his elbow on the table and turning his cup round with one hand, while with the other he gathered his beard together, lifted it to his nose as if smelling it, and let it go again. He looked with his glittering black eyes straight at an excited landowner, with a grey moustache, whose words evidently amused him. The landowner was complaining about the peasants. Levin saw clearly that Sviyazhsky could have answered the landowner’s complaint so that the meaning of the latter’s words would have been destroyed at once, but owing to his position he could not give that answer, and listened not without pleasure to the landowner’s funny speech.

This landowner with the grey moustache was evidently an inveterate believer in serfdom, and a passionate farmer who had lived long in the country.

Levin saw signs of this in the way the man was dressed — he wore an old-fashioned shiny coat which he was evidently not used to — and in his intelligent, dismal eyes, his well-turned Russian, his authoritative tone, evidently acquired by long practice, and in the firm movement of his fine large sunburnt hands, the right one having an old wedding-ring on the third finger.