Levin emptied his glass, and they were silent for a while.

"There’s one other thing I ought to tell you. Do you know Vronsky?" Stepan
Arkadyevitch asked Levin.

"No, I don’t. Why do you ask?"

"Give us another bottle," Stepan Arkadyevitch directed the Tatar, who was filling
up their glasses and fidgeting round them just when he was not wanted.

"Why you ought to know Vronsky is that he’s one of your rivals."

"Who’s Vronsky?" said Levin, and his face was suddenly transformed from the look
of childlike ecstasy which Oblonsky had just been admiring to an angry and
unpleasant expression.

"Vronsky is one of the sons of Count Kirill Ivanovitch Vronsky, and one of the
finest specimens of the gilded youth of Petersburg. I made his acquaintance in
Tver when I was there on official business, and he came there for the levy of
recruits. Fearfully rich, handsome, great connections, an aide-de-camp, and with
all that a very nice, good-natured fellow. But he’s more than simply a good-
natured fellow, as I’ve found out here—he’s a cultivated man, too, and very
intelligent; he’s a man who’ll make his mark."

Levin scowled and was dumb.
"Well, he turned up here soon after you’d gone, and as I can see, he’s over head
and ears in love with Kitty, and you know that her mother..."

"Excuse me, but I know nothing," said Levin, frowning gloomily. And immediately he recollected his brother Nikolay and how hateful he was to have been able to forget him.

"You wait a bit, wait a bit," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling and touching his
hand. "I’ve told you what I know, and I repeat that in this delicate and tender
matter, as far as one can conjecture, I believe the chances are in your favor."

Levin dropped back in his chair; his face was pale.

"But I would advise you to settle the thing as soon as may be," pursued Oblonsky,
filling up his glass.

"No, thanks, I can’t drink any more," said Levin, pushing away his glass. "I shall
be drunk.... Come, tell me how are you getting on?" he went on, obviously anxious
to change the conversation.

"One word more: in any case I advise you to settle the question soon. Tonight I
don’t advise you to speak," said Stepan Arkadyevitch. "Go round tomorrow morning,
make an offer in due form, and God bless you..."

"Oh, do you still think of coming to me for some shooting? Come next spring, do,"
said Levin.

Now his whole soul was full of remorse that he had begun this conversation with
Stepan Arkadyevitch. A feeling such as his was profaned by talk of the rivalry of
some Petersburg officer, of the suppositions and the counsels of Stepan
Arkadyevitch.
Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled. He knew what was passing in Levin’s soul.

"I’ll come some day," he said. "But women, my boy, they’re the pivot everything

turns upon. Things are in a bad way with me, very bad. And it’s all through women.

Tell me frankly now," he pursued, picking up a cigar and keeping one hand on his
glass; "give me your advice."

"Why, what is it?"

"I’ll tell you. Suppose you’re married, you love your wife, but you’re fascinated
by another woman..."

"Excuse me, but I’m absolutely unable to comprehend how ... just as I can’t
comprehend how I could now, after my dinner, go straight to a baker’s shop and
steal a roll."

Stepan Arkadyevitch’s eyes sparkled more than usual.

"Why not? A roll will sometimes smell so good one can’t resist it."

"Himmlisch ist’s, wenn ich bezwungen

Meine irdische Begier;
Aber doch wenn’s nich gelungen

Hatt’ ich auch recht huebsch Plaisir!"

As he said this, Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled subtly. Levin, too, could not help
smiling.

"Yes, but joking apart," resumed Stepan Arkadyevitch, "you must understand that
the woman is a sweet, gentle loving creature, poor and lonely, and has sacrificed
everything. Now, when the thing’s done, don’t you see, can one possibly cast her
off? Even supposing one parts from her, so as not to break up one’s family life,
still, can one help feeling for her, setting her on her feet, softening her lot?"

"Well, you must excuse me there. You know to me all women are divided into two
classes ... at least no ... truer to say: there are women and there are ... I’ve
never seen exquisite fallen beings, and I never shall see them, but such creatures
as that painted Frenchwoman at the counter with the ringlets are vermin to my
mind, and all fallen women are the same."

"But the Magdalen?"

"Ah, drop that! Christ would never have said those words if He had known how they
would be abused. Of all the Gospel those words are the only ones remembered.
However, I’m not saying so much what I think, as what I feel. I have a loathing
for fallen women. You’re afraid of spiders, and I of these vermin. Most likely
you’ve not made a study of spiders and don’t know their character; and so it is
with me."

"It’s very well for you to talk like that; it’s very much like that gentleman in
Dickens who used to fling all difficult questions over his right shoulder. But to
deny the facts is no answer. What’s to be done—you tell me that, what’s to be
done? Your wife gets older, while you’re full of life. Before you’ve time to look
round, you feel that you can’t love your wife with love, however much you may
esteem her. And then all at once love turns up, and you’re done for, done for,"
Stepan Arkadyevitch said with weary despair.

Levin half smiled.

"Yes, you’re done for," resumed Oblonsky. "But what’s to be done?"

"Don’t steal rolls."

Stepan Arkadyevitch laughed outright.

"Oh, moralist! But you must understand, there are two women; one insists only on
her rights, and those rights are your love, which you can’t give her; and the
other sacrifices everything for you and asks for nothing. What are you to do? How
are you to act? There’s a fearful tragedy in it."

"If you care for my profession of faith as regards that, I’ll tell you that I
don’t believe there was any tragedy about it. And this is why. To my mind, love
... both the sorts of love, which you remember Plato defines in his Banquet,
served as the test of men. Some men only understand one sort, and some only the
other. And those who only know the non-platonic love have no need to talk of
tragedy. In such love there can be no sort of tragedy. ‘I’m much obliged for the
gratification, my humble respects’—that’s all the tragedy. And in platonic love
there can be no tragedy, because in that love all is clear and pure, because..."

At that instant Levin recollected his own sins and the inner conflict he had lived
through. And he added unexpectedly:

"But perhaps you are right. Very likely ... I don’t know, I don’t know."

"It’s this, don’t you see," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, "you’re very much all of a
piece. That’s your strong point and your failing. You have a character that’s all
of a piece, and you want the whole of life to be of a piece too—but that’s not how
it is. You despise public official work because you want the reality to be
invariably corresponding all the while with the aim—and that’s not how it is. You
want a man’s work, too, always to have a defined aim, and love and family life
always to be undivided—and that’s not how it is. All the variety, all the charm,
all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow."

Levin sighed and made no reply. He was thinking of his own affairs, and did not
hear Oblonsky.

And suddenly both of them felt that though they were friends, though they had been
dining and drinking together, which should have drawn them closer, yet each was
thinking only of his own affairs, and they had nothing to do with one another.
Oblonsky had more than once experienced this extreme sense of aloofness, instead
of intimacy, coming on after dinner, and he knew what to do in such cases.

"Bill!" he called, and he went into the next room where he promptly came across an
aide-de-camp of his acquaintance and dropped into conversation with him about an
actress and her protector. And at once in the conversation with the aide-de-camp
Oblonsky had a sense of relaxation and relief after the conversation with Levin,
which always put him to too great a mental and spiritual strain.

When the Tatar appeared with a bill for twenty-six roubles and odd kopecks,
besides a tip for himself, Levin, who would another time have been horrified, like
any one from the country, at his share of fourteen roubles, did not notice it,
paid, and set off homewards to dress and go to the Shtcherbatskys’ there to decide
his fate.