240 241
and whenever he tried to imagine any of the girls he knew in that place,
he felt that it was utterly impossible. Moreover, the recollection of the
rejection and the part he had played in the affair tortured him with
shame. However often he told himself that he was in no wise to blame
in it, that recollection, like other humiliating reminiscences of a similar
kind, made him twinge and blush. There had been in his past, as in
every man’s, actions, recognized by him as bad, for which his conscience
ought to have tormented him; but the memory of these evil actions was
far from causing him so much suffering as those trivial but humiliating
reminiscences. These wounds never healed. And with these memo-
ries was now ranged his rejection and the pitiful position in which he
must have appeared to others that evening. But time and work did
their part. Bitter memories were more and more covered up by the
incidents—paltry in his eyes, but really important—of his country life.
Every week he thought less often of Kitty. He was impatiently looking
forward to the news that she was married, or just going to be married,
hoping that such news would, like having a tooth out, completely cure
him.
Meanwhile spring came on, beautiful and kindly, without the de-
lays and treacheries of spring,—one of those rare springs in which
plants, beasts, and man rejoice alike. This lovely spring roused Levin
still more, and strengthened him in his resolution of renouncing all his
past and building up his lonely life firmly and independently. Though
many of the plans with which he had returned to the country had not
been carried out, still his most important resolution—that of purity—
had been kept by him. He was free from that shame, which had
usually harassed him after a fall; and he could look everyone straight in
the face. In February he had received a letter from Marya Nikolaevna
telling him that his brother Nikolay’s health was getting worse, but that
he would not take advice, and in consequence of this letter Levin went
to Moscow to his brother’s and succeeded in persuading him to see a
doctor and to go to a watering-place abroad. He succeeded so well in
persuading his brother, and in lending him money for the journey
without irritating him, that he was satisfied with himself in that matter.
In addition to his farming, which called for special attention in spring,
and in addition to reading, Levin had begun that winter a work on
agriculture, the plan of which turned on taking into account the charac-
ter of the laborer on the land as one of the unalterable data of the
question, like the climate and the soil, and consequently deducing all
the principles of scientific culture, not simply from the data of soil and
climate, but from the data of soil, climate, and a certain unalterable
character of the laborer. Thus, in spite of his solitude, or in conse-
quence of his solitude, his life was exceedingly full. Only rarely he
suffered from an unsatisfied desire to communicate his stray ideas to
someone besides Agafea Mihalovna. With her indeed he not infre-
quently fell into discussion upon physics, the theory of agriculture, and
especially philosophy; philosophy was Agafea Mihalovna’s favorite
subject.
Spring was slow in unfolding. For the last few weeks it had been
steadily fine frosty weather. In the daytime it thawed in the sun, but at
night there were even seven degrees of frost. There was such a frozen
surface on the snow that they drove the wagons anywhere off the
roads. Easter came in the snow. Then all of a sudden, on Easter
Monday, a warm wind sprang up, storm clouds swooped down, and for
three days and three nights the warm, driving rain fell in streams. On
Thursday the wind dropped, and a thick gray fog brooded over the
land as though hiding the mysteries of the transformations that were
being wrought in nature. Behind the fog there was the flowing of