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

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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.




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