"What a marvelous, sweet and unhappy woman!" he was thinking,
as he stepped out into the frosty air with Stepan Arkadyevitch.
"Well, didn't I tell you?" said Stepan Arkadyevitch, seeing that
Levin had been completely won over.
"Yes," said Levin dreamily, "an extraordinary woman! It's not
her cleverness, but she has such wonderful depth of feeling. I'm
awfully sorry for her!"
"Now, please God, everything will soon be settled. Well, well,
don't be hard on people in future," said Stepan Arkadyevitch,
opening the carriage door. "Good-bye; we don't go the same way."
Still thinking of Anna, of everything, even the simplest phrase
in their conversation with her, and recalling the minutest
changes in her expression, entering more and more into her
position, and feeling sympathy for her, Levin reached home.
At home Kouzma told Levin that Katerina Alexandrovna was quite
well, and that her sisters had not long been gone, and he handed
him two letters. Levin read them at once in the hall, that he
might not over look them later. One was from Sokolov, his
bailiff. Sokolov wrote that the corn could not be sold, that it
was fetching only five and a half roubles, and that more than
that could not be got for it. The other letter was from his
sister. She scolded him for her business being still unsettled.
"Well, we must sell it at five and a half if we can't get more,"
Levin decided the first question, which had always before seemed
such a weighty one, with extraordinary facility on the spot.
"It's extraordinary how all one's time is taken up here," he
thought, considering the second letter. He felt himself to blame
for not having got done what his sister had asked him to do for
her. "Today, again, I've not been to the court, but today I've
certainly not had time." And resolving that he would not fail to
do it next day, he went up to his wife. As he went in, Levin
rapidly ran through mentally the day he had spent. All the
events of the day were conversations, conversations he had heard
and taken part in. All the conversations were upon subjects
which, if he had been alone at home, he would never have taken
up, but here they were very interesting. And all these
conversations were right enough, only in two places there was
something not quite right. One was what he had said about the
carp, the other was something not "quite the thing" in the tender
sympathy he was feeling for Anna.