Going to his office after his unpleasant interview with his wife, he attended to matters in the court for some time, and on suspending business for lunch found his friend Levin waiting to see him—­a fair-complexioned, broad-shouldered man whom he often saw in Moscow.  Levin frequently came in from the country, full of enthusiasm about great things he had been attempting, at the reports of which Stepan was apt to smile in his good-humoured style.  That Levin was in love with his sister Kitty was well enough known to Stepan.

When Oblonsky on this occasion, after chatting over some rural concerns in Levin’s district, asked his friend what had specially brought him to Moscow, Levin blushed and was vexed with himself for blushing.  He could not bring himself to reply that he had come to ask for the hand of Stepan’s sister-in-law Kitty, though that was really his errand.  As a student and a friend of the Shcherbatsky family, belonging like his own to the old nobility of Moscow, Konstantin Levin at first thought himself in love with Dolly, the eldest, but she married Oblonsky; then with Natalie, who married Lyof, a diplomat; and finally his passion settled on Kitty, who had been only a child when he left the University.  He was now thirty-two, was wealthy, would surely have been reckoned an acceptable suitor, but had a most exalted opinion of Kitty, and to a corresponding degree depreciated himself.

He feared that probably Kitty did not love him, and he knew that his friends only looked upon him as a country proprietor, occupied with farming, or amusing himself with hunting.  He was not what is understood as a society man.  But he felt that he could no longer rest without seeking to get the question settled whether she would or would not be his wife.

III

Levin made his way to the gate of the Zoological Gardens and followed the path to the ice-mountains, where he knew that he should find the Shcherbatskys there, Kitty among them.  He had seen their carriage at the gate.  It was a lovely day, and the gaily-clad fashionable people, the Russian izbas with their carved woodwork, the paths gleaming with snow, and the old birch-trees, brilliant with icicles, combined to render the whole scene one of fascination.

Drawing near the ice-mountains, where the sledges rushed down the inclines, he soon discovered Kitty, who was on the opposite side, standing in close conversation with a lady.  For him her presence filled the place with light and glory.  He asked himself whether he was brave enough to go and meet her on the ice.  The spot where she was seemed to him like a sanctuary, and all the persons privileged to be near her seemed to be the elect of heaven.  This day the ice was the common meeting-ground for fashionable people, the masters in the art of skating being among them.  Nikolai Shcherbatsky, Kitty’s cousin, catching sight of Levin, exclaimed, “There is the best skater in Russia.”  Kitty cordially invited Levin to skate with her.  He did so, and the faster they went together, the closer Kitty held his hand.  And when after a spin they rested, and she asked how long he was going to stay in St. Petersburg, he astonished her by replying, “It depends on you.”  Either she did not understand, or did not wish to understand, his words, for she at once made an excuse to leave him.