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 memories 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 delays 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 character 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 consequence 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 infrequently fell into discussion upon physics, the theory of agriculture, and especially philosophy; philosophy was Agafea Mihalovna’s favorite subject.