“Oh, what a lucky fellow you are!” broke in Stepan Arkadyevitch, looking into Levin’s eyes.

“Why?”

    “I know a gallant steed by tokens sure,
     And by his eyes I know a youth in love,”

declaimed Stepan Arkadyevitch.  “Everything is before you.”

“Why, is it over for you already?”

“No; not over exactly, but the future is yours, and the present is mine, and the present—­well, it’s not all that it might be.”

“How so?”

“Oh, things go wrong.  But I don’t want to talk of myself, and besides I can’t explain it all,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch.  “Well, why have you come to Moscow, then?....  Hi! take away!” he called to the Tatar.

“You guess?” responded Levin, his eyes like deep wells of light fixed on Stepan Arkadyevitch.

“I guess, but I can’t be the first to talk about it.  You can see by that whether I guess right or wrong,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, gazing at Levin with a subtle smile.

“Well, and what have you to say to me?” said Levin in a quivering voice, feeling that all the muscles of his face were quivering too.  “How do you look at the question?”

Stepan Arkadyevitch slowly emptied his glass of Chablis, never taking his eyes off Levin.

“I?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, “there’s nothing I desire so much as that—­nothing!  It would be the best thing that could be.”

“But you’re not making a mistake?  You know what we’re speaking of?” said Levin, piercing him with his eyes.  “You think it’s possible?”

“I think it’s possible.  Why not possible?”

“No! do you really think it’s possible?  No, tell me all you think!  Oh, but if...if refusal’s in store for me!...  Indeed I feel sure...”

“Why should you think that?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling at his excitement.

“It seems so to me sometimes.  That will be awful for me, and for her too.”

“Oh, well, anyway there’s nothing awful in it for a girl.  Every girl’s proud of an offer.”

“Yes, every girl, but not she.”

Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled.  He so well knew that feeling of Levin’s, that for him all the girls in the world were divided into two classes:  one class—­all the girls in the world except her, and those girls with all sorts of human weaknesses, and very ordinary girls:  the other class—­she alone, having no weaknesses of any sort and higher than all humanity.

“Stay, take some sauce,” he said, holding back Levin’s hand as it pushed away the sauce.

Levin obediently helped himself to sauce, but would not let Stepan Arkadyevitch go on with his dinner.

“No, stop a minute, stop a minute,” he said.  “You must understand that it’s a question of life and death for me.  I have never spoken to any one of this.  And there’s no one I could speak of it to, except you.  You know we’re utterly unlike each other, different tastes and views and everything; but I know you’re fond of me and understand me, and that’s why I like you awfully.  But for God’s sake, be quite straightforward with me.”