Half asleep, he heard the laughter and mirthful talk of Veslovsky and Stepan Arkadyevitch.  For an instant he opened his eyes:  the moon was up, and in the open doorway, brightly lighted up by the moonlight, they were standing talking.  Stepan Arkadyevitch was saying something of the freshness of one girl, comparing her to a freshly peeled nut, and Veslovsky with his infectious laugh was repeating some words, probably said to him by a peasant:  “Ah, you do your best to get round her!” Levin, half asleep, said: 

“Gentlemen, tomorrow before daylight!” and fell asleep.

Chapter 12

Waking up at earliest dawn, Levin tried to wake his companions.  Vassenka, lying on his stomach, with one leg in a stocking thrust out, was sleeping so soundly that he could elicit no response.  Oblonsky, half asleep, declined to get up so early.  Even Laska, who was asleep, curled up in the hay, got up unwillingly, and lazily stretched out and straightened her hind legs one after the other.  Getting on his boots and stockings, taking his gun, and carefully opening the creaking door of the barn, Levin went out into the road.  The coachmen were sleeping in their carriages, the horses were dozing.  Only one was lazily eating oats, dipping its nose into the manger.  It was still gray out-of-doors.

“Why are you up so early, my dear?” the old woman, their hostess, said, coming out of the hut and addressing him affectionately as an old friend.

“Going shooting, granny.  Do I go this way to the marsh?”

“Straight out at the back; by our threshing floor, my dear, and hemp patches; there’s a little footpath.”  Stepping carefully with her sunburnt, bare feet, the old woman conducted Levin, and moved back the fence for him by the threshing floor.

“Straight on and you’ll come to the marsh.  Our lads drove the cattle there yesterday evening.”

Laska ran eagerly forward along the little path.  Levin followed her with a light, rapid step, continually looking at the sky.  He hoped the sun would not be up before he reached the marsh.  But the sun did not delay.  The moon, which had been bright when he went out, by now shone only like a crescent of quicksilver.  The pink flush of dawn, which one could not help seeing before, now had to be sought to be discerned at all.  What were before undefined, vague blurs in the distant countryside could now be distinctly seen.  They were sheaves of rye.  The dew, not visible till the sun was up, wetted Levin’s legs and his blouse above his belt in the high growing, fragrant hemp patch, from which the pollen had already fallen out.  In the transparent stillness of morning the smallest sounds were audible.  A bee flew by Levin’s ear with the whizzing sound of a bullet.  He looked carefully, and saw a second and a third.  They were all flying from the beehives behind the hedge, and they disappeared