“She understands,” he thought; “she knows what I’m thinking about.  Shall I tell her or not?  Yes, I’ll tell her.”  But at the moment he was about to speak, she began speaking.

“Kostya! do something for me,” she said; “go into the corner room and see if they’ve made it all right for Sergey Ivanovitch.  I can’t very well.  See if they’ve put the new wash stand in it.”

“Very well, I’ll go directly,” said Levin, standing up and kissing her.

“No, I’d better not speak of it,” he thought, when she had gone in before him.  “It is a secret for me alone, of vital importance for me, and not to be put into words.

“This new feeling has not changed me, has not made me happy and enlightened all of a sudden, as I had dreamed, just like the feeling for my child.  There was no surprise in this either.  Faith—­or not faith—­I don’t know what it is—­but this feeling has come just as imperceptibly through suffering, and has taken firm root in my soul.

“I shall go on in the same way, losing my temper with Ivan the coachman, falling into angry discussions, expressing my opinions tactlessly; there will be still the same wall between the holy of holies of my soul and other people, even my wife; I shall still go on scolding her for my own terror, and being remorseful for it; I shall still be as unable to understand with my reason why I pray, and I shall still go on praying; but my life now, my whole life apart from anything that can happen to me, every minute of it is no more meaningless, as it was before, but it has the positive meaning of goodness, which I have the power to put into it.”