“You’re of the Kiev university?” said Konstantin Levin to Kritsky, to break the awkward silence that followed.

“Yes, I was of Kiev,” Kritsky replied angrily, his face darkening.

“And this woman,” Nikolay Levin interrupted him, pointing to her, “is the partner of my life, Marya Nikolaevna.  I took her out of a bad house,” and he jerked his neck saying this; “but I love her and respect her, and any one who wants to know me,” he added, raising his voice and knitting his brows, “I beg to love her and respect her.  She’s just the same as my wife, just the same.  So now you know whom you’ve to do with.  And if you think you’re lowering yourself, well, here’s the floor, there’s the door.”

And again his eyes traveled inquiringly over all of them.

“Why I should be lowering myself, I don’t understand.”

“Then, Masha, tell them to bring supper; three portions, spirits and wine....  No, wait a minute....  No, it doesn’t matter....  Go along.”

Chapter 25

“So you see,” pursued Nikolay Levin, painfully wrinkling his forehead and twitching.

It was obviously difficult for him to think of what to say and do.

“Here, do you see?"...  He pointed to some sort of iron bars, fastened together with strings, lying in a corner of the room.  “Do you see that?  That’s the beginning of a new thing we’re going into.  It’s a productive association...”

Konstantin scarcely heard him.  He looked into his sickly, consumptive face, and he was more and more sorry for him, and he could not force himself to listen to what his brother was telling him about the association.  He saw that this association was a mere anchor to save him from self-contempt.  Nikolay Levin went on talking: 

“You know that capital oppresses the laborer.  The laborers with us, the peasants, bear all the burden of labor, and are so placed that however much they work they can’t escape from their position of beasts of burden.  All the profits of labor, on which they might improve their position, and gain leisure for themselves, and after that education, all the surplus values are taken from them by the capitalists.  And society’s so constituted that the harder they work, the greater the profit of the merchants and landowners, while they stay beasts of burden to the end.  And that state of things must be changed,” he finished up, and he looked questioningly at his brother.

“Yes, of course,” said Konstantin, looking at the patch of red that had come out on his brother’s projecting cheek bones.

“And so we’re founding a locksmiths’ association, where all the production and profit and the chief instruments of production will be in common.”

“Where is the association to be?” asked Konstantin Levin.

“In the village of Vozdrem, Kazan government.”

“But why in a village?  In the villages, I think, there is plenty of work as it is.  Why a locksmiths’ association in a village?”