here yet?' And he
says, 'You're the third.' Yes, my dear boy, that he did!"

Talking and greeting the friends they met, Levin and the prince
walked through all the rooms: the great room where tables had
already been set, and the usual partners were playing for small
stakes; the divan room, where they were playing chess, and Sergey
Ivanovitch was sitting talking to somebody; the billiard room,
where, about a sofa in a recess, there was a lively party
drinking champagne--Gagin was one of them. They peeped into the
"infernal regions," where a good many men were crowding round one
table, at which Yashvin was sitting. Trying not to make a noise,
they walked into the dark reading room, where under the shaded
lamps there sat a young man with a wrathful countenance, turning
over one journal after another, and a bald general buried in a
book. They went, too, into what the prince called the
intellectual room, where three gentlemen were engaged in a heated
discussion of the latest political news.

"Prince, please come, we're ready," said one of his card party,
who had come to look for him, and the prince went off. Levin sat
down and listened, but recalling all the conversation of the
morning he felt all of a sudden fearfully bored. He got up
hurriedly, and went to look for Oblonsky and Turovtsin, with whom
it had been so pleasant.

Turovtsin was one of the circle drinking in the billiard room,
and Stepan Arkadyevitch was talking with Vronsky near the door at
the farther corner of the room.

"It's not that she's dull; but this undefined, this unsettled
position," Levin caught, and he was hurrying away, but Stepan
Arkadyevitch called to him.

"Levin," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, and Levin noticed that his
eyes were not full of tears exactly, but moist, which always
happened when he had been drinking, or when he was touched. Just
now it was due to both causes. "Levin, don't go," he said, and
he warmly squeezed his arm above the elbow, obviously not at all
wishing to let him go.

"This is a true friend of mine--almost my greatest friend," he
said to Vronsky. "You have become even closer and dearer to me.
And I want you, and I know you ought, to be friends, and great
friends, because you're both splendid fellows."

"Well, there's nothing for us now but to kiss and be friends,"
Vronsky said, with good-natured playfulness, holding out his
hand.

Levin quickly took the offered hand, and pressed it warmly.

"I'm very,