n his room, talking of various trifling matters,
and not daring to ask what he wanted to know.

"How wonderfully they make this soap," he said gazing at a piece
of soap he was handling, which Agafea Mihalovna had put ready for
the visitor but Oblonsky had not used. "Only look; why, it's a
work of art."

"Yes, everything's brought to such a pitch of perfection
nowadays," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, with a moist and blissful
yawn. "The theater, for instance, and the entertainments...
a--a--a!" he yawned. "The electric light everywhere...a--a--a!"

"Yes, the electric light," said Levin. "Yes. Oh, and where's
Vronsky now?" he asked suddenly, laying down the soap.

"Vronsky?" said Stepan Arkadyevitch, checking his yawn; "he's in
Petersburg. He left soon after you did, and he's not once been
in Moscow since. And do you know, Kostya, I'll tell you the
truth," he went on, leaning his elbow on the table, and propping
on his hand his handsome ruddy face, in which his moist,
good-natured, sleepy eyes shone like stars. "It's your own
fault. You took fright at the sight of your rival. But, as I
told you at the time, I couldn't say which had the better
chance. Why didn't you fight it out? I told you at the time
that...." He yawned inwardly, without opening his mouth.

"Does he know, or doesn't he, that I did make an offer?" Levin
wondered, gazing at him. "Yes, there's something humbugging,
diplomatic in his face," and feeling he was blushing, he looked
Stepan Arkadyevitch straight in the face without speaking.

"If there was anything on her side at the time, it was nothing
but a superficial attraction," pursued Oblonsky. "His being such
a perfect aristocrat, don't you know, and his future position in
society, had an influence not with her, but with her mother."

Levin scowled. The humiliation of his rejection stung him to the
heart, as though it were a fresh wound he had only just received.
But he was at home, and the walls of home are a support.

"Stay, stay," he began, interrupting Oblonsky. "You talk of his
being an aristocrat. But allow me to ask what it consists in,
that aristocracy of Vronsky or of anybody else, beside which I
can be looked down upon? You consider Vronsky an aristocrat,
but I don't. A man whose father crawled up from nothing at all
by intrigue, and whose mother--God knows whom she wasn't mixed
up with.... No, excuse me, but I consider myself aristocratic,
and people like me, who ca