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"Ah," cried Levin joyfully, flinging up both his hands. "Here's a

delightful visitor! Ah, how glad I am to see you!" he shouted,

recognizing Stepan Arkadyevitch.

"I shall find out for certain whether she's married, or when

she's going to be married," he thought. And on that delicious

spring day he felt that the thought of her did not hurt him at

all.

"Well, you didn't expect me, eh?" said Stepan Arkadyevitch,

getting out of the sledge, splashed with mud on the bridge of his

nose, on his cheek, and on his eyebrows, but radiant with health

and good spirits. "I've come to see you in the first place," he

said, embracing and kissing him, "to have some stand-shooting

second, and to sell the forest at Ergushovo third."

"Delightful! What a spring we're having! How ever did you get

along in a sledge?"

"In a cart it would have been worse still, Konstantin

Dmitrievitch," answered the driver, who knew him.

"Well, I'm very, very glad to see you," said Levin, with a

genuine smile of childlike delight.