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"I don't think it important; it does not take hold of me, I can't

help it," answered Levin, making out that what he saw was the

bailiff, and that the bailiff seemed to be letting the peasants

go off the ploughed land. They were turning the plough over. "Can

they have finished ploughing?" he wondered.

"Come, really though," said the elder brother, with a frown on

his handsome, clever face, "there's a limit to everything. It's

very well to be original and genuine, and to dislike everything

conventional-I know all about that; but really, what you're

saying either has no meaning, or it has a very wrong meaning. How

can you think it a matter of no importance whether the peasant,

whom you love as you assert...."

"I never did assert it," thought Konstantin Levin.