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 being who could concentrate for him all the light and meaning of life. It was she; it was Kitty. He judged that she was on her way from the railway station to Yergushovo.

And all the thoughts that had occupied Levin through his sleepless night, all the resolutions that he had made, vanished in a twinkling. Horror seized him as he remembered his dream of marrying a krestyanka—a peasant wife! In that carriage which flashed by him on the other side of the road, and disappeared, was the only possible answer to his life's enigma which had tormented and puzzled him so long.

She was now out of sight; the rumble of the wheels had ceased, and scarcely could he hear the bells. The barking of the dogs told him that the carriage was passing through the village. And now there remained only the empty fields, the distant village, and himself, an alien and a stranger to everything, walking solitary on the deserted highway.

He looked at the sky, hoping to find there still the sea-shell cloud which he had admired, and which personified for him the movement of his thoughts and feelings during the night. But in the sky there was nothing that resembled the shell. There, at immeasurable heights, that mysterious change had already taken place. There was no trace of the shell, but in its place there extended over a good half of the heavens a carpet of cirrus clouds sweeping on and sweeping on. The sky was growing blue and luminous, and with the same tenderness and also with the same unsatisfactoriness it answered his questioning look.

"No," he said to himself, "however good this simple and laborious life may be, I cannot bring myself to it. I love her."