Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/39

 Levin was about the same age as Oblonsky, and their intimacy was not based on champagne alone. Levin was a friend and companion from early boyhood. In spite of the difference in their characters and their tastes, they were fond of each other as friends are who have grown up together. And yet, as often happens among men who have chosen different spheres of activity, each, while approving the work of the other, really despised it. Each believed his own mode of life to be the only rational way of living, while that led by his friend was only illusion.

At the sight of Levin, Oblonsky could not repress a slight ironical smile. How many times had he seen him in Moscow just in from the country, where he had been doing something, though Oblonsky did not know exactly what and scarcely took any interest in it. Levin always came to Moscow anxious, hurried, a trifle annoyed, and vexed because he was annoyed, and generally bringing with him entirely new and unexpected views of things. Stepan Arkadyevitch laughed at this and yet liked it.

In somewhat the same way Levin despised the city mode of his friend's life, and his official employment, which he considered trifling, and made sport of it. But the difference between them lay in this: that Oblonsky, doing what every one else was doing, laughed self-confidently and good-naturedly, while Levin, because he was not assured in his own mind, sometimes lost his temper.

"We have been expecting you for some time," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, as he entered his office, and let go his friend's hand to show that the danger was past. "I am very, very glad to see you," he continued. "How goes it? how are you? When did you come?"

Levin was silent, and looked at the unknown faces of Oblonsky's two colleagues, and especially at the elegant Grinevitch's hand, with its long, white fingers and their long, yellow, and pointed nails, and his cuffs, with their huge, gleaming cuff-buttons. It was evident that his hands absorbed all of his attention and allowed him to think of nothing else. Oblonsky instantly noticed this, and smiled.

"Ah, yes," said he, "allow me to make you acquainted