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 How can you explain your flight from Moscow? The Shcherbatskys have kept asking me about you, as if I were likely to know! I only know one thing, that you are always likely to do things that no one else did."

"Yes," replied Levin, slowly, and with emotion; "you are right, I am untamed; yet it was not that I went, but that I have come back proves me so! I have come now ...."

"Oh, what a lucky fellow you are!" interrupted Oblonsky, looking into Levin's eyes.

"Why?"

"I know fiery horses by their brand, and I know young people who are in love by their eyes," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, dramatically; "everything is before you!"

"And yourself,—is everything behind you?"

"No, not altogether, but you have the future; and I have the present, and this present is between the devil and the deep sea!"

"What is the matter?"

"Nothing good. But I don't want to talk about myself, especially as I cannot explain the circumstances," replied Stepan Arkadyevitch. "What did you come to Moscow for?.... Here! clear off the things!" he cried to the Tatar.

"Can't you imagine?" answered Levin, not taking his glowing eyes from Oblonsky's face.

"I can imagine, but it is not for me to be the first to speak about it. By this you can tell whether I am right in my conjecture," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, looking at Levin with a sly smile.

"Well, what have you to tell me?" asked Levin, with a trembling voice, and feeling all the muscles of his face quiver. "How do you look at this?"

Stepan Arkadyevitch slowly drank his glass of Chablis while he looked steadily at Levin.

"I?" said Stepan Arkadyevitch. "There is nothing that I should like so much—nothing. It is the best thing that could possibly be!"

"But are n't you mistaken? Do you know what we