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 figure was so gayly brilliant, though in rags, and he made up his mind to profit by this example the next time he should go hunting.

"Well, where is our host?" asked he.

"He has a young wife," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling.

"And how charming she is!"

"He must have gone in to see her again, for I saw him all ready to start."

Stepan Arkadyevitch was right. Levin had gone back to Kitty to make her say over again that she forgave him for his absurd behavior of the evening before, and to ask her for Christ's sake to be more careful. The most important thing was for her to keep the children at a distance, for they were always likely to run into her. Then he needed once more to receive assurance from her that she would not be angry with him because he was going away for two days, and to reiterate his desire that she should infallibly send him a note the next morning by a mounted courier, if it were only two words, so that he might know that she was comfortable.

Kitty, as always, had regretted the two days' separation from her husband; but as she saw him full of animation, and seeming especially big and strong in his hunting-boots and white blouse, and recognized that, to her incomprehensible, enthusiasm for hunting, she forgot her own regret in her delight in his happiness, and cheerfully bade him good-by.

"Pardon, gentlemen!" cried Levin, hurrying down to the porch. "Has the breakfast been put up? Why is the chestnut horse on the off side? Well, then, it makes no difference. Down, Laska! charge!"

"Put him among the geldings," said he, addressing the cowherd who was waiting for him on the door-steps with a question about the young ram. "It is my blunder that he's become ugly."

Levin jumped down from the katki in which he had already taken his seat, and met a hired carpenter who was just approaching the porch.