Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/774

 "Now, yesterday evening you didn't come to my office and here you are delaying me: well, what is it?"

"You bid me make a new stairway. Three steps will have to be added. And we can get all the lumber at once. It would be much more convenient."

"You should have listened to me," said Levin, in a tone of annoyance. "I said, 'Fix the string-boards, and then cut in the steps.' Now, don't try to mend them. Do as I ordered, make a new one."

The matter in question was this: in the wing which was building, the carpenter had spoiled a staircase by framing it separately, and not taking the slope into account, so that the steps were all at an angle when it was put into its place. But now the carpenter wanted to add three steps and keep the same framework.

"It would be much better...."

"But where would it go, even if you added three steps?"

"Excuse me," said the carpenter, with a disdainful smile. "It would go up to the same landing. Of course you'd pull it out below," said he, with a persuasive gesture. "It will fit, it will surely fit."

"But three steps add to the length of it—how would that improve it?"

After an idle argument in which the carpenter kept obstinately repeating the same words, Levin took his ramrod and proceeded to outline the plan of the stairway in the dust.

"Now do you see?"

"As you command," said the carpenter, with a sudden light flashing into his eyes, and evidently at last comprehending what Levin was driving at. "I see, we shall have to make a new one."

"Well, then, do as you were ordered," cried Levin, taking his place in the katki again. "Let us start! Hold the dogs, Filipp!"

Levin, now that he had left behind him all domestic and business cares, felt such a powerful sense of the joy of living and such expectation that he did not care to talk. Moreover, he experienced that sense of con-