Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/775

 centrated emotion which every huntsman feels as he approaches the field of his activity. If anything occupied him now, it was the question whether they should find anything in the Kolpensky marshes, and how would Laska come out in comparison with Krak, and what sort of luck he would that day enjoy. Should he do himself credit as a huntsman before this stranger? How would Oblonsky shoot? Better than he?

Oblonsky was occupied with similar thoughts and was not talkative. Vasenka Veslovsky was the only voluble one; and now, as Levin listened to him, he reproached himself for his injustice of the previous evening. He was a capital fellow, simple, good-natured, and very gay. If Levin had known him in his bachelor days, he would have become intimate with him. But Levin rather disliked his holiday view of life and a certain free and easy elegance. He seemed to arrogate to himself a marked and indubitable superiority because of his long finger-nails and his little cap and everything else corresponding; but this could be condoned in view of his good nature and irreproachable manners. He pleased Levin because he was well educated, and spoke French and English admirably, in fact, was a man of his own walk in life.

Vasenka was completely carried away by the Stepnaya Donskaya horse on the left of the three-span. He kept going into raptures over her. "How splendid it would be to gallop over the steppe on a steed of the steppe! Isn't that so?" he cried. He imagined that galloping over the steppe on such a horse was something wild and poetic, with no possibility of disappointment; but his innocence, especially in conjunction with his good looks, his pleasant smile, and his graceful motion, was very captivating. And because he was naturally sympathetic to Levin, or else because Levin, in consequence of his injustice to him the evening before, tried to find all his best qualities, they got on famously.

They had gone scarcely three versts when Veslovsky suddenly remembered his cigars and pocket-book, and