Levin scowled, and without answering her, he sat down again to his work, repeating to himself all that he had been thinking of the real significance of that work.

Only at intervals he listened in the stillness to the click of Agafea Mihalovna's needles, and recollecting what he did not want to remember, he frowned again.

At nine o'clock they heard the bell and the faint vibration of a carriage over the mud.

"Well, here's visitors come to us, and you won't be dull," said Agafea Mihalovna, getting up and going to the door.

But Levin overtook her.