At that instant Levin recollected his own sins and the inner conflict he had lived through. And he added unexpectedly:

`But perhaps you are right. Very likely... I don't know - I positively don't know.'

`You see,' said Stepan Arkadyevich, `you're very much all of a piece. That's your quality and your failing. You have a character that's all of a piece, and you want the whole of life to be of a piece too - but that's not how it is. You despise public official work because you want the reality to be constantly corresponding with the aim - and that's not how it is. You want a man's work, too, always to have a defined aim, and love and family life always to be undivided - and that's not how it is. All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.'

Levin sighed and made no reply. He was thinking of his own affairs, and was not listening to Oblonsky.

And suddenly both of them felt that though they were friends, though they had been dining together, and drunk wine which should have drawn them closer, yet each was thinking only of his own affairs, and they had nothing to do with one another. Oblonsky had more than once experienced this extreme sense of aloofness, instead of intimacy, coming on after dinner, and he knew what to do in such cases.

`Let's have the check!' he called, and he went into the next room, where he promptly came across an aide-de-camp of his acquaintance and dropped into conversation with him about an actress and her protector. And at once, in this conversation with the aide-de-camp, Oblonsky had a sense of relaxation and relief after his conversation with Levin, which always put him to too great a mental and spiritual strain.

When the Tatar appeared with a check of twenty-six roubles and some kopecks, besides a tip for himself, Levin, who would another time have been horrified, like anyone from the country, at his share of fourteen roubles, did not notice it, paid, and set off homeward to dress and go to the Shcherbatsky's, where his fate was to be decided.