`Well, but you yourself, Iegor, when you got married, did you love your wife?'

`Ay! And why not?' responded Iegor.

And Levin saw that Iegor too was in an excited state and intending to express all his most heartfelt emotions.

`My life, too, has been a wonderful one. From a child up...' he was beginning with flashing eyes, apparently catching Levin's enthusiasm, just as people catch yawning.

But at that moment a ring was heard. Iegor departed, and Levin was left alone. He had eaten scarcely anything at dinner, had refused tea and supper at Sviiazhsky's, but he was incapable of thinking of supper. He had not slept the previous night, but was incapable of thinking of sleep either. His room was cold, but he was oppressed by heat. He opened both the movable panes in his windows and sat down on the table opposite the open panes. Over the snow-covered roofs could be seen a decorated cross, with chains, and above it the rising triangle of Auriga, with the yellowish light of Capella. He gazed at the cross, then at the star, drank in the fresh freezing air that flowed evenly into the room, and followed as though in a dream the images and memories that rose in his imagination. At four o'clock he heard steps in the passage and peeped out of the door. It was the gambler Miaskin, whom he knew, coming from the club. He walked gloomily, frowning and coughing. `Poor, unlucky fellow!' thought Levin, and tears came into his eyes from love and pity for this man. He would have talked with him, and tried to comfort him, but remembering that he had nothing but his shirt on, he changed his mind and sat down again at the open pane to bathe in the cold air and gaze at the exquisite lines of the cross, silent, but full of meaning for him, and the mounting lurid yellow star. At six o'clock there was a noise of people polishing the floors, and church bells ringing to some divine service, and Levin felt that he was beginning to get frozen. He closed the pane, washed, dressed, and went out into the street.