“What nonsense! That’s her manner.⁠ ⁠… Come, boy, the soup!⁠ ⁠… That’s her manner⁠— grande dame ,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch. “I’m coming, too, but I have to go to the Countess Bonina’s rehearsal. Come, isn’t it true that you’re a savage? How do you explain the sudden way in which you vanished from Moscow? The Shtcherbatskys were continually asking me about you, as though I ought to know. The only thing I know is that you always do what no one else does.”

“Yes,” said Levin, slowly and with emotion, “you’re right. I am a savage. Only, my savageness is not in having gone away, but in coming now. Now I have come.⁠ ⁠…”

“Oh, what a lucky fellow you are!” broke in Stepan Arkadyevitch, looking into Levin’s eyes.

“Why?”