"Oh, where shall we meet? You know I want very much to talk to you," said Levin.
Oblonsky seemed to ponder.
"I'll tell you what: let's go to Gurin's to lunch, and there we can talk. I am free till three."
"No," answered Levin, after an instant's thought, "I have got to go on somewhere else."
"All right, then, let's dine together."
"Dine together? But I have nothing very particular, only a few words to say, and a question I want to ask you, and we can have a talk afterwards."
"Well, say the few words, then, at once, and we'll gossip after dinner."
"Well, it's this," said Levin; "but it's of no importance, though."
His face all at once took an expression of anger from the effort he was making to surmount his shyness.
"What are the Shtcherbatskys doing? Everything as it used to be?" he said.
Stepan Arkadyevitch, who had long known that Levin was in love with his sister-in-law, Kitty, gave a hardly perceptible smile, and his eyes sparkled merrily.
"You said a few words, but I can't answer in a few words, because . . . . Excuse me a minute . . . "
A secretary came in, with respectful familiarity and the modest consciousness, characteristic of every secretary, of superiority to his chief in the knowledge of their business; he went up to Oblonsky with some papers, and began, under pretense of asking a question, to explain some objection. Stepan Arkadyevitch, without hearing him out, laid his hand genially on the secretary's sleeve.
"No, you do as I told you," he said, softening his words with a smile, and with a brief explanation of his view of the matter he turned away from the papers, and said: "So do it that way, if you please, Zahar Nikititch."
