listen to Agafya Mikhaïlovna's unceasing prattle, but his imagination was all the time filled with those varied pictures of family happiness which hovered before him. He felt that in the depths of his soul some change, some modification, some crystallization, was taking place.
He listened while Agafya Mikhaïlovna told how Prokhor had forgotten God, and, instead of buying a horse with the money which Levin had given him, had taken it and gone on a spree, and beaten his wife almost to death; and while he listened he read his book, and again caught the thread of his thoughts, awakened by his reading. It was a book by Tyndall, on heat. He remembered his criticisms on Tyndall's self-satisfaction in the cleverness of his management of his experiments and on his lack of philosophical views, and suddenly a happy thought crossed his mind:—
"In two years I shall have two Holland cows; perhaps Pava herself will still be alive, and possibly a dozen of Berkut's daughters will have been added to the herd, just from these three! Splendid!"
And again he picked up his book.
"Well! very good: electricity and heat are one and the same thing; but could one quantity take the place of the other in the equations used to settle this problem? No. What then? The bond between all the forces of nature is felt, like instinct When Pava 's daughter grows into a cow with red and white spots, what a herd I shall have with those three! Admirable! And my wife and I will go out with our guests to see the herd come in; .... and my wife will say, 'Kostia and I have brought this calf up just like a child.'—'How can this interest you so? ' the guests will say, 'All that interests him interests me also.'.... But who will she be?" and he began to think of what had happened in Moscow.—"Well! What is to be done about it?.... I am not to blame. But now everything will be different. It is foolishness to let one's past life dominate the present. One must struggle to live better—much better."....
He raised his head, and sank into thought. Old Laska, who had not yet got over her delight at her
