Ryabinin buys the forest

Driving home Levin presses for particulars, and is privately pleased by them — there is still hope, and she who made him suffer is suffering — but cuts Oblonsky off the moment Vronsky's name comes up. He turns instead on the forest: thirty-eight thousand roubles, eight down and the rest over six years, is giving it away, since the wood is worth five hundred a desyatina and no dealer buys without counting the trees. Oblonsky, who has picked up 'timber' and 'ten sazhens' from somewhere, is sure he has done well. At the house Ryabinin is waiting — long blue coat, goloshes, a hand held out as if catching something — and looks at the snipe, the bookshelves and the icon with the same contempt, doubting whether the game is worth the candle. He asks to have something knocked off; Levin says he will buy the forest himself; the smile goes and the face turns hawk-like. The agreement is signed. Driving away, Ryabinin calls the gentlefolk regular objects.

The forest sale is the estate-owning class being quietly stripped, and Tolstoy stages it so that the only man who understands the transaction has no standing to stop it. Ryabinin crossing himself the instant the money leaves his pocket-book, having declined to cross himself before the icon, tells the whole story of the new commerce. Levin's pleasure at Kitty's suffering is admitted and not excused.