Arbeitskur, and a letter from Oblonsky

Mashkin Heights are mown and the men go home in high spirits; from the hilltop Levin can no longer see them through the mist but hears their voices and the clank of scythes. He bursts in on Koznyshev, who is drinking iced water with lemon behind a shut door, and is told he has let in a dozen flies. Levin has forgotten yesterday's argument entirely. He eats hugely, proposes to enrich medicine with a new word, Arbeitskur, and hears from his brother that the old wet-nurse reports the peasants disapprove: it is not gentlefolk's work, and the gentry are expected to keep inside the bounds set for them. A letter from Oblonsky asks him to go to Dolly at Ergushovo, where everything is out of gear and she is alone; both brothers will drive over. Koznyshev has solved two chess problems and reconsidered the argument, conceding Levin is partly right. Levin understands nothing of it and does not wish to, then remembers Agatha Mikhaylovna's arm and clatters off downstairs.

Tolstoy scores the argument by putting the two men side by side afterwards: one has solved chess problems behind a closed door, the other cannot remember what they disagreed about. The peasants' verdict — not gentlefolk's work — refuses Levin the fellowship he felt in the meadow, and he shrugs it off, which is the limit of his communion. Dolly's summons opens the next movement.