Levin sees Kitty in the coach

The women follow the carts with rakes on their shoulders, one starts a song, and fifty voices take it up; the thundercloud of merriment passes over Levin on his haycock and leaves him discontented with his idle artificial life. The peasants who had disputed with him bow pleasantly, unrepentant and forgetful, everything drowned in the sea of common toil. He lies there all night while they eat and sing in the meadow, and before dawn sets himself three questions: renouncing his old life, which would be easy and pleasant; the simplicity and rightness of the life he now wants; and how to get from one to the other, to which he has no answer at all. Should he marry a peasant girl? He admires a mother-of-pearl shell of cloud and notes that his views have changed as unnoticeably. Walking to the village at daybreak he meets a coach, glances in, and sees Kitty at the window holding the ribbons of her nightcap. Every resolution of the night vanishes. 'I cannot turn to it. I love her!'

A whole night's conversion undone by four seconds at a carriage window, and Tolstoy makes the undoing convincing by having Levin notice what is missing from the peasant idyll all along — he can only lie and look and listen. The shell of cloud is checked twice, formed and then dispersed, which is the chapter's own comment on resolutions made before dawn.