The leak Levin would not look for

The night on the haycock has spoiled the farm for Levin. Despite a splendid harvest he has never met so many failures or so much hostility, and he now sees why: the whole enterprise rests on a struggle between himself, pressing everything toward the best models, and the labourers, who want to work merrily and without care. The best seed clover is mown because it was easiest; the horse-rake breaks because sitting under the rotating wings is dull; the English ploughs strain the horses because nobody lowers the share at the turn; three calves are ruined on clover without water, and he is comforted with the news that a neighbour lost a hundred head. None of it is malice — they like him and call him a homely gentleman. He had seen the boat leaking and not looked for the leak, and can no longer deceive himself. Kitty is twenty miles away and unreachable: he cannot propose to a woman because the man she wanted would not have her. Dolly asks for a side-saddle; he sends it without a word and leaves to shoot snipe with Sviyazhsky.

The mowing chapters are paid for here: fellowship in the meadow becomes, in the accounts, an unwinnable struggle whose aim Levin now finds unworthy. Tolstoy itemises the damage without blaming anyone, which is the point — the interests genuinely conflict. Pride blocks Kitty by the same logic, and the side-saddle sent without a note is the cost of it.