Back among the beehives

The coachman drives up to fetch Levin: his brother and another gentleman have come. Taking the reins, Levin expects everything to be different now — no disputes, never a quarrel with Kitty, kindness to the servants. He hunts for something amicable to say to Ivan, and when Ivan takes the rein to steer him past a stump he snaps at him not to teach him, and sees how wrong his conclusion was. Tanya mimics an awfully dreadful man who goes like that with his hands, and Levin recognises Katavasov in a straw hat. Kitty has taken Mitya to the wood at Kolok, which Levin thinks dangerous; the Prince jokes about the ice-cellar. Levin asks about Koznyshev's book to steer him off the Slavonic Question; Koznyshev says nobody concerns himself with it, he least of all, and points out rain clouds, and the old coldness returns. Katavasov asks about Spencer, and Levin stops himself mid-answer rather than spoil his condition. At the apiary he settles the party in the shade with bread, cucumbers and honey, frees a bee from his beard, puts on his veil, and, alone among the familiar hives, finds that reality has veiled his tranquillity without removing it.

Tolstoy tests the revelation within a page of granting it, and Levin fails three times — Ivan, his brother, Katavasov — before he reaches the hives. The bee simile carries the book's final position: the cares circle and force him to flinch, and the powers underneath are untouched. Nothing about his manner has changed, which is the honest form the conversion takes.