It was only in the third month of their married life, after their return from Moscow, where they had been staying for a month, that their life began to go more smoothly.

They had just come back from Moscow, and were glad to be alone.

He was sitting at the writing table in his study, writing.

She, wearing the dark lilac dress she had worn during the first days of their married life, and put on again today, a dress particularly remembered and loved by him, was sitting on the sofa, the same old-fashioned leather sofa which had always stood in the study in Levin's father's and grandfather's days.