Chapter 26 — Anna Karenina

Levin leaves Moscow in the morning and reaches his estate by evening. On the train he talks politics and railways with neighbors, and the same confusion, self-disgust, and shame that haunted him in the city return. At his own station everything shifts: Ignat the one-eyed coachman, the familiar sledge and tasseled harness, village news about the contractor and Pava calving. Wrapped in sheepskin, riding home, he stops wanting to be anyone else. He resolves to quit chasing extraordinary happiness through marriage, to guard against low passion, to stay close to dying Nikolay, and to work harder so his comfort beside peasant poverty feels less unjust. Hope feels easy on the drive.

Home before nine, Agafea Mihalovna and Kouzma greet him; Laska whines at his knees. In the study the stag horns, broken ashtray, and his own manuscript seem to accuse him: you will stay the same doubter, forever expecting impossible happiness. He lifts dumbbells until the bailiff enters with news that buckwheat scorched in Levin's new drying machine. Levin snaps, sure negligence caused it, then forgives everything when he learns Pava, his show cow, has calved.

Lantern in hand he crosses the yard to the cowhouse, lifts the red spotted calf onto tottering legs, and watches Pava lick her clean. Delighted, he praises the haunch to the bailiff, then Semyon the contractor pulls him back to estate accounts. He ends the chapter upstairs in the drawing-room, work reclaimed, the Moscow humiliation already distant.