“That’s in the same style as, ‘that’s a thing I can’t endure!’ You know the story?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch.  “Ah, that’s exquisite!  Another bottle,” he said to the waiter, and he began to relate his good story.

“Pyotr Illyitch Vinovsky invites you to drink with him,” a little old waiter interrupted Stepan Arkadyevitch, bringing two delicate glasses of sparkling champagne, and addressing Stepan Arkadyevitch and Levin.  Stepan Arkadyevitch took the glass, and looking towards a bald man with red mustaches at the other end of the table, he nodded to him, smiling.

“Who’s that?” asked Levin.

“You met him once at my place, don’t you remember?  A good-natured fellow.”

Levin did the same as Stepan Arkadyevitch and took the glass.

Stepan Arkadyevitch’s anecdote too was very amusing.  Levin told his story, and that too was successful.  Then they talked of horses, of the races, of what they had been doing that day, and of how smartly Vronsky’s Atlas had won the first prize.  Levin did not notice how the time passed at dinner.

“Ah! and here they are!” Stepan Arkadyevitch said towards the end of dinner, leaning over the back of his chair and holding out his hand to Vronsky, who came up with a tall officer of the Guards.  Vronsky’s face too beamed with the look of good-humored enjoyment that was general in the club.  He propped his elbow playfully on Stepan Arkadyevitch’s shoulder, whispering something to him, and he held out his hand to Levin with the same good-humored smile.

“Very glad to meet you,” he said.  “I looked out for you at the election, but I was told you had gone away.”

“Yes, I left the same day.  We’ve just been talking of your horse.  I congratulate you,” said Levin.  “It was very rapidly run.”

“Yes; you’ve race horses too, haven’t you?”

“No, my father had; but I remember and know something about it.”

“Where have you dined?” asked Stepan Arkadyevitch.

“We were at the second table, behind the columns.”

“We’ve been celebrating his success,” said the tall colonel.  “It’s his second Imperial prize.  I wish I might have the luck at cards he has with horses.  Well, why waste the precious time?  I’m going to the ‘infernal regions,’” added the colonel, and he walked away.

“That’s Yashvin,” Vronsky said in answer to Turovtsin, and he sat down in the vacated seat beside them.  He drank the glass offered him, and ordered a bottle of wine.  Under the influence of the club atmosphere or the wine he had drunk, Levin chatted away to Vronsky of the best breeds of cattle, and was very glad not to feel the slightest hostility to this man.  He even told him, among other things, that he had heard from his wife that she had met him at Princess Marya Borissovna’s.

“Ah, Princess Marya Borissovna, she’s exquisite!” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, and he told an anecdote about her which set them all laughing.  Vronsky particularly laughed with such simplehearted amusement that Levin felt quite reconciled to him.