I may be inferior to them, stupider perhaps, though I don't see why I should be inferior to them.

But you and I have one important advantage over them for certain, in being more difficult to buy.

And such men are more needed than ever.

" Vronsky listened attentively, but he was not so much interested by the meaning of the words as by the attitude of Serpuhovskoy who was already contemplating a struggle with the existing powers, and already had his likes and dislikes in that higher world, while his own interest in the governing world did not go beyond the interests of his regiment.

Vronsky felt, too, how powerful Serpuhovskoy might become through his unmistakable faculty for thinking things out and for taking things in, through his intelligence and gift of words, so rarely met with in the world in which he moved.