"I thought you were going towards the piano," said he, going up
to her. "That's something I miss in the country--music."

"No; we only came to fetch you and thank you," she said,
rewarding him with a smile that was like a gift, "for coming.
What do they want to argue for? No one ever convinces anyone,
you know."

"Yes; that's true," said Levin; "it generally happens that one
argues warmly simply because one can't make out what one's
opponent wants to prove."

Levin had often noticed in discussions between the most
intelligent people that after enormous efforts, and an enormous
expenditure of logical subtleties and words, the disputants
finally arrived at being aware that what they had so long been
struggling to prove to one another had long ago, from the
beginning of the argument, been known to both, but that they
liked different things, and would not define what they liked for
fear of its being attacked. He had often had the experience of
suddenly in a discussion grasping what it was his opponent liked
and at once liking it too, and immediately he found himself
agreeing, and then all arguments fell away as useless.
Sometimes, too, he had experienced the opposite, expressing at
last what he liked himself, which he was devising arguments to
defend, and, chancing to express it well and genuinely, he had
found his opponent at once agreeing and ceasing to dispute his
position. He tried to say this.