Anna wants to leave Moscow the next day. Dolly finds her sister-in-law strangely nervous, always close to tears, but Anna is unable to tell her why, that she is leaving sooner than intended in order to avoid Vronsky. She confesses to Dolly that Kitty is jealous on her account and she had caused her misery at the ball. Dolly remonstrates soothingly, saying she is glad that her sister had no further hopes for Vronsky since he is so fickle. At parting the two women embrace and profess sincere affection.
Nervous and excited, Anna is relieved to be on the train journeying home to her son and husband and resume her nice comfortable way of life again. She thinks of Vronsky and wonders at her vague feeling of shame when there is nothing to be ashamed about. Still tense, she alights at the next station for a breath of cold air. Suddenly Vronsky appears at her side and she is seized by a feeling of joyful pride at his look of reverence and devotion. "You know that I have come to be where you are," he says, "I can't help it." Pausing before her answer, Anna feels this moment in the midst of a snowstorm has drawn them close together. She begs him to forget, as she had forgotten it, the statement he has just uttered.
Still in her tense mood, Anna cannot sleep for the rest of the trip. Meeting her husband at the station, she feels dissatisfied with "his imposing and frigid figure, his high pitched voice, now noticing how his ears stick out." What she suddenly recognizes for the first time, is "an intimate feeling, like a consciousness of hypocrisy, which she experienced in her relations with her husband."
