Oblonsky cannot manage to repent

Oblonsky is truthful with himself and cannot manage to repent. He is thirty-four, handsome and amorous; Dolly has borne seven children, is a year younger than him, and he regrets only that he failed to conceal things from her. He had assumed she long suspected him and winked at it, and that she ought in simple justice to be lenient — 'It turned out that the very opposite was the case.' Finding no answer, he takes life's usual one, forgetfulness in the business of the day. He rises, puts on his grey dressing-gown lined with blue silk, and rings. Matthew, his valet, brings clothes, boots and a telegram, and the two conduct a whole understanding through the looking-glass. The telegram says his sister Anna Arkadyevna arrives tomorrow, alone; she may reconcile the couple. Dolly's answer to it is that she is leaving. Matrena Filimonovna, the nurse, begs him to try again.

Character assembled entirely out of self-justification. Stiva's incapacity for repentance sets the novel's moral floor, the level against which Karenin's rigidity and Levin's scruple will both be measured. The looking-glass exchange with Matthew does structural work as well: servants here read their masters accurately, and keep doing so.