Levin arrives at the Board

Oblonsky heads a Government Board in Moscow, a post got through his brother-in-law Alexis Alexandrovich Karenin, though a hundred other relations would have served; half Moscow and half Petersburg are his friends. He is respected at the Office for his leniency, his easy equality with all ranks, and above all his complete indifference to the business, which keeps him from ever making a mistake. The sitting is interrupted when Constantine Dmitrich Levin comes running up the stone stairs in a sheepskin cap, and Oblonsky hurries him into his private room. The two have been friends since youth, each privately thinking the other's life an illusion. Levin, introduced to the colleagues Nikitin and Grinevich, is nettled at being named as Koznyshev's brother, announces he has quarrelled with the Zemstvo, blushes like a boy, and cannot get his question out. Oblonsky answers it anyway: the Shcherbatskys are unchanged, and Kitty skates in the Zoological Gardens from four to five.

Levin's entrance is staged as intrusion — an outsider running up the stairs in the wrong hat — and the novel's second centre opens. Tolstoy pairs him with Stiva at once so that every later Levin chapter is measured against a man whose success depends on not caring. Grinevich's fingernails carry the judgement Levin cannot say aloud.