Waiting at the railway station

At eleven next morning Vronsky drives to the Petersburg railway station to meet his mother and finds Oblonsky on the portico steps, waiting for his sister off the same train. Oblonsky declaims his verse about recognising youths in love, then names the lovely woman he has come to meet: Anna. The name Karenina suggests to Vronsky someone stiff and dull, though he knows Alexis Alexandrovich Karenin by repute as clever, learned and religious — 'not in my line'. Vronsky complains that Muscovites are always standing on their hind legs; Oblonsky defends Levin, then cheerfully gives away that Levin probably proposed to Kitty last night. Vronsky says she may make a better match, expands his chest and feels himself a conqueror. The train comes in through the frosty mist. Of his mother, whom he will treat with perfect outward submission, Vronsky in his heart feels neither respect nor love.

Everything the novel will do at railway stations is set up in a chapter where nothing happens at one. Oblonsky betrays Levin's confidence within a day, using the same recited couplet on both men, and Tolstoy closes on the formula that explains Vronsky entirely: outward submission inversely proportional to inward regard.