Anna hears Dolly out

Dolly is giving Grisha a French lesson and pulling a loose button off his jacket when Anna arrives, dreading the set phrases of Christian consolation she has heard in her own head a thousand times. Anna offers none. She names all five children, their ages and their illnesses, and then says simply that she will not take Stiva's part or console her, only that she is sorry from the bottom of her heart. Dolly tells it from the beginning: married knowing nothing, nine years believing she was the only woman he had known, then his letter to the governess. It is not a momentary slip she cannot bear but the deliberate deceiving. Anna argues that such men hold their homes as holy places, that Dolly has been and remains his divinity, and asks whether there is love enough left for forgiveness. Asked whether she herself would forgive, Anna considers and says she would, utterly.

Anna's gift is shown before her fall so the loss of it can be measured: she persuades by refusing to console. The chapter is built to make her final answer ring — she would forgive utterly, and would not remain the same woman — because she is about to require exactly that of Karenin, who gives it, and of a society that will not.