Kitty falls in love with Anna

Anna stays in all day, receiving nobody, and sends Stiva a note — 'Come. God is merciful.' At dinner Dolly addresses him familiarly again; the estrangement holds but separation is no longer in question. Kitty arrives nervous of this admired Petersburg woman and within minutes is in love with her, finding her unlike a Society woman or the mother of an eight-year-old, girlish but for a sad seriousness in her eyes that suggests a higher world of complex poetic interests. Anna crosses her brother and sends him through the door to Dolly. The children cling to her and play at getting closer. Talking of the coming ball, Anna says there are no more jolly balls for her, recalls the blue mist at the end of girlhood, and then reports what Vronsky's mother told her of him — the property offered to his brother, the woman saved from drowning. She does not mention the 200 roubles.

The omission is the chapter. Anna praises Vronsky freely and withholds the one detail that was addressed to her, and Tolstoy tells us she does not like to think of it — the first concealment, performed before there is anything to conceal. Kitty's infatuation with her is set here so that the ball can turn it inside out.