Levin goes to brother Nicholas

Walking away from the Shcherbatskys', Levin concludes that Kitty was bound to choose Vronsky and that he himself is a man of no account, wanted by no one. His thoughts turn gladly to Nicholas, and on the sledge ride he goes over his brother's life: the monkish University years of fasting and church, mocked by everyone including Levin; then the sudden break into debauchery, the boy beaten, the sharper, the night in the police cells, the suit against Sergius Ivanich over their mother's fortune, the arrest for assaulting an Elder. Nobody helped him when he was seeking, and all turned away when he broke loose. At No. 12 Levin finds him among tobacco fumes with Kritsky, expelled from Kiev University for starting Sunday schools, and Mary Nikolavna, whom Nicholas introduces as his life's companion, taken out of a house — anyone who cannot respect her may use the door.

Rejection sends Levin to his brother, and Tolstoy makes the connection explicit: humiliation is what opens him to Nicholas. The catalogue of disgraces is delivered as Levin's defence of him, which is the chapter's technique — the same facts that damn Nicholas to Prokofy exonerate him to someone who knows the whole story.