Anna leaves Moscow a day early

The morning after the ball Anna telegraphs her husband that she is leaving Moscow that evening. Kitty sends word that she has a headache and does not come; the children abruptly stop loving their aunt, sensing she no longer takes an interest in them. Dolly recognises in Anna an anxiety that generally hides dissatisfaction with oneself, and follows her to her room. Anna says she is not strange but wicked, and then confesses her skeleton: Kitty is jealous of her, and she was the cause of the ball being a torture — 'really I was not to blame, or only a very little'. Dolly laughs that she sounds like Stiva, which annoys her. She says she would be in despair if there were anything serious in it on Vronsky's side, knowing as she says it that she is leaving a day early only to avoid meeting him. Dolly, embracing her, promises to love her always as her best friend.

A confession that functions as concealment: Anna tells Dolly the truth in order to establish that she has nothing to hide, and Tolstoy flatly contradicts her in the next sentence. Dolly's pleasure at finding a weakness in her is the novel's quiet warning about how friends will receive this later. The children withdraw first, before anyone has been told anything.