Karenin drafts a speech

Karenin saw nothing improper in the conversation at the little table, but noticed that others did, and therefore thinks it improper and resolves to speak to his wife. At home he reads his book on the Papacy till one, then paces the dining-room, drawing-room and her sitting-room in circles, each one returning him to the same two questions — decide what, and what has happened — and to the same answer, nothing. He is not jealous, holding jealousy an insult to a wife; but he now faces something illogical, and feels like a man crossing a bridge who sees it being taken to pieces above an abyss. The abyss is real life, the bridge the official life he has always lived in. Sitting at her table he for the first time imagines her thoughts and wishes, finds the idea of her independent life dreadful, and drives it off as dangerous romancing. He files the matter under conscience and religion, drafts a four-point speech, cracks his fingers, and hears the carriage.

The novel's fullest case for Karenin, made by showing him fail at the one act that would save him: imagining another person. Tolstoy walks him in literal circles through his own rooms, and the thought arrives at her writing table and is dismissed as romancing. Filing a marriage under a formal category is the administrative mind meeting the abyss and reaching for a folder.