The armour of lies

Anna comes in playing with the tassels of her hood, her face glowing like a conflagration on a dark night, and is astonished at her own capacity for deception — she feels clothed in an impenetrable armour of lies, helped by some unseen power. Karenin warns her that her too animated conversation with Count Vronsky attracted attention. She answers that one day he dislikes her being dull and the next her being happy, and tells him not to crack his fingers. He knows what her refusal to notice his state of mind means: the depths of her soul, always open till now, are closed, and she is not ashamed of it. He recites his case — propriety, the bond made by God, the crime that brings its punishment — and then, departing from his draft, says he loves her, which she hears as a word he would not want had he never heard others use it. She says she has nothing to say and that it is bedtime. In the dark he falls asleep whistling; she lies awake thinking of another.

Anna discovers her talent for lying in the act of using it, and Tolstoy has her marvel at it, which makes the scene a birth rather than a deceit. Karenin's four-point speech collapses into 'I love you' and is thrown away. The whistling snore that ends the chapter does more damage to him than any of her arguments, and she takes it as permission.