An impenetrable wall of merry perplexity

A new life begins for Karenin and his wife, in which nothing particular happens. Anna goes into Society as before, visits Princess Betsy often, and meets Vronsky everywhere; Karenin notices and can do nothing, since she meets every attempt at an explanation with 'an impenetrable wall of merry perplexity'. Strong in his official work, he is powerless here, waiting submissively 'like an ox' for the pole-axe he feels raised above him. Each day he prepares to have the talk, and each time the same spirit of falsehood takes hold of him and he falls into his habitual half-bantering tone, in which nothing that needs saying can be said.

A hinge compressed into a single paragraph. Tolstoy summarises months of stalemate instead of dramatising them, and the ox waiting for the pole-axe fixes Karenin as livestock rather than antagonist. The half-bantering tone he cannot climb out of is named once as the mechanism of the marriage's failure, then left to work.