Beefsteak and Yashvin before the race

On the day of the Krasnoe Selo races Vronsky comes early to the mess-room for his beefsteak, at the regulation eleven-and-a-half stone and avoiding sweets, with a French novel open on his plate so that he need not talk. He has not seen Anna for three days, her husband is back from abroad, and he decides to drive to the Karenins' country house on the pretext that Betsy sent him to ask about the race. Two officers come in — a boy fresh from the Cadet Corps and a bloated older man with a bracelet — and are frozen out. Then Captain Yashvin arrives: gambler, rake, a man with bad principles rather than none, and Vronsky's best friend in the regiment, liked for his strength, his head for cards, and above all because he likes Vronsky for himself. He is the one man Vronsky would tell about his love, and the one who already knows and takes it seriously. Yashvin won eight thousand last night and has staked heavily on Vronsky. They go out together.

The one friendship Vronsky has is with a man of bad principles, and Tolstoy makes the reason exact: Yashvin values him apart from name and money, which nobody else does. The unopened French novel and the two snubbed officers show the coldness Anna will later be on the wrong side of. Everything in the chapter — weight, mare, stake — is being set on a race.