Nightingales are not fed on fables

Pinning a last bow before the mirror, Anna hears wheels and sees a black hat and her husband's familiar ears. Dreading that he means to stay the night, she goes out beaming, gives herself up to the now familiar spirit of lies, and hears herself hope aloud that he will stay. He grimaces at Betsy's name, says he will not separate the inseparables and will walk part of the way as the doctors ordered. Anna talks too much and too fast, and notices Slyudin watching her; nothing particular is said, and she can never afterwards recall the scene without shame. Serezha comes in and shrinks from 'young man', looking to his mother for protection; she lifts her husband's hand off the boy's shoulder and takes him out. Karenin cracks his fingers and gives her money, since nightingales are not fed on fables, and she blushes to the roots of her hair. He kisses her hand at parting, and the moment he is out of sight she shudders at the place his lips touched.

The money is the chapter's sharpest stroke: an allowance handed to a pregnant woman by the husband she is deceiving, delivered with a proverb. Tolstoy notes that nothing particular passed and that she was ashamed of it ever after, which locates the shame in the pretending rather than in any act. She defends her son from his father, physically, for the first time.