The watering-place, and Varenka

At the little German watering-place Society crystallises as water does into snow, each newcomer settling at once into a preordained place; 'Fürst Shcherbatsky sammt Gemahlin und Tochter' take theirs, and the presence of a real German Royal Princess makes the process especially brisk. Kitty curtsies in a very simple Paris gown and is told she hopes the roses will return to that pretty little face. There follow an English Lady, a German Countess with a son wounded in the war, a Swedish savant, the Rtishchevs — whose daughter is ill of the same cause as Kitty — and an unshakeable Moscow Colonel, comical out of uniform. Bored, Kitty takes to inventing splendid characters for strangers, and fixes on a Russian girl who attends the invalid Madame Stahl and everyone else who is seriously ill. Varenka, neither relative nor paid companion, has no consciousness of her own attractiveness and seems always occupied, which is exactly what Kitty is seeking. Then Nicholas Levin and Mary Ivanovna appear at the Wells.

The crystallisation image opens Kitty's convalescence with the same argument her illness was a protest against: that Society assigns a place and one cannot deviate. Varenka is introduced as the answer — a woman exempt from the marriage market — and described as a flower already fading and without scent, which is Tolstoy warning that the answer is partial.