Nicholas shakes his stick

A wet morning fills the covered gallery. Kitty walks with her mother and the Moscow Colonel, keeping to one side to avoid Nicholas Levin, while Varenka paces the length of it with a blind Frenchwoman, exchanging friendly looks at each pass. The Princess will not let Kitty speak to her first, being offended that Madame Stahl has avoided her acquaintance. Then shouting breaks out: Nicholas, dissatisfied with his treatment, has insulted the German doctor and shaken his stick at him, and the Colonel comes back declaring that the one thing to fear abroad is meeting Russians. Varenka knew what to do before anybody, took him by the arm and led him away. Next day she is on the same footing with Nicholas and Mary Ivanovna as with her other protégés, interpreting for the woman, who has no German. The Princess makes inquiries, then introduces herself outside a baker's shop. Varenka explains that Madame Stahl is not her aunt but adopted her, and that Levin is leaving.

Varenka earns the friendship by an action rather than a conversation, and the man she rescues is the brother of the suitor Kitty refused — a coincidence Tolstoy leaves entirely unremarked by anyone in the scene. Kitty's hand is pressed and the pressure is not returned, which is the first small fact against the ideal she has built.