Dolly puts Kitty's case

Dolly asks why he is angry with Kitty, and learns for the first time that he proposed and was refused — Kitty told nobody. She puts the case he cannot see: men observe, bide their time and propose when their love is ripe, while a girl in suspense is expected to choose and can only say yes or no, and Kitty was undecided between him and Vronsky. Levin answers that one may choose a dress that way, not love, and that the pride Dolly despises makes any thought of her sister perfectly impossible. When she persists he jumps up: it is like telling a man whose child has died what the child might have been. He will not come while Kitty is there, though he will not avoid her. Then Tanya comes in for her spade and is made to ask in French, and everything in the house is spoilt for him — teach them French and deprive them of sincerity. After tea Grisha and Tanya are found fighting, and Dolly's pride in her children collapses. Levin comforts her, thinking his own will be different.

Dolly explains the refusal in terms that would let Levin hope, and his pride refuses the explanation, which is the plot of Part Four in advance. Tolstoy then punctures him twice in a page: the French lesson he judges without knowing she has thought it through, and the children whose fight he consoles her about while promising himself better ones.