The brothers quarrel and part

Nicholas's meekness lasts one night. By morning he is cavilling at everything, and Levin, who knows that speaking straight from the heart would reduce them to 'You will die' and 'I know, and I am afraid', tries for the first time in his life to say something other than what he thinks, and is detected. On the third day Nicholas demands the plan again and deliberately confuses it with communism, which at least has a geometric charm of definiteness; Levin, who wants to balance between communism and things as they are, grows hot because he knows the charge is partly true. Nicholas tells him he has no convictions and only wants to flatter his self-esteem, and will not be pacified: better that they part. At the door he kisses his brother and says, 'Do not think too badly of me, Kostya' — the only sincere words that pass between them. Three days later Levin leaves for abroad, telling young Shcherbatsky at the station that it is time for him to die, and clinging to his work as the one thread through the dark.

The dying man delivers the most accurate criticism of Levin's scheme in the novel, and he does it out of malice, which Tolstoy lets stand as no objection. Part Three closes on work held onto as a thread through darkness rather than as a solution — the position Levin will keep until the last chapters. Nine words at a doorway are all the two brothers manage.