The Prince, and a look in the mirror

The Karenins live in the same house, meet daily and are wholly estranged; he dines out, Vronsky never calls, and Anna meets him elsewhere with her husband's knowledge. All three endure it only because each expects it to resolve: Karenin that the passion will pass, Anna that something will soon settle everything without knowing what, Vronsky because he submits to her judgement. In midwinter he spends a dull week escorting a foreign Prince — a man as fresh as a big green shining cucumber, who has serenaded in Spain, shot a chamois in Switzerland, jumped hedges in a pink coat in England, and now wants Russian amusements. Vronsky arranges trotting-races, pancakes, bear-hunting, gipsies and sprees with smashed crockery, and the Prince keeps asking what next. The worst of it is the mirror: the Prince is stupid, healthy and clean, quiet with superiors, free with equals, contemptuously good-natured with inferiors — exactly as Vronsky is. 'Stupid ox! can I really be like that myself?'

Tolstoy opens Part Four with the three of them waiting for something to happen, which is the actual condition of the plot, and then supplies Vronsky with a mirror. The Prince embodies the code of Part Three chapter 20 in a man with nothing else, and the recognition costs Vronsky a week's comfort and produces the first self-judgement he has managed.