The dream of the peasant

A note from Anna is waiting: she is ill and unhappy, cannot go out, and cannot go on without seeing him — come this evening, her husband will be at the Council till ten. Vronsky, now a colonel and living alone, lies down after lunch and dreams of a small dirty peasant with a tangled beard, a beater from the bear-hunt, stooping over something and suddenly speaking strange words in French. He wakes in the dark trembling, cannot say why it was terrible, and forgets it in the rush to be on time. At the Karenins' door he notices the hall porter's surprise and almost walks into Karenin, whose dull expressionless eyes rest on him under the gaslight; Karenin moves his lips silently, touches his hat and drives off with his rug and opera-glasses. Vronsky is left furious at being made an impostor by a man who will not defend his honour. Anna meets him in tears, having waited two hours, and searches his face against the image her fancy paints, which is finer than anything that could exist.

The peasant with the tangled beard muttering French arrives in Vronsky's sleep, unexplained and terrifying, and Tolstoy plants it without comment — Anna has been dreaming him too. Karenin's silence in the doorway does more damage than a challenge would, exactly as Anna predicted. The note that she compares him each time against an impossible image is the terms on which this love now runs.