Levin and Kitty meet again

Oblonsky arrives to find the drawing-room frozen — Turovtsyn stranded among the clever ones, the old Prince sharpening a remark for Karenin, Kitty watching the door — and in a minute kneads the Society dough into shape, starting Koznyshev and Karenin on the Russification of Poland and seating everyone where they belong. Then Levin comes in, knocking snow from his cap, and sees Kitty: frightened, shy and shamefaced, and more charming for it. Their hands meet over nothing much; he tells her he saw her driving to Ergushovo, and decides on the spot that what Dolly told him is true. Introduced to Karenin, he recalls their three hours in a railway carriage and his sheep-skin coat. Kitty asks about the bear while chasing a slippery pickled mushroom with her fork, and he hears a prayer for forgiveness and a promise in it. Koznyshev wonders why his brother behaves like a conqueror. Oblonsky, quite casually, puts the two of them side by side at table.

Tolstoy loads a whole reconciliation into a question about bears, and the reader hears it only because Levin does — nothing said aloud would convict either of them. Oblonsky's social craft is treated as a real skill and given its own paragraph. The word 'casually' doing the seating is the chapter's joke: the entire dinner exists for those two chairs.