The diary, and the confessions

The Princess breaks the silence with cards, the betrothal and the trousseau; Levin proposes the wedding for tomorrow and is told he seems quite mad. Alone with Kitty he says he always knew it was predestined; she admits that even when she drove her happiness away she loved only him, and asks whether he can forget it. He means to confess two things — that he is not as pure as she is, and that he is an agnostic — and puts it off. Then relatives and servants arrive and the beatific tumult begins. He goes for sweets, for flowers at Fomin's, for presents at Fulda's, and finds that everyone, even the cold and indifferent, is delighted with him; Countess Nordston hints she had hoped for better and is argued down. Having got the old Prince's permission he gives Kitty his diary. The agnosticism passes without a remark, since she knows his soul through her love. The other confession makes her weep bitterly — 'Take those dreadful books back!' — and she forgives him, and he bows lower before her than ever.

Levin expects his courtship to be unlike anyone's, does exactly what everyone does, and is happier for it — Tolstoy's verdict on custom, delivered without argument. The diary is the one real wound: he hands it over as a duty without once imagining its effect, the same failure that ruins other men in this book. Her indifference to his unbelief is the deepest thing said about faith so far.