Two telegrams, and a forgiveness

Two telegrams reach Karenin: Stremov has taken the appointment he wanted, and Anna is dying and begs his forgiveness. He assumes deception, re-reads it, and goes, deciding to keep up appearances if it is true. On the Petersburg porch he is told she was safely delivered yesterday, and turns pale — realising how much he had wanted her death — then is relieved to hear her health is very bad. Inside, Vronsky sits weeping with his face in his hands. Anna, rosy and brilliant with puerperal fever, talks rapidly of Alexis, meaning her husband, whom nobody knows but her; when she sees him she puts her arms up as if expecting a blow, then says she fears only death. There is another woman in her, she says, who fell in love with that other one, and is not herself. Karenin's perturbation turns into a bliss he has never known: he kneels and sobs, forgives wholly, and at her command uncovers Vronsky's face and gives him his hand. Afterwards he tells Vronsky he will turn the other cheek and stay.

The novel's turning point, and Tolstoy makes the forgiveness arrive as a physical event rather than a decision — Karenin does not apply the law of Christ, the feeling simply fills him. He is honest enough to record wanting her dead on the doorstep. Anna's account of another woman inside her is the closest the book comes to naming what has happened to her, and it is spoken in delirium.