Anna refuses the divorce

The bullet missed Vronsky's heart but he lies days between life and death, and his first words to Varya are an order: it went off accidentally, tell everybody, or it would be too stupid. Convalescent, he finds the attempt has washed off the shame — he can think of Karenin's generosity without humiliation and look people in the face again — and what remains is a regret bordering on despair at having lost Anna. Serpukhovskoy finds him a post in Tashkend and he accepts at once, asking only to see her once more and then bury himself; Betsy brings back a refusal, which he calls just as well. Next day Betsy reports that Karenin has consented to a divorce, and he runs up the Karenins' stairs without asking where the husband is. Anna has prepared what to say and says none of it. She tells him she does not want the divorce and cannot accept Karenin's generosity, and that she does not know what to decide about Serezha, which he cannot understand at all. He refuses Tashkend, resigns his commission, and they go abroad undivorced.

Part Four ends by undoing everything it achieved: the forgiveness is refused, the divorce declined, the career resigned. Tolstoy notes without comment that the suicide attempt worked — the shame is gone, the rut regained — which is the coldest thing in the book. Anna refuses the one arrangement that could protect her, and the reason is the word she still cannot settle: Serezha.