Anna rings her own door

Anna came back to Russia to see her son and finds she cannot: she may not go to the house, the old nurse has left the household, and two days go by in searching. She writes to Lydia Ivanovna, deliberately resting the request on her husband's magnanimity, and the commissionaire brings back the answer that there is no answer — the deepest humiliation she has known. She cannot share it with Vronsky, knowing the matter would seem unimportant to him and that his coldness would make her hate him, which she fears more than anything. When the Countess's letter follows, its malevolence turns her humility to anger — 'She is worse than I. Anyhow, I don't lie!' — and she resolves to go to the house on Serezha's birthday and bribe her way in. She buys toys, plans everything but the words. At eight she rings her own former door; Kapitonich recognises her and bows low, and runs ahead in his goloshes to show her up. She hears a yawn, knows it, and goes in. 'I knew! I knew you would come!'

Tolstoy notes that she prepared everything except what to say, which is how the scene can be written at all. The child she has been loving for months is four years old and the one in the bed is nine, thinner and cropped — the reunion begins with a correction. Kapitonich's silent bow is the only act of pure kindness in Part Five.