The Kartasovs leave their box

Vronsky is angry for the first time and cannot say why: to appear at the opera dressed like that with Princess Barbara is to admit being a fallen woman and to challenge Society outright. His regard for her diminishes as his consciousness of her beauty grows. He stays behind with Yashvin and brandy, kicks over a table, snaps at his valet, and then dresses and goes. He finds her in the fifth box, proud and strikingly beautiful in her lace, and notices Princess Barbara laughing unnaturally, Yashvin wearing his losing-at-cards face, and the Kartasovs' box emptying — the wife has said aloud that it is a disgrace to sit near Madame Karenina, and her husband goes out without bowing. Anna plays external tranquillity perfectly, and strangers admire her composure without suspecting she feels pilloried. Vronsky's mother recommends he go and pay court to the woman making a sensation. At the hotel Anna cries that it is all his fault, that she hates his calmness, that if he loved her — and he gives her assurances he is ashamed to utter. Next day they leave for the country.

The public execution takes about ninety seconds and is conducted entirely by a woman putting on her cloak. Tolstoy shows it from the stalls, through opera-glasses, so the reader sees what Vronsky sees and learns the words only later at second hand. Part Five ends with a reconciliation built on assurances the man is ashamed to make and the woman drinks in — the arrangement they will now live on.