The white boletus and the birch

Ten paces away, Koznyshev has the sentences ready — his ideal formed young, met for the first time in her, his hand offered. Varenka, kneeling to defend some mushrooms from Grisha, mentions her childhood; they walk out of earshot and she says, against her will, that of course there are fewer deep in the wood. He is vexed with her for mentioning mushrooms and answers about white boleti. Her heart beats so that she can hear it; both know it must be now or never; he is sorry for her and feels that silence would be an offence — and asks what the difference is between the white boletus and the birch-tree variety. She answers, her lips trembling, that it is only in the stems, and both understand at once that it is over. He observes that the stem is like a dark man's two-day beard. She feels pained, ashamed, and relieved. At home he concludes he had judged wrongly and cannot be unfaithful to Marie's memory. Kitty needs no telling: 'Won't bite.'

Two lives are settled by a question about fungus stems, and Tolstoy gives no reason beyond the mechanics of the moment — the wrong remark, the vexation, the substituted sentence. Koznyshev's return to Marie's memory is produced afterwards, which is exactly how the chapter before predicted he would use it. Varenka's relief, placed beside her shame, is the honest half of the scene.