Vronsky asks Dolly for help

Vronsky sends the others to the stud farm and keeps Dolly back. Alone, mopping his balding head, he says he knows she is Anna's friend and asks for help. Society, he says, is hell — two weeks in Petersburg were torment beyond imagining — and though Anna is happy now, resting after her sufferings and unwilling to see what is coming, he cannot help seeing it: his daughter is not his by law but Karenin's, a son would be a Karenin too, heir neither to his name nor his property, and the work he is proud of would die with him. He wanders into a defence of that work, which Dolly notes is confused and belongs to the same private category. Then the request: a divorce is needed even to petition the Emperor for adoption, Karenin has said he will not refuse if Anna asks, and only a letter is wanted. He calls the demand a Pharisaic cruelty and asks Dolly to persuade her. Dolly agrees, remembering Anna's new habit of screwing up her eyes — as if blinking at her life so as not to see it.

Vronsky's case is legal, practical and entirely about inheritance, and he says twice that Anna is happy while Dolly's doubt grows each time. The two of them can no longer discuss the one thing that governs their lives, so a guest is enlisted. Dolly's image for the screwed-up eyes — blinking at her life so as not to see it — is the best description of Anna anyone gives.