The portrait behind the screen

The club calm lasts as far as the courtyard gate; in the jolting, ill-lit street Levin begins to wonder what Kitty would say. Oblonsky talks him past it: the divorce has dragged three months over the question of the son, Anna has been weeks in Moscow seeing nobody but Dolly because she will not be visited as a charity, and even Princess Barbara has left her as improper. She is writing a children's book which Vorkuyev the publisher calls remarkable; she has taken in the family of Vronsky's drunken English trainer, coaches the boys in Russian and keeps the girl in the house. Upstairs, in a study lit by a shaded lamp, a reflector picks out Mikhaylov's full-length portrait of her, and Levin cannot look away: a living charming woman with bare shoulders and a dreamy half-smile, the only sign that she is not alive being that she is more beautiful than a living woman could be. Then Anna comes out from behind the trellis screen, in blue, at the same height of beauty.

Tolstoy introduces Anna to Levin through Mikhaylov's portrait first, so that the real woman is measured against a painting from the moment she enters. The detail that damns the picture is also its praise — more beautiful than a living woman could be. Oblonsky's account of her occupations is affectionate, complete, and describes a life assembled to fill time.