Kitty's labour begins

There are no conditions a man cannot get used to, especially when everyone around him lives the same way: three months ago Levin could not have believed he would sleep soundly after tippling, after unsuitable friendship with the man his wife once loved and a more unsuitable visit to a fallen woman. At five the door creaks; Kitty says it is nothing with a peculiarly sweet smile, and he only later understands the bated breath beside him. At seven she wakes him — send for Mary Vlasevna — and sits holding her knitting, telling him not to be frightened. Every veil has fallen from her face and the kernel of her soul shows through; she suffers, complains, triumphs in the suffering and loves it, and he cannot understand it. She sends him off and takes up the knitting again. Crossing the drawing-room he hears one piteous moan and, an unbeliever, finds the words on his lips: 'Lord have mercy! Pardon and help us!' He sets off on foot rather than wait for the horse, and meets the midwife's sledge at the corner.

The prayer arrives before the belief and Tolstoy insists on the order: doubt and the impossibility of believing by reason fly off like dust, and the appeal stands. Kitty taking up her knitting between pains is the chapter's whole portrait of courage. The opening sentence about habituation quietly indicts the entire Moscow winter just before it is swept away.