Oblonsky puts Anna's case

At Anna's name Karenin's face empties of animation. Oblonsky appeals to him not as a statesman but as a kind man and a Christian: her position is literally awful. Karenin answers that she has everything she herself desired and that the matter was closed when she declined the divorce rather than give up the son. Oblonsky recapitulates — Karenin was as magnanimous as a man can be, she appreciated it and renounced everything, and facts and time have made her situation impossible. She no longer asks for the boy; she asks only to be got out of it. Six months in Moscow where every meeting is a knife, waiting daily on a decision, is like keeping a condemned man in the halter and promising him either death or reprieve. Karenin says he may have promised what he had no right to promise, and that as a believer he cannot act against the Christian law. Reminded of his own words about the coat and the cloak, he rises pale with a trembling jaw and begs him to stop. He will answer the day after tomorrow.

Oblonsky quotes Karenin's own act of forgiveness back at him and it is unbearable, which is the surest sign the forgiveness was real. The Christian law now forbids what Christian feeling once granted — Lydia Ivanovna's conversion working exactly as designed. The halter and the deferred reprieve is the fairest statement of Anna's position anyone makes, and it comes from the brother who lives on her brother-in-law's patronage.